politics

When Women and Men Work Together: The Costs and Benefits

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Many women and men are still wary of working together when their work requires them to have one-on-one meetings or to travel together for business. New research reported by Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times  reveals that almost two-thirds of the 5,282 registered voters surveyed by the New York Times say, “People should take extra caution around members of the opposite sex at work.” Miller notes that these results also partially explain “why women still don’t have the same opportunities as men. . . . They [women] are treated differently.” Like many women, my work sometimes requires that I travel with male colleagues for my business. I currently have wonderful male colleagues with whom I have respectful and trusting relationships. I also have had those other experiences, so I understand the need for caution, especially for younger women. Early in my career in two different contexts, two senior male colleagues who had the power to offer me business opportunities used their power to demand sexual favors. Both were married, older men. They may not have thought of themselves as “demanding favors” and may have thought they were offering me a compliment by propositioning me—but they probably knew they were abusing their positions. Because of their power to cut off my much-needed income, their actions put me in a very difficult position. I did rebuff them both—and they both stopped hiring me. The financial impact was devastating for me. Women and men need to be able to work together, yet Miller describes real reasons to be wary:

  • Power differences do make it difficult for the lower-power individuals to protect themselves. Their vulnerability is real. This is true for both women and men. However, men do still hold a higher proportion of the high-power positions, so women are still more likely to be vulnerable.
  • The recent examples from Uber and Fox clearly show that sexual harassment is still being perpetrated and tolerated and ignored by the highest levels of leadership. This makes women and men more afraid to report unwanted and unwelcome advances.
  • The perception of inappropriate behavior in the workplace, whether or not it has actually been experienced that way, can ruin careers.
The discomfort women and men can experience working together can clearly result in negative impacts on women’s careers:
  • People tend to hire and promote people like themselves with whom they are most comfortable. Miller, in a previous article, described this phenomenon as “homophily.”
  • Women may not be invited to join a male boss on a business trip because of his fear of a perception of inappropriate behavior by the female employee or by others. Women may, then, lose opportunities for advancement and exposure to new business networks. This can be career limiting.
  • If women have difficulty getting one-on-one meetings with male bosses, they may not be able to demonstrate their readiness for promotions.
I wrote in a previous article about the “tax” women pay due to fear of sexual assault and sexual harassment. What can organizations do? Miller suggests keeping office doors open for one-on-one meetings, utilizing conference rooms with glass walls, and going for after-work drinks or dinner with multiple coworkers. Communication is key—companies can teach women and men how to have honest conversations about how to work together. Organizations should also have multiple, clear procedures and supports available for employees to use when they feel inappropriate behavior has happened. Often, perpetrators are unaware of the impact their behavior has had, and they need some low-key feedback and counseling to change their behavior. I wish it was not still necessary for women and men to exercise thoughtful caution when working with each other, but it is. We can manage this dynamic and have enjoyable and productive work relationships without penalizing women’s careers. What has worked for you?   Image courtesy of Highways England. CC by 2.0]]>

Why Women Are Good Lawmakers—and Why We Need More of Them

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Do you know a woman who has recently decided to run for office? Suddenly, I know several. Brittany Bronson, writing for the New York Times, explains that the 2016 presidential election “was a wake-up call for American women, one that has inspired their increased grassroots activism and political involvement.” One of the main reasons that women have been so poorly represented in government in the past is that few women ran for office. That is changing, and the results will be good for all of us. The state of Nevada provides a case study of the positive impact for both women and men when women are well represented in state legislatures. Bronson explains that with women making up 39.7 percent of Nevada’s lawmakers, the state ranks second only to Vermont in women’s representation in state politics. The impact has been a focus on issues important to women that are usually ignored by male legislators, such as family-friendly policies in the workplace that benefit both women and men, the gender wage gap, and the “pink tax,” or the extra amount women are charged for feminine hygiene products. The female legislators of Nevada also have sponsored legislation supporting the Equal Rights Amendment and eliminating co-pays for contraception. How can men benefit from having more women colleagues in legislative roles? Bronson notes that studies have shown that while women may support a wide range of positions, “they are often more compassionate, better at working across the aisle, and more willing to compromise, qualities intricately bound in successful policy making.” Having more female lawmakers will help everyone get more done. Encourage the women you know to run for office—and vote for women candidates. As noted by Hillary Clinton in her recent postelection interview, we need women to get involved in making laws if gender discrimination in our society is ever going to be removed. Vote for women and help them get elected. Their engagement as lawmakers will be good for all of us.   Photo courtesy of Senate Democrats. CC by 2.0      ]]>

What Liberia Can Teach Us About Electing Women

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In 2005, the women of Liberia elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as the first female president of an African nation, and we can learn a lot by examining how they did it. In a recent article for the New York Times, Helene Cooper, a reporter who grew up in Liberia before immigrating to the United States in 1980, tells the story of how Liberian women got Sirleaf elected, highlighting valuable lessons for American women. When the Liberian election took place in 2005, Liberia had just emerged from a brutal civil war. Nearly everyone had been a victim or witness, if not a perpetrator, of extreme acts of violence. Children were kidnapped and turned into child soldiers; family members were brutally murdered while survivors were forced to watch. Cooper reports that “more than 70 percent of Liberian women were raped . . . while horrified children were forced to watch their sisters, mothers, and grandmothers gang-raped in front of them.” Cooper notes that while the women of Liberia blamed the men who waged the war for the violence and brutality, when it came time for the first postwar presidential election, initially only 15 percent of the women were registered to vote. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated global technocrat with significant government experience, was running against a field of men—with an uneducated soccer star in the lead. A group of women leaders got worried and went to work to organize women to vote for Sirleaf. How did a small group of women in Liberia get enough women to register and vote twice in two rounds of voting? The problem in Liberia for getting women to register and vote was time. The men running for president were holding mass rallies, which women did not have time to attend. The majority of women worked in markets to earn their living, which is equivalent to low-wage service jobs in our country, and they were responsible for the child care in their families. Realizing that there was a need for a more effective strategy for engaging women, Sirleaf’s supporters organized to

  • Use radio stations to broadcast their message
  • Provide babysitters and market-stall tenders to free up the women to register and vote
  • Send women into rural areas with bullhorns to stand along the road and broadcast their message of the need for a female president
  • Organize women’s rallies and pass out clean drinking water at the rallies
  • Go door to door passing out t-shirts and flyers
  • Offer young men money to buy a beer in exchange for their voter ID cards to ensure that the men could not vote—not something we could do here, but very creative, nonetheless
The result, ultimately, was that 51 percent of the registered voters were women. On the second ballot, 80 percent of the Liberian women voters elected Sirleaf, who won 59.4 percent of the total vote. What lessons can we draw for electing a woman president? We have not had a brutal civil war, but women in the United States do face deeply entrenched problems in this country that male leaders have ignored for decades. We need to join together to elect women to all levels of government to represent our interests, such as
  • Closing the gender wage gap (which is much worse for women of color)
  • Ensuring that our workplaces are free of sexual harassment by eliminating nondisclosure agreements that silence women when we are harassed and keep the harassers protected and in place
  • Subsidizing child care and instituting paid family leave policies
The women of Liberia have given us a wonderful example of what we can accomplish when we work together. What would you like to achieve as part of a united coalition?   Photo courtesy of Center for Global Development. CC by 2.0]]>

Sexism in Politics in Spain and the United States: Is There a Difference?

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Mayor Ada Colau of Barcelona, Spain.[/caption] I love Spain and have spent a lot of time there for work and leisure travel. I was, therefore, particularly interested in an article by Raphael Minder in the New York Times reporting that women in Spain have achieved greater parity in their national parliament, the Cortes Generales, than we have made in the US Congress. Women make up 40 percent of the Spanish Cortes while, according to the Rutgers Center for Women in Politics, women hold only 19.4 percent of all seats in the US Congress. Nonetheless, female politicians in Spain complain of having to counteract entrenched sexism. I understand that Spain has a deeply embedded culture of machismo, so I wondered whether female politicians in Spain have different experiences than their US counterparts. Minder interviewed a number of female politicians in Spain who reported

  • Sexual harassment is common, which includes inappropriate touching, leering, and sexualized comments.
  • The women receive insults for daring to express opinions that differ from those of male colleagues. Last year a group of female colleagues held an open meeting under the banner “We Haven’t Come to Look Good” and read aloud insults they have received on the job. These remarks tend to mix political criticism with personal insults. Legislator Anna Gabriel explained, “What we hear has to do with our political stance, but the comments almost always include something about our bodies, sexuality, sex lives, and whether we’re beautiful or not.”
  • Ada Colau, the woman mayor of Barcelona, reports that she has been told she should sell fish or scrub floors instead of being mayor.
Minder notes that sexism and sexual harassment are not limited to Spain, and I agree. In fact, I don’t detect any difference between these reports from female politicians in Spain and my previous article about the double standards women face in US politics. We see these same sexist dynamics in Donald J. Trump’s many demeaning comments during the 2016 presidential election about the appearance, attractiveness, and body parts of his female opponents and of other women who dared to challenge him. A recent article by Amber Phillips of The Washington Post about Hillary Clinton’s loss cites research from the nonpartisan Barbara Lee Foundation, which studies women in politics. Phillips includes the Lee Foundation’s suggestions for candidates:
  • Voters (both male and female) care whether their female politicians are likable, an attribute that is not something they need from their male political leaders.
  • Women candidates should not pose for a head shot. Instead, circulate more candid, informal photos of the candidate engaging with her community—say hanging out with children on a playground. “To show likability, a woman doing her job among constituents is effective,” the study’s authors say.
  • Women candidates should not take credit all the time for their accomplishments, which men are expected to do.
  • Women candidates need to recognize that their hair, makeup and clothes will be scrutinized by voters much more than a man’s.
  • If the candidate is a mother, voters worry about the impact her public-office job will have on her children. They do not hold men to this same standard.
  • Voters recognize this is all a double standard, and yet they “actively participate in it and are conscious of doing so.”
“Time and again, we found that women candidates still bump up against the gendered expectations voters have (for politicians),” said Barbara Lee, citing research her foundation and the nonpartisan Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University will release this spring. As for a woman running for president, Lee comments, “After all, for 228 years, the presidency has looked decidedly male.” Not enough American voters were able to accept a woman in that role. The misogyny displayed during the 2016 election has energized a record number of women to run for office in the United States in 2018 and 2020. Let’s work together to support our women candidates by pushing through this culture’s entrenched misogyny. Photo courtesy of Barcelona en Comú. CC by-nd 2.0]]>

When Anger and Outrage Are Useful Emotions

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Many of my female coaching clients are told in their performance feedback that they need to be “less emotional” and to “smile more.” This feedback occurs so often that my colleagues and I joke about it when we talk about the unfair feedback that our female clients receive. We often reflect together on the ways that men can express anger in the workplace, but women cannot. Men can bang their fists on the table or yell and they are seen by many as strong and passionate. By contrast, men expect women to be nice and subdued. This is even more of a problem for black women and men who are seen as militant, dangerous, or threatening when they express anger. White women are not seen as threatening or dangerous, but they do make many men uncomfortable when they get angry because they are not conforming to stereotypes of femininity. Unfortunately, these uncomfortable men are sometimes the bosses who give women lower performance ratings and tell them to smile more. Roxane Gay of the New York Times points out how these double standards in expressing anger played out in our last presidential campaign. Bernie Sanders reveled in his anger, “often wagging his finger and raising his voice.” He was seen as passionate and engaged. Donald Trump emerged as the angriest candidate from a large group of angry Republican contenders in the primary. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, had to play by different rules. She could not raise her voice and was attacked as a “nasty woman” by Trump when she asserted strong positions. During her years in public life, she learned to smile a lot while demurely expressing strong opinions—because she had to. More recently, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell demanded that Senator Elizabeth Warren sit down and stop talking in the Senate when she tried to read a letter expressing strong objections to the confirmation of Jeff Sessions to be attorney general. The next day, four men took turns reading the same angry letter without being told to stop talking. Anger is a natural human emotion. Not only is it healthy to express anger, it can also be useful. There are, of course, damaging, violent, and unproductive ways to express anger. I am not advocating for any of those modes of expression, such as destroying property, causing injury to self or others, or name calling that shuts down opportunities for dialogue. Anger can be functional and constructive. Anger is functional when it gives us the energy we need to take an action to right a wrong done to another, to have a difficult conversation, or to stand up for ourselves. Anger can give us the energy to join with others to insist on changes in our organization or community. Anger is fueling a lot of rallies and political action in our country these days. Leaders need to listen when people are angry. Angry people are trying to express strong feelings that deserve to be heard about issues that they care deeply about. In my social justice workshops, I encourage people to tune in to the world around them and find their sense of outrage, or anger, about injustices in society. It is easy to become numb to the things going on around us, to tune them out and sit on the sidelines. We are all busy. Outrage gives us energy to take action. Where is your outrage? What helps you mobilize yourself to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem?   Photo courtesy of Molly Adams. CC by 2.0  ]]>

Women Must Persist to Be Heard: What Will Work

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The spectacle of Senator Elizabeth Warren being silenced by a man in a male-dominated organization—in this case on the floor of the US Senate—was very familiar to many women. And then, as is typical, four men stood up and read aloud the same letter she had been reading—they were not silenced. Susan Chiara of the New York Times notes that “being interrupted or ignored, and being one of the few women in the room, can be both inhibiting and enraging.” Gail Collins of the New York Times quotes Senator Kirsten Killebrand, who believes that, while Senator Mitch McConnell says he silenced Warren because “she persisted,” he targeted Warren because she has been effective, and Republicans feel threatened by her. Their attempt to silence her has backfired, and both her credibility and the outrage women feel about her treatment have skyrocketed. We can now see, perhaps more clearly than ever, that we must persist to get our voices heard. Chiara notes that talking over women and shutting them down happens in most professions and “is a bi-partisan exercise.” She explains that women in the Obama White House “banded together to work on ‘amplification,’ taking care in meetings to repeat other women’s points and give women credit for ideas they had first raised.” I have written in previous articles about the price women pay when they do persist and are seen as too aggressive. I have also written about why women’s voices are needed and what leaders can do to help women get their voices heard. It’s not easy to persist, but we must in order to be heard. Let’s persist and support each other in the process in the way the women in Obama’s White House were able to do. Our contributions are important. What has worked for you?   Photo courtesy of Edward Kimmel. CC by-sa 2.0]]>

Caroline Kennedy: Empowering Women

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What a delight to read about Caroline Kennedy’s successful tenure as the United States Ambassador to Japan! As reported by Moroko Rich in the New York Times, Caroline Kennedy, who was appointed to the position by President Barack Obama, was the first woman to hold the post in Japan, a traditionally male-dominated society. While mocked unfairly by Donald Trump during the presidential campaign, she was, in fact, a trusted and respected diplomat who managed relations well with one of our most important allies. In addition, she built strong relationships in government and business communities as well as with the broader public. Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President John F. Kennedy, will probably be remembered best in Japan for two contributions during her tenure: the central role she played in getting President Obama to make his historic reconciliation visit to Hiroshima and her encouragement to the women of Japan to keep fighting for women’s rights. Women in Japan are discouraged from working outside the home, and few women hold positions of authority in government or business. Kennedy sent notes of encouragement to a female lawmaker being taunted for speaking out for women’s rights. She held gatherings of women leaders to encourage them and spoke about empowerment at conferences. As the first woman ambassador to Japan from the United States, she was a public role model—a visible woman leader who was also a mother. Rich notes that Kennedy also supported Prime Minister Abe’s commitment to expand opportunities for women, and she sent a quiet message of empowerment to the women of Japan in many large and small ways. Public service is a long tradition in the Kennedy family. Let’s hope there is more public service in Caroline’s future! Have you been inspired by Caroline’s work? Who are some of the women leaders you admire?   Image courtesy of US Embassy Tokyo. CC by-nd 2.0.]]>

The Cost of Being a Successful Woman: New Research from Sweden

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Joan C. Williams, writing for the Harvard Business Review about why white working-class men and women voted for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 presidential election, describes the strong feelings about traditional gender roles that still exist in segments of our society. She explains, “Trump promises a world free of political correctness and a return to an earlier era, when men were men and women knew their place.” She goes on to explain that manly dignity is a big deal for most working-class men. So is breadwinner status: Many still measure masculinity by the size of a paycheck,” and the paychecks of working-class men have been decreasing since the 1970s. During this same time period in the United States, women, especially educated women, have gained greater access to opportunities, increasing the resentment of working-class men and women. While the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump reflects, at least in part, that traditional attitudes about gender roles are still deeply embedded in large segments of society in the United States, a recent study finds that, surprisingly, these attitudes also still exist in Sweden. Why is this a surprise? Ray Fisman, writing for Slate.com, explains that while Sweden is known to be a progressive country with legal protections for women, generous family leave, and free day care for all, societal gender norms still play a big role. Fisman cites research by Olle Folke and Johanna Rickne showing that female career success is harmful to marriages in Sweden. They followed the marriages of aspiring female politicians and found that while winners’ and losers’ divorce rates are identical before an election, the divorce rate for winners doubles relative to that of losers right after an election. They find a similar impact from becoming a female CEO in Sweden. Fisman notes, “The authors argue that the women’s sudden success puts extra strain on marriages in which men are accustomed to playing a more dominant role in the workforce.” According to the researchers, the effect is larger when “the promotion results in the woman becoming the household’s dominant earner.” The costs of these attitudes about successful women are high. Neither the United States nor Sweden has ever had a female head of state—at least in part a reflection of discomfort with ambitious women. Other costs include

  • women having to work twice as hard to be considered for promotions
  • women receiving harsher performance feedback often with a focus on personal characteristics rather than results
  • higher divorce rates
I agree with Fisman’s closing statement: “We still have a long way to go.” Photo courtesy of BusinessForward CC by 2.0  ]]>

Four Reasons Why Women’s Empowerment Is a National Security Issue

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I admit that I got nervous when the Trump transition team demanded that the State Department submit details of programs and jobs dedicated to promoting gender equity. Given Donald J. Trump’s history of demeaning and assaulting women and his sexist behavior during the presidential campaign, it seems quite possible that his administration will pursue the elimination of all funding for women’s empowerment programs in the same way they have planned to defund Planned Parenthood, which will deprive poor women of basic healthcare services. For this reason, I was glad to read the article by Valerie M. Hudson and Dara Kay Cohen, which makes the case for resisting the elimination of these empowerment programs funded by the State Department as an issue of national security for the United States. The US State Department makes small grants to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) all over the world to help make progress in women’s empowerment. The authors offer four reasons why these programs have strategic importance for us here at home and should remain intact:

  1. Reduce member recruitment by terrorist groups. Terrorist groups such as Boko Haram in West Africa and Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan find recruits among frustrated young men. In the regions where they operate, high bride prices on young women establish the young women as chattel to be bought and sold. These high bride prices frustrate young men who cannot afford them, making it easier for terrorists to recruit them. NGOs funded by the State Department are working to abolish bride prices, thereby reducing the population vulnerable to terrorist recruitment. Young men recruited as terrorists could very well end up attacking US interests in many parts of the world.
  2. Create more durable peace agreements. A landmark study by the United Nations found that peace agreements lasted longer and were more stable when women took part in the negotiations. One example of a strategic interest for the United States is to get a stable peace accord in Afghanistan. We need Afghanistan to be stable to help stabilize the region with nuclear-armed Pakistan next door. Once stable, Afghanistan will be able to provide its own security so that it is not dependent on the US military, thereby enabling the United States to withdraw from the region. If there is to be a durable peace agreement for Afghanistan, it would be wise to have both Afghan and American women at the negotiating table.
  3. Stabilize high-conflict regions. More than a decade of research shows that women’s advancement is critical to the stability of countries with a history of ethnic conflict and civil war. When girls are educated and empowered, countries are more stable and secure.
  4. Deal with matters of life, death, and dignity. The State Department makes small grants to NGOs to help women deal with the aftermath of rape during war, to eliminate genital cutting and forced marriage, and to help girls gain access to education. To his credit, President George W. Bush identified “respect for women” as a “nonnegotiable demand of human dignity.”
The Trump administration says it cares about foreign policy with a focus on national security. The authors note, “To build such a foreign policy, women’s rights are an indispensable pillar.” What are your views about continuing to support stability in war-torn areas by empowering women?   This image provided courtesy of ResoluteSupportMedia (CC BY 2.0)  ]]>

Misogyny and Double Standards for Women in Politics and at Work

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Misogyny is a difficult and important concept to understand if we are to grasp many of the challenges that women face in politics and in the workplace. One source of confusion is that misogyny is actually an umbrella term that encompasses multiple concepts such as sexism, patriarchy, gender-based oppression, and internalized oppression. Both women and men participate in perpetuating the misogynistic attitudes, behaviors, and practices motivated by hatred or distrust of women. Such concepts are largely unconscious in individuals and often institutionalized in the policies and practices of organizations and societal institutions. I wrote about some post-election examples of misogynistic behaviors in a recent article. Another way to understand misogyny is to consider examples of double standards that women regularly experience. In order to succeed, women are often evaluated against different and harsher standards than are men, as the following examples show.

  • Women are given more negative performance reviews with more negative personality criticisms.
  • Women get interrupted more and then are criticized for not talking more in meetings.
  • Women must walk a tightrope between being effective versus likeable and too feminine versus not feminine enough.
  • Women in academia receive less research funding and less tenure credit for publishing, even though they publish as much as men also on the tenure track.
  • The gender-wage gap persists in most professions in the United States, including for teachers and nurses, for female physicians, and in the financial sector. Maria Tadeo of Bloomberg News reports on a study by the World Economic Forum showing that it will take 170 years to achieve pay equity due to continuing deterioration in progress over the past twelve months.
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times writes that we must consider the double standards women face in politics, noting that women are subjected to greater scrutiny than men in politics. He asks us to imagine how Hillary Clinton would have fared in her presidential campaign if she had
  • been married three times with five children by three husbands and referred to her daughter as “a piece of ass”
  • boasted about the size of her vagina during an election debate
  • had less experience in government or the military than any person who had ever become president
  • been caught on tape referring in a degrading way to men’s genitals
  • been accused of sexual assault by more than fifteen people
  • been sued for racial discrimination and retweeted white supremacists
  • filed six bankruptcies and withheld payment from many people who worked for her
I have seen people and organizations change once leaders become aware and support each other. I recently advised an organization trying to be more fair and inclusive to white women and to people of color. After a series of awareness training sessions, the managers began to call each other out about applying double standards when making hiring or promotion decisions. Their decisions became more conscious and intentional, resulting in a significant increase over time in hires and promotions of white women and people of color. Here are actions we can take to effectively change double standards.
  • Join together with other women and men to call out misogynistic behaviors or practices when they occur so that such actions do not remain unconscious.
  • Do not allow misogynistic behavior to be seen as “normal” or “just the way men are” either within yourself or others.
  • Form study groups to read and discuss double standards applied to white women and to people of color.
  • Take action together to recommend changes in your community or organization.
Do you have success stories? Let us hear about them so we can learn from each other.   The image in this post is courtesy of Nguyen Hung Vu (CC BY 2.0)]]>