Women Friendly Companies: What Works and What Doesn’t
By Barbara Annis
Most managers have more or less or bought into the idea that gender diversity is a good thing. An encouraging, twenty-five percent of women gave their CEO 10 out of 10 on “Commitment to advancing women” in WITI’s Best Companies for Women in Technology survey. Yet in the same survey women commented:
“It’s still an old boy’s club”
“Women’s comments are not even recognized unless a man also supports that idea.”
“Women are continuously over looked for key positions regardless of the quality and impact of their contributions”
“They talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. The programs are in place, but they are not supported by management”
Most large companies have spent loads of money on diversity programs. Why then are so many companies lousy places for women to work?
At the risk of sounding flippant the answer is that being good at diversity is hard‹or rather, what you need to do is subtle, and so many people get it wrong. For example, it seems logical that if your firm doesn’t have enough women at senior levels then you need to establish targets, say four new women VPs over the next three years. But experience has shown this doesn’t work. It’s pretty clear there is something flawed in the quota approach if you listen to your gut. Women feel, “I don’t want to be promoted just as a token!” Men feel, “I don’t want to be passed over for promotion just because I’m the wrong gender!” The quota system promotes equality only in that it makes everyone equally mad.
However, it would be wrong to condemn companies applying quotas; they are trying to do the right thing. The end goal they seek, a greater number of women in senior positions, is a laudable one. What was missed was the subtlety of what it takes to get to the goal. Before companies get into implementing diversity programs, they need to get a better understanding of the problem.
Why Do We Need Programs Anyway?
A good place to start is to ask, “Why you need diversity programs anyway?̶`; If a company truly lived in a spirit of inclusiveness there would be no diversity programs, people would simply rise on merit, irrespective of ethnicity, gender or hair color. Ideally, we shouldn’t be striving to have great diversity programs but to do away with the barriers that create a need for them.
The biggest barrier is the blind spots men have when it comes to women in the workplace.
If you ask men why there are not many women in the higher ranks they’ll say:
- “There are not enough women in the labor pool with the right experience.”
- “Women do not want to make the sacrifices required for senior jobs.”
- “Our male clients prefer, and feel more comfortable, dealing with men.”
None of these are true, and if you ask women why there are few women in the senior levels they’ll say,
- “There’s an old boys network.”
- “Women are excluded from the real meeting after the meeting.”
- “It is not a supportive environment for women.”
Unfortunately, they won’t say that to men in the exit interview. In the exit interview they’ll say they’re leaving for more money or better work-life balance. They don’t say, so the men never know. One of the central reasons why inclusiveness is so hard to attain is that the problem is invisible to the group in power. Read full article>>