tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/female-executives-4423/articlesfemale executives – The Conversation2021-06-17T14:28:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1627772021-06-17T14:28:09Z2021-06-17T14:28:09ZGender washing: seven kinds of marketing hypocrisy about empowering women<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407045/original/file-20210617-12-zgs0pm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'We're all about you.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/digital-art-painting-illustration-business-man-564387154">jesadaphorn</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At a time of so much focus on how women are held back and treated unfairly, corporations spend multiple millions telling us what they are doing to empower women and girls. When this makes them seem more women-friendly than they really are, it’s known as gender washing. </p>
<p>Gender washing comes in different varieties, and some can be easier to spot than others. To help identify them, it can be useful to look at the decades of research on corporate greenwashing – that better known variant related to climate change. </p>
<p>Inspired by a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1086026615575332?casa_token=CkZLSpkmkJEAAAAA%3A3VRqewkRzQLKk-_unLf4GtR79bhvVs_n2WQvkUOSBmkHL65U4r61f3H0Gk4lnYoXVO6zakPwuqF-">2015 paper</a> that identified seven varieties of greenwashing, I have published <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2021.1935295">a new paper</a> that classifies seven kinds of questionable corporate claims about empowering women and girls.</p>
<p><strong>1. Selective disclosure</strong></p>
<p>When corporations publicise improvements in, say, female boardroom representation, or the gender pay gap, while omitting contradictory or inconvenient information, it’s known as selective disclosure. </p>
<p>For example, pharma group Novartis frequently features on <a href="http://www.workingmother.com/frequently-asked-questions-about-working-mother-surveys">Working Mother</a> magazine’s annual list of the 100 best companies to work for, via an application highlighting the progress it has made in employment practices towards women. Novartis also proudly cites its support for Working Mother, per the tweet below. Yet as recently as 2010, <a href="https://sanfordheisler.com/case/novartis-pharmaceutical-gender-discrimination-class-action/">the corporation lost</a> the then largest gender pay, promotion and pregnancy discrimination case ever to go to trial.</p>
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<p><strong>2. Empty gender policies</strong></p>
<p>Some companies take initiatives to raise women’s voices internally which, in reality, have little impact. For example, “women’s networks” aim to increase female employees’ confidence and help them build leadership skills through networking events and mentoring schemes. But critics argue that such networks are frequently ignored, and don’t address the underlying causes of discrimination or engage men in efforts to tackle institutional sexism. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13678860500100517?casa_token=M6YF6dfj4GIAAAAA%3AwdsPPMRVIE-QT5d1MYLntVdVKfhZOGc94oxNezrrjgiqznM-73LO8ydW1qe5ORZMTjw_qy0zL7db">One study</a> from 2007 found that the members of one company’s women’s network feared it might actually damage their career prospects because at the time, it was ridiculed by male colleagues as a forum for “male-bashing” and exchanging recipes. </p>
<p><strong>3. Dubious labelling</strong></p>
<p>The promotional placement of the pink breast cancer awareness ribbon by brands with products containing known carcinogens or other arguably risky ingredients is an example of this third kind of gender washing. There are examples involving <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0891243214540991?casa_token=dqmpBlAII48AAAAA%3A5JsfDEKId7AeXO38mGCyQhEjfpOrEHbz0UjdPvV4obekV7Y9SwMkV_ph_HpwraxPS684OhKm-br8">makeup</a>, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/add.13035?casa_token=o0KFdzhtj4cAAAAA%3ALae1SGdaHxKGOFJLRfSbP54SJ1MJbKoIDZUsIATvk4uN_Yev0OXNqtGI4x1W9ZGMxpCqZyDEjdCFVQ">alcoholic drinks</a> and even <a href="https://nca.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0033563032000160981?casa_token=PohNuVZfFXcAAAAA:wF0QhHKQjQnrYsPYDEO1aM8AcafVEytoksKjfONbNaRUAA0_QZHq3m-BP4JYu6wip1ujv8rlmrSd#.YMCIHPnduUk">pesticides</a>.</p>
<p>The pink ribbon can also gender wash the objectification of women. For example, US bar chain Hooters has built its entire brand around waitresses with voluptuous breasts and skimpy clothing. In the company logo, the two Os are replaced by the eyes of an owl, symbolising breasts to be stared at, wide-eyed. Yet, once a year for breast cancer awareness month, the eyes are replaced by pink ribbons as Hooters invites customers to “give a hoot” for breast cancer awareness. Staring is thus rebranded as caring.</p>
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<p><strong>4. Useful partnerships</strong></p>
<p>One way in which a corporation’s image could be gender-washed is to associate with a feminist, women’s or girls’ organisation through funding or some other assistance. The corporation gets to place its logo on the organisation’s marketing materials, potentially distracting from practices elsewhere. </p>
<p>For example, Dove has partnered with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts on a <a href="https://free-being-me.com/downloads/">teaching resource</a> aimed at helping girls to question dominant beauty standards that damage their self-esteem. This is despite the beauty industry - of which Dove is part - <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/528849">perpetuating those standards</a> to sell products.</p>
<p><strong>5. Voluntary codes</strong></p>
<p>When rights abuses emerge in global supply chains – often most affecting female workers in the global south – there are often demands for tighter regulation of corporate behaviour. One way for corporations <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20097949?casa_token=gcBe12TotnkAAAAA%3A6rIR07PA5rkuCE5U80VB0p6ZAOZOaIDycef6zjTJTlz52HbjeswM1n64hRwienr7SoLnpBqk0TlNOiihqLVWg0Ph25Omg-n4DLnW8OyYzp3W6huPBNo&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">to respond</a> and potentially deflect such demands is by creating voluntary codes of practice. Their very voluntariness is presented by corporations as evidence of a commitment to empowering workers – particularly women.</p>
<p>Voluntary codes rarely lead to meaningful improvements. For example, when the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed in 2013, over 1,000 garment factory workers died, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-018-3798-1">some 80%</a> of them women. In the aftermath, the voluntary Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety was established and <a href="https://corporate.walmart.com/our-commitment-to-the-workers-of-bangladesh">promoted by</a> western retailers such as Walmart as improving safety and empowering female factory workers. Yet crucially, there were no <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-018-4080-2">legally binding commitments</a> to prevent another disaster, and the alliance was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/31/rana-plaza-bangladesh-collapse-fashion-working-conditions">later criticised</a> by activists and researchers for not improving conditions quickly enough.</p>
<p><strong>6. Changing the narrative</strong></p>
<p>Corporations can position themselves as global leaders on issues where they have previously been found wanting. For example in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Nike <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021943610389752?casa_token=dVWU3tTcZ1EAAAAA:yvP7HaS5wP6xHUD19QyhYlB7BCBO1GmMNpa02N6DtRZYyQcfSE6wycw8-4JpQZ-LqrG1Ybnnb7R3">was dogged</a> by claims of child labour, sexual and physical abuse among workers at supplier factories, 90% of whom were female. </p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021943610389752">Nike’s response</a> included establishing a division of corporate responsibility and setting up the Nike Foundation. One of the foundation’s flagship campaigns was the Girl Effect, launched in 2008 to persuade global elites to invest in girls’ education in the global south. </p>
<p>The campaign quickly went viral, and was soon partnering with the UK’s Department for International Development on programmes to empower girls in the global south. Nike had gone from a brand tarnished by accusations of child labour and exploitation to a trusted partner in international efforts to promote girls’ rights.</p>
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<p><strong>7. Reassuring branding</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://www.chiquita.com/">Chiquita Banana</a>, the famous logo of Chiquita Brands Corporation, might give shoppers in the global north the impression of buying their bananas from a happy, Latina market woman cheerfully selling her wares. </p>
<p>Yet feminist scholars <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=16kwDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=cynthia+enloe+bananas+beaches+bases&ots=1Oyi5OdiuL&sig=ijIFpEmVipKmlHAE_t56ey2keZs&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=cynthia%20enloe%20bananas%20beaches%20bases&f=false">have documented</a> the long history of Chiquita – formerly the United Fruit Company – exploiting women on banana plantations in Latin America and the Caribbean. This includes past cases of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230289673_3">sexual harassment, discrimination</a>, exposure to harmful chemicals, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/jcorpciti.21.85?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">and violations</a> of childcare and maternity rights. </p>
<p>Does all of this matter? If corporations want to take up the cause of gender equality, is that so bad? It is true that some women and girls do find ways within gender washing campaigns to make gains, but we can’t lose sight of <a href="https://theconversation.com/feminism-washing-are-multinationals-really-empowering-women-120353">the bigger picture</a>. </p>
<p>If a corporation’s employment practices, supply chains or products are harmful to women and girls, and it sells more products thanks to gender washing, then this has increased the harm done. That is why it is so important to identify and call out forms of gender washing whenever we see them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosie Walters receives funding from the ESRC, and is a member of the Women's Equality Party. </span></em></p>How companies love to tell us all the great things they’re doing to help women.Rosie Walters, Lecturer in International Relations, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1414112020-06-28T16:06:51Z2020-06-28T16:06:51ZAs lockdown ends, women executives are also at the end of their rope<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/343788/original/file-20200624-132951-1b6a7zp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C66%2C7360%2C4506&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women internalized their role as caregivers so much so that, more often than not, the question of "whose work is getting priority in your couple?" is never even asked.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Clara is a researcher in charge of four doctoral students, Nadja a web chief editor and manager of 10 people, and Floria a recently established entrepreneur. Settled in heterosexual couples, mothers of one or several children, these women benefit from jobs with flexible hours and generally work autonomously. In theory, this is all good. However, as the <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20200509-france-prepares-to-ease-covid-19-lockdown-what-you-need-to-know">Covid-19 lockdown was being gradually eased in France</a>, their children were not given priority to go back to school or daycare centres.</p>
<p>During this period, these women and their partners had a difficult equation to solve: to continue working full time while taking care of their children, home-schooling them and managing a surplus of domestic chores. Today, the issue has become even more complex as employers urge their staff to come back to work, at least on a part-time basis.</p>
<p>Many of these women have the financial means to subcontract domestic chores, but the main difficulty still remains taking care of their children and ensuring their pedagogical follow-up. Given the need to protect elders, grandparents are not the solution they once were, and moreover, many couples cannot afford private baby-sitting services. Even those who can have difficulty finding someone able to manage home-schooling as well. </p>
<p>More than ever, these couples are faced with a decision to make, and chose who is going to be in charge of most of the domestic and parental load, and whose work is going to have priority.</p>
<h2>Internalizing the “caregiver” role</h2>
<p>More often than not, the question of “whose work is getting priority?” is never openly asked within families. Sociologist Émilie Genin explains that because women have internalised the role of “caregivers”, they “naturally” step back from their professional career to devote themselves to their children, thereby facilitating men’s work.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.academia.edu/29302315/The_Female_Breadwinner_Phenomenological_Experience_and_Gendered_Identity_in_Work_Family_Spaces">Other studies show</a> that even when women are the “breadwinners” of the family, those providing financial support to the rest of the family, their internalisation of their role as “caregivers” is leading them to think that they are the ones who are supposed to take care of the children. Consequently, they continue to carry a large part of the domestic and parental load.</p>
<p>This pandemic is no exception. In a study currently running on executive women during the sanitary crisis, we have collected testimonials of women researchers, entrepreneurs, marketing directors, and research and development managers. These testimonials show that they give priority to their household, but that in order to somehow safeguard their professional careers, they seek to make full use of the flexibility of their work.</p>
<h2>Still “locked-down”</h2>
<p>These women then begin to start working “on the margins” of time and space usually devoted to their professional activity. They tell us how they now work before their children get up, after they go to bed, at night and on weekends:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I find myself working at 3 a.m. because then I’ll be able to get things done. But I work with the stress of being interrupted by my child. David never hears anything, he’s a heavy sleeper. There were times when I had to go back upstairs, cradle my young one for 45 minutes and come back down. I’m wiped out.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Others complain about working through insomnia, often caused by the anxiety they feel regarding their marginalisation from the work sphere.</p>
<p>Faced with the absence of any structure to take care of their children, these women maximise their possibilities of home-office until the next back-to-school in September 2020. They give priority to their husband, for their customer visits, on site business meetings and their business trips. These women stay home and are left, for the most part, alone in charge of cooking, cleaning up and home-schooling. These executive women tell us that they are feeling “locked-down” at home, despite the lock-down release, and that they fear they will not be able to take this situation any longer.</p>
<p>Some men have also allowed their work to slide into “marginalized” spaces and times during lock-down and have also been playing on the flexibility of their work since lock-down release. But since their wives have internalised their roles as “caregivers”, these latters continue to anticipate children’s needs, want to be in charge of their pedagogical follow-up and even try to anticipate their partner’s needs and find solutions to relieve them.</p>
<p>For other men – the partners in our study – the flexibility of their wive’s work gives them the opportunity to actually “unlock”. However, in the absence of schools and child-care facilities, as men’s work becomes “demarginalized”, women’s work is even more “marginalized”. In other words, in these couples, it is now a given that men are to rapidly return to a “normal” work pace and work space, whereas women are expected to “compensate” the absence of schools and child care structures by making the most of the flexibility of their work.</p>
<h2>Women must fight to be able to work</h2>
<p>These women then feel the need to fight to be able to work. Firstly, against their own body so as not to be overwhelmed by stress and the exhaustion of intense day, of short nights, of femininity injunctions which did not die down with lockdown, but also of an ever growing mental load women must deal with mostly by themselves.</p>
<p>Then, women fight against social judgement. Wanting to save their job at the expense of their children’s physical and psychological health is not always well perceived and makes them feel guilty:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I have to admit that I’m a little scared [to put her back to school], but do I really have a choice?”</p>
</blockquote>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339740/original/file-20200604-67360-dk174n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339740/original/file-20200604-67360-dk174n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339740/original/file-20200604-67360-dk174n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339740/original/file-20200604-67360-dk174n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339740/original/file-20200604-67360-dk174n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339740/original/file-20200604-67360-dk174n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339740/original/file-20200604-67360-dk174n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Working at home, being in good physical shape, staying ‘feminine’, taking care of the children: as many injunctions as women impose on themselves.</span>
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<p>Other women tell us that they fight against their husbands to “negotiate” arrangements to “de-marginalise” their work. Lastly, some mothers fight against institutions to obtain a few days of child care for their children.</p>
<p>“I’ve sent a distress e-mail to the school principal. I know they have about a dozen spaces left. She answered that I was lucky to be able to work from home and that I have to think of my child’s welfare first. But what’s going to happen the day I blow a fuse because I cannot take it anymore, will I be responsible for my child’s unhappiness?”</p>
<p>This pandemic thus confronts these women with gender norms they usually manage to mask or even deny, thanks to the facilities (school, day care) that support their emancipation</p>
<h2>Flexibility: a false “choice”</h2>
<p>In our study, women seem to be at the origin of their own lockdown. They chose flexibility then decided to make the most of it. But what two French Female researchers <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09513570810872897/full/html">underline</a> is that this very “choice”, is no choice at all. It is rather dictated by internalized social standards, prompting women into careers allowing them to accommodate their professional and private lives.</p>
<p>Making the most of this flexibility is not a choice either. As indicated here-above, it is mostly the result of the internalization of the role of “caregiver”. These women are not responsible for their own lockdown, but are rather victims of internalized gender standards. This is where they are subjected to some sort of “symbolic” violence.</p>
<p>What these testimonies are revealing is that some sort of physical and emotional violence also transpires from the exhaustion and guilt these women are narrating. In an article one of the authors recently published, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gwao.12460">she highlighted the fact</a> that this pandemic emphasises the vulnerability of women in the absence of the facilities they can usually rely on to emancipate themselves through work.</p>
<h2>Incomplete professional equality policies</h2>
<p>If executive women are holding prestigious positions and are financially independent, still, the pandemic shows that behind the scene, they are still confronted with powerful gendered norms.</p>
<p>In her thesis to be defended at the end of June 2020, one of the authors shows that executive women at Saint-Gobain suffer from vertical and horizontal segregation in their career due to maternity leave and a gender biased evaluation system. Gender equality policies, by trying to ensure that women and men receive the same salaries and occupy the same positions, leave the structural dimensions that (re)produce inequalities in the dark.</p>
<p>More than ever, this pandemic shows that gender equality is not just a question of financial independence or career valorisation. The gender norms that at the root of such inequalities must be addressed and explained so that equality is fully redesigned.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141411/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>Caught between the educational care of children and a considerable amount of full-time work to be done, women managers continue to shoulder a large part of the domestic and parental burden.Ludivine Perray-Redslob, Professeure associée en comptabilité, EM Lyon Business SchoolNathalie Clavijo, Professeure assistante en contrôle de gestion et sociologie des métiers comptables, Neoma Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/699082017-01-20T10:59:17Z2017-01-20T10:59:17ZWhy it’s so hard for women to break into the C-suite<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153549/original/image-20170120-5234-1belde4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It always seems just out of reach.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Glass ceiling via www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the first U.S. presidential election featuring a major party female nominee in the rear-view mirror and her male rival about to take the presidential oath, now is a good time to examine the progress women have made toward gender equality.</p>
<p>First, the good news: While Clinton lost the election, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president">she still won the popular vote</a> – by almost three million votes, in fact. About 66 million Americans affirmed that a woman is fit to lead one of the <a href="http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top-ten-powerful-countries-map.html">world’s most powerful nations</a>. </p>
<p>In addition, women now account for 51 percent of <a href="https://www.dol.gov/wb/factsheets/qs-womenwork2010.htm">management, professional and other high-wage occupations in the U.S.</a>, and research shows they <a href="http://jom.sagepub.com/content/38/2/719.short">perform slightly better than men</a> at work. Some analysts argue that once women’s career choices, such as taking time off or opting for flexible hours, are considered, the male-female <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/harvard-prof.-takes-down-gender-wage-gap-myth/article/2580405">pay gap disappears</a>.</p>
<p>Does this mean the glass ceiling has been broken?</p>
<p>Well, not so fast. Now the bad news. </p>
<p><a href="http://fortune.com/2016/06/06/women-ceos-fortune-500-2016/">Fewer than 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women</a>, while Donald Trump has nominated just <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/donald-trump-s-cabinet-picks-so-far-n690296">three women</a> to join his 15-member Cabinet. In addition, women who seek power are still met with <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/01/14/women-and-leadership/">skepticism</a> – or worse – by many. </p>
<p>Clinton’s gender, for example, was seen as a barrier to her candidacy. When interviewed by <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/features/hidden-sexism/">PBS Newshour</a> during the campaign, a 20-year-old clerk said, “With a man, you look for leadership and guidance. With a woman, you look for companionship and nurturing. A motherly role.”</p>
<p>Clearly, there’s more work to be done, as evidenced by the fact that hundreds of thousands of Americans plan to attend the <a href="https://www.womensmarch.com">Women’s March on Washington</a> to advocate for the equitable treatment of women.</p>
<p>Our own recent research shows just how complicated perceptions of men and women can be. Using data from nearly 50,000 managers, we asked the question of whether organizations punish women who do not conform to expectations that they be nurturing, kind and communal. The results reveal one way that persistent gender stereotypes continue to hold back the careers of women.</p>
<h2>Derailment risk</h2>
<p>In our study, titled “<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/peps.12184/full">Dropped on the Way to the Top: Gender and Managerial Derailment</a>” and published in Personnel Psychology, we wanted to learn how gender biases affect managerial assessments. </p>
<p>To better understand this, we obtained ratings from managers’ bosses on their job performance. But we also looked at another type of rating: assessments of how likely it was that the managers would “derail” in the future.</p>
<p>In business, derailing means that someone has hit his or her ceiling in the organization but was expected to go higher. Picture someone who started on the executive fast track but stalls out as a middle manager and “doesn’t have what it takes” to get the next promotion.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4165289.pdf">Decades of research show</a> that a key cause of derailment is problems with interpersonal relationships, so we also examined ratings of the managers’ interpersonal behaviors, provided by their coworkers, to determine how relationship skills influenced bosses’ perceptions of the managers’ future potential. </p>
<p>Our data showed that men’s and women’s performance ratings were equal and that women, as a group, were slightly more effective in their interpersonal behaviors than men. But when a female manager wasn’t so good with people, she was 17 percent more likely than a male manager with the same level of people skills to be evaluated as a derailment risk. </p>
<p>In other words, bosses viewed ineffective interpersonal behavior as a bigger problem for women than for men – big enough that it disproportionately limited their odds of getting ahead.</p>
<h2>Jason and Jennifer</h2>
<p>To see if gender was truly the cause of these effects, we conducted an experiment.</p>
<p>We created a managerial feedback report for a fictional manager named Jason, a generally effective midlevel manager who met his business goals but also had some difficulty getting along with others at work and needed to get better at building a team. We duplicated that report, keeping all the details exactly the same except the gender of the manager, now named Jennifer. </p>
<p>We gave these reports to real managers, who were randomly assigned to read and evaluate either Jennifer’s or Jason’s report. Our findings confirmed the original results: Jennifer and Jason were rated equally on their job performance, but Jennifer was rated as a significantly higher risk for derailment. </p>
<p>To better understand the consequences of derailment risk for managers, we conducted another experiment. We asked managers what they would do if Jennifer or Jason were their subordinate. Results showed that when a boss thinks a manager might derail, critical resources are withdrawn. </p>
<p>Bosses were less likely to coach or support managers at risk of derailing. Even worse, though, they were less willing to provide sponsorship – to use their influence to help the manager advance. This is especially harmful for women because they remain underrepresented in the C-suite, making a <a href="https://hbr.org/2010/09/why-men-still-get-more-promotions-than-women">powerful sponsor even more important</a> as they make their way up the career ladder.</p>
<p>This hits women with a “double whammy”: They’re more likely than men to be perceived as derailment risks, and they’re hit harder than men by the consequences of these perceptions. </p>
<h2>Gender stereotypes</h2>
<p>Why are poor people skills such a killer for female managers? </p>
<p>It is because <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191308512000093">expectations for effective interpersonal behaviors differ for men and women</a>, based on stereotypes in our society about how women should behave. Women have historically taken on nurturing and care-giving roles, including working in service professions and raising children. This division of labor leads to stereotypes that women are more kind and nurturing than men. When they morph into prescriptions of how women should behave, they become particularly problematic.</p>
<p>People often see work conflicts between men <a href="http://amp.aom.org/content/27/1/52.short">as normal</a>. When a female manager has conflict, though, the same people may worry that she has trouble getting along with others. And when bosses rely on “gut feelings” to make judgments about whether or not an employee might detail in the future, they are left vulnerable to these biases.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153547/original/image-20170120-5251-1g5mkvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153547/original/image-20170120-5251-1g5mkvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153547/original/image-20170120-5251-1g5mkvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153547/original/image-20170120-5251-1g5mkvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153547/original/image-20170120-5251-1g5mkvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153547/original/image-20170120-5251-1g5mkvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/153547/original/image-20170120-5251-1g5mkvy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One step forward, two steps back: President Obama’s final term in office boasted eight women out of 23 Cabinet or Cabinet-level positions. That may be more than Trump has nominated but still far short of women’s share of the population.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How to battle our biases</h2>
<p>The reason stereotypes are so insidious and challenging to address is that <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199805/where-bias-begins-the-truth-about-stereotypes">they operate subconsciously</a>. Chances are good that few, if any, of the bosses in our studies were overtly sexist – indeed, most would likely be shocked and dismayed to learn that their decisions were biased. </p>
<p>Even decision-makers who are committed to treating women fairly may not be able to <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2015/08/25/gender-bias-is-real-womens-perceived-competency-drops-significantly-when-judged-as-being-forceful/#adda3363b451">stop their brains from raising a red flag</a> when they see a woman engaging in behavior that violates societal beliefs that women should be nice and nurturing.</p>
<p>So what can be done to stop bias and discrimination toward women? </p>
<p>Research shows that one of the most important steps people can take is <a href="http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/10/biased-brain.aspx">increasing awareness</a> about how implicit biases can influence their thinking. Colleagues can talk, coach and engage each other in conversation. When organizational leaders observe high-potential managers struggling, they can step up to help, rather than “dropping” them – something that will benefit managers regardless of their gender. </p>
<p>The fight to help women achieve high-level leadership positions must continue until powerful women are so commonplace that stereotypes begin to change. But as long as men and women fill different social roles – at home and at work – we may never be able to fully eliminate gender stereotypes from our minds. </p>
<p>Perhaps a silver lining in the cloud of sexism that arose during the recent presidential election is that Americans are now talking openly about gender bias. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/us-election-result-misogyny-america-panel-woman">Author Kate Harding</a> wrote, “My country hates women, which is bad enough, and it pretends it doesn’t, which is worse.” </p>
<p>Our research doesn’t go that far, but it does suggest that we hold men and women to different standards of behavior. To make progress, we must acknowledge the prevalence and insidious nature of gender stereotypes and admit that they affect our attitudes and behavior, even when we don’t want them to.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69908/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While Clinton’s popular vote win shows progress toward gender equality, her rival’s nomination of just three women to his Cabinet is a reminder of how much work still needs to be done to overcome bias in management.Joyce E. Bono, Full Professor, University of FloridaElisabeth Gilbert, Ph.D. Student in Management, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/326852014-12-02T19:23:31Z2014-12-02T19:23:31ZRisky business: why we shouldn’t stereotype female board directors<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62867/original/6d2vpdxw-1414406984.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Research dispels the myth that if Lehman Brothers had been "Lehman Sisters" it would not have collapsed</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/opinion/08kristof.html">popular notion abroad</a> that women are not risk takers and their mere presence on a bank board will reduce risky strategies and behaviours. </p>
<p>Over the past years there has been an increasing trend of female directors on company boards. A leading factor has been the introduction of gender diversity policies. Already women hold <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a24982fa-4f07-11e4-a1ef-00144feab7de.html#axzz3HL5p6eST">23% of directorships</a> in the United Kingdom’s top companies, just shy of the government’s target of 25% by 2015.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.companydirectors.com.au/Director-Resource-Centre/Governance-and-Director-Issues/Board-Diversity/Statistics">Australian Institute of Company Directors</a>, at the end of August this year, 18.3% of top 200 ASX company board directors were women. </p>
<p>Among the Big Four banks, the ratio ranges from two women on a board of 12 for NAB, to four women on a board of nine for Westpac. On the Reserve Bank of Australia board, three of the nine directors are women.</p>
<p>Does this mean our banks, by virtue of this trend, are falling into an increasingly safe pair of hands?</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/jun/21/eu-women-bank-directors">safety factor concept</a> has been used in the past to support the argument for gender quotas for boards. </p>
<p>Some of the world’s <a href="http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-09-344_en.htm?locale=en">leading economic spokeswomen</a> (and men) have very publicly argued women are “typically” more risk-averse and therefore their presence on boards helps contain risky behaviour. This premise led to what became known as the “Lehman Sisters” hypothesis, which arose in the years following the global financial crisis. The theory was if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters (or brothers and sisters), there would have been no collapse.</p>
<h2>Why more women on boards will not lead to less risk</h2>
<p>Sadly for those who believe banks revel in the occasional risky business, adding more women to the board is unlikely to have an impact.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2380036">research paper</a> I co-authored with the University of Queensland’s Vanitha Ragunathan, we showed that more women on boards will not lead to less risk in banks. </p>
<p>Women who choose to follow a career path leading to a directorship are not the “typical” woman in risk-aversion studies. Instead, female directors are likely to be less risk-averse than the “typical” woman because of selection. That is, they would not have chosen this career path if they were so risk-averse.</p>
<p>Selection is likely to be even more important for financial firms because finance is a business dealing with risk. Women in finance may well have the same average levels of risk aversion as men in finance.</p>
<p>Our research showed that female MBA students who choose to enter finance after graduating are much less risk-averse than female MBA students not entering finance. In fact, female MBA students in finance are less risk-averse than male MBA students in finance. </p>
<p>The research shows the dangers of stereotyping women. Applying gender differences that may occur within the population to the management level does not work.</p>
<h2>But gender diversity has other benefits</h2>
<p>However, though having a greater proportion of women on bank boards may not reduce risk, it does provide other benefits.</p>
<p>Our study reviewed around 300 large publicly traded United States banks and bank holding companies across a four-year period spanning the 2007-2008 financial crisis. We found that US banks with more women on their boards were not less risky during this period. However, they did perform better during the financial crisis. </p>
<p>Male directors on boards with more women have fewer attendance problems. Female directors also tend to perform different committee duties than male directors. </p>
<p>Women are more likely to sit on board committees, especially those with key monitoring duties such as audit or corporate governance committees. However, they are not more likely to sit on banks’ risk committees. Banks themselves seem to not view their female directors as being more or less prone to avoiding risks than their male directors.</p>
<p>We still do not have a complete understanding of how and why gender diversity matters for corporate outcomes. We also do not know when diversity matters. However, the concept of using women on bank boards as a quick fix for bad corporate behaviour is simplistic and devalues the other benefits that diversity brings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32685/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Renee Adams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is a popular notion abroad that women are not risk takers and their mere presence on a bank board will reduce risky strategies and behaviours. Over the past years there has been an increasing trend…Renee Adams, Professor of Finance, Commonwealth Bank Chair in Finance, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/274742014-06-03T04:50:18Z2014-06-03T04:50:18ZOnly 17% of UK universities are run by women – why?<p>Women now form 56.5% of the student body, make up 53.8% of the whole workforce and occupy 45% of academic jobs in higher education in the United Kingdom. But their representation declines dramatically at senior management levels, where <a href="http://www.ecu.ac.uk/publications/files/equality-in-he-statistical-report-2013-staff.pdf/view">only 27.5% of managers are women</a>. In vice-chancellor and principal roles, this is even lower: only 17% are women, or <a href="http://www.kpmg.com/UK/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/PDF/Market%20Sector/Education/women-count-leaders-higher-education-2013.pdf">29 out of 166</a> in 2013-14. </p>
<p>In order to shed some light on the possible causes of such a striking gender imbalance in leadership positions in the sector, the Equality Challenge Unit and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education <a href="http://www.lfhe.ac.uk/en/research-resources/publications/index.cfm/S4-02">commissioned some research</a> from the Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice at Oxford Brookes University, in partnership with Learning for Good. </p>
<p>This research focused on the experiences and career trajectories of a sample of alumni from the <a href="http://www.lfhe.ac.uk/en/programmes-events/you/top-management-programme/">Top Management Programme</a>. Today, 57 UK vice-chancellors and principals are programme alumni (14 women and 43 men). On the basis of this figure, 14 of the UK’s 29 female vice-chancellors and principals are alumni from the programme – 48% of those women occupying the top job in the sector. </p>
<p>This research involved an online survey which got 183 responses – 45% of them by women. We also did 42 in-depth interviews with a sample of 23 women and 19 men. </p>
<h2>Cloning leaders</h2>
<p>We found that women are more likely to be unsuccessful compared to men when applying for leadership roles in the sector and that selection and recruitment processes at this level may be gender biased. Some of the women who took part in the interviews felt that leadership in the sector was “too narrowly defined” and that there was a failure to acknowledge that there might be different ways of carrying out the chief executive role. </p>
<p>It’s important to note that when they did the programme, the participants were already in senior positions in the sector. More or less equal numbers of men and women who took part in the research had no particular desire to move further upward in their own or another organisation.</p>
<p>Although the research did not have an explicit focus on the experience of ethnic minority senior post holders, similar points were raised by a small number of participants from ethnic minority backgrounds in respect of cultural bias in constructions of leadership models. </p>
<p>Some of those who took part in the study explained that they became more aware of gender differences as they moved into more senior roles, and, in particular, they felt that they did not fit the image that members of appointment panels might have of university leaders: “some people could not see me in the role”.</p>
<p>The respondents were worried about the lack of both gender and ethnic diversity in both management and governance leadership roles in the sector. Some feared this could result in a “cloning” effect in the selection and recruitment process for senior posts. One pointed out that: “many of the selections are made by white-haired, ageing, middle-class men”.</p>
<h2>The role of executive search</h2>
<p>Several interviewees of both genders, but predominantly women, raised questions about the role of executive search firms in the selection and recruitment process for senior appointments. There was a perception that these firms may have a disproportionate influence on the hiring process and might be contributing to a reinforcement of the status quo. </p>
<p>It was also noted that fewer women applicants who are included in long lists make it into shortlists. This raised questions as to whether this might be the result of a “tokenistic” approach to gender diversity on long and short lists or whether women might be receiving poor advice in terms of the type of positions they should be putting themselves forward for. </p>
<p>But on the other hand, a few participants of both genders found that executive search firms had positively helped them to apply successfully for more senior roles. </p>
<p>Based on the research, we made some significant recommendations for change at the highest level, some of which are under discussion. These include getting universities to adopt aspirational targets to increase women’s representation in senior roles, equality and diversity training for governing bodies who hire vice-chancellors, and a transparent code of practice for executive search firms. These need to be enacted quickly in order to keep pace with the private sector. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27474/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Beer is Chair of the Board of the Equality Challenge Unit. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simonetta Manfredi has received funding from the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, Equality Challenge Unit, Higher Education funding Council, European Social Fund and European Commission.</span></em></p>Women now form 56.5% of the student body, make up 53.8% of the whole workforce and occupy 45% of academic jobs in higher education in the United Kingdom. But their representation declines dramatically…Janet Beer, Vice Chancellor, Oxford Brookes UniversitySimonetta Manfredi, Professor in Equality and Diversity Management and Director of the Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice, Oxford Brookes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.