Month: October 2015

Gender-lens Investing: How Does It Work?

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I was surprised to read about gender-lens investing recently in an article by Paul Sullivan in the New York Times. I just didn’t know it existed. It is defined as “investing strategically to help advance women’s causes while earning a return.” I have heard of socially responsible investing where investors look for companies that “do no harm” to the environment or the communities in which they are located. Gender-lens investing falls under the umbrella of socially responsible investing with the additional goals of impacting positive social change and producing a financial return for the investor. Specifically, Sullivan explains that investments are made to “promote gender equality and women’s empowerment through both debt and equity investments in the United States and emerging markets.” There are three options currently utilized for making gender-lens investments:

  1. Make money available to enterprises owned by women.
  2. Focus on employment for women.
  3. Invest in companies that provide products and services that help women. An example is a company that provides clean-burning cook stoves to women in Africa and Latin America or companies that get water-purification systems to rural areas.
I had heard of grant-making organizations, such as the Virginia Gildersleeve International Fund (VGIF) where small grants are made globally to fund women-led grassroots projects in developing countries that advance the rights of women and girls. The grants are made from donated funds and are not expected to be repaid, although their impact is measured. I have also heard about microcredit, where microloans to women have been a successful tool for alleviating poverty in developing countries, although critics disagree with the claims of positive social impact. Gender-lens investing is a different approach to creating positive social change for women and girls, and we need multiple approaches. I am not a person of wealth, but I do have retirement savings that are invested. I’m intrigued by the idea of not only saving for my future but also helping women and girls at the same time. Do you have experience with gender-lens investing? If yes, what have you learned about it that might help others take a step in that direction? Let us hear from you.   Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

Good News for Gender Equity: It Can Happen! Two Success Stories and Lessons Learned

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Two recent stories about efforts to achieve gender equity provide encouragement about what’s possible and some useful lessons about how to get there. Here are the two cases, one from science and the other from technology. The Microbiologists Women have been underrepresented as speakers and presenters at scholarly meetings for many years, but one group, the American Society for Microbiology, found a way to achieve gender parity in three short years. Between 2012 and 2015, the percentage of presentations by female scholars went from 25.9 percent to 48.5 percent—almost parity. Why is it important that women scientists have equal visibility at professional meetings?

  • Women now constitute a majority of the students and postdocs in microbiology and represent the future of the field. A message of “no glass ceiling” is important to keep them engaged and to ensure their talents are fully recognized and utilized.
  • Being a speaker or presenter at a professional meeting impacts career advancement. Invitations to speak at major professional meetings are used by faculty promotion and tenure committees as evidence of external recognition and are critical to advancement decisions.
How did they do it? Several valuable lessons for other organizations can be learned from the steps taken by the American Society of Microbiologists to achieve gender equity. To begin with, the women scientists who were members of the Society rejected the conventional wisdom that there were not enough qualified women to be speakers and that it would take a generation for parity to be achieved. They insisted that steps be taken to correct the imbalance. Specifically, three steps were taken that led to parity in three years:
  • The program committee studied historical data to learn about the gender gap among speakers.
  • More women were recruited as conveners, or organizers, of presentation panels. These panels usually include several presenters who take turns giving talks on related topics. The female conveners invited more women to present research papers than had occurred in the past.
  • Conveners were urged to avoid creating all-male panels. This was not an absolute requirement, but the intention to include more women resulted in a drop to 4.1 percent of the panels being all-male in 2015, down from 35.7 percent in 2011.
The Technology Company The next case comes from Salesforce.com, a Silicon Valley technology company. The story begins when, one day, the CEO noticed that his meetings with managers only included men. He was aware of all the talk about a lack of gender diversity in Silicon Valley and realized that his company had that problem, too. He was concerned and took the following steps:
  • He set goals to achieve 100 percent gender equality for pay and promotion in his company.
  • He started what he called Women’s Surge in 2013 where he asked managers across the company to identify their top executives for advanced leadership training. If they sent him lists that were mostly men, he sent the lists back and asked for more diverse lists. Promotions of women started to climb.
  • Two of the women promoted during the “surge” decided to leverage their new positions to help other women. They went together to the CEO and told him they felt certain that women were being paid less than men for the same work in the company. He was shocked but commissioned a salary review that proved them right. Salary adjustments have begun.
This company still has a long way to go to reach gender equality. Only 29 percent of the employees are female, including only five of twenty-one executive team members and two of eleven board members—but they are on the right track. What are the lessons from these two cases that other organizations can learn from?
  • Women need to join forces and push for change.
  • The gender pay gap is usually invisible, which helps perpetuate the gap. Organizations need to regularly conduct salary reviews and make adjustments. Scrutiny and transparency about salaries are critical to closing the gaps.
  • Efforts to promote equality must be intentional and consistent:
    1. Set goals (not quotas).
    2. Hold managers and conveners accountable for promoting and including women in visible roles.
All of these lessons learned also apply to achieving equity for all dimensions of diversity, including race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. What other suggestions do you have?   Image courtesy imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

Women in the Catholic Church

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One of my favorite consulting clients for the past twenty years has been an order of Catholic nuns. They risk their lives working in desperately poor and war-torn areas of the world to deliver health care, education, trauma counseling, and peace-making services to people in need. They fight for women’s empowerment and against sex trafficking. They are feminists and leaders in the world, yet they are basically unacknowledged and marginalized within their own institution—the Catholic Church. They are frustrated about the church’s refusal to ordain women and to provide open leadership roles within the church to women. I am not Catholic, but I have watched other Christian denominations, as well as some other religions, ordain women as religious leaders and have wondered why the Catholic Church does not. Unfortunately, while Pope Francis has liberalized the church’s position on some important issues, he has rejected outright the possibility of ordaining women as priests in the church. Elisabetta Povoledo, writing in the New York Times, notes that “women make up a notably higher percentage of those devoted to the consecrated life” in the Catholic Church—there are approximately one-third more women than men—yet women play little role in the decision-making of the church. In addition, Frank Bruni of the New York Times explains, “men but not women get to preside over a Mass. Men but never women wear the cassock of a cardinal, the vestments of a pope. Male clergy are called ‘father,’ which connotes authority. Women in religious orders are called ‘sister,’ which doesn’t.” Bruni goes on to describe a generation of young Catholic women who see doors opening for them everywhere but in their church and feel alienated by the patriarchal attitudes and absence of female leaders. It’s been hard for me as an outsider to watch the impact on the religious women I have worked with for so long and admire so deeply. They are frustrated and angry. They wonder how long it will take for the Catholic Church as an institution to value women, and so do I. What do you think it will take for women to become leaders in the church?]]>

LIES That Limit: Uncover the Truth of Who You Really Are: A Book Review

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Author Teressa Moore Griffin takes you on a journey of self-discovery that can reveal choices you didn’t know you had about how to live your life. She describes the ways that LIES—labels, illusions, excuses, and stories—limit your capacity to self-actualize, or be all that you can be. Each chapter offers reflective practices and practical suggestions. I decided to recommend this book to my readers because I think that while both women and men will find it useful, women have an added challenge with focusing on their own wants and needs instead of on the needs of others. Griffin writes about the importance of becoming aware of the negative self-talk that we all do that may unconsciously limit the options we can see for ourselves. For example, when I was growing up, my high school guidance counselor told me not to bother taking advanced math and science courses because “girls are not good at math and science.” I believed him and internalized that message. When I got to college, I avoided all career options that required math or science courses. After college, I was terrified about going back to school for a master of arts degree in a field that interested me because math courses were a required part of the curriculum. I did go forward with this degree at the urging of my friends, and—you guessed it. I discovered that I am actually quite good at math and science, but my internal voice—formed from early experiences and messages from respected adults—kept me fearful of making certain choices for many years, so I missed numerous opportunities. The author also points out that larger historical events can shape our limiting beliefs. She gives examples of ways that the history of slavery in the United States may have shaped some of her limiting messages as an African American. Becoming aware of them gave her choices. Griffin’s message is that we can reclaim our passion and purpose if we become aware of our conscious and unconscious limiting messages and reconnect to our unrealized dreams and desires. She offers tools and practices to help with this journey of rediscovery. The possibilities of greater energy and fulfillment lie at the end of this journey. What are your limiting beliefs?]]>