{"id":1084,"date":"2016-10-03T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=1084"},"modified":"2016-10-03T08:00:41","modified_gmt":"2016-10-03T12:00:41","slug":"how-men-can-help-close-the-gender-equity-gap-examples-of-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/blog-posts\/how-men-can-help-close-the-gender-equity-gap-examples-of-success\/","title":{"rendered":"How Men Can Help Close the Gender Equity Gap: Examples of Success"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\u201cSisterhood is not enough; men must be involved in efforts to equalize workplace culture,\u201d writes Peggy Klaus in the New York Times<\/em><\/a>. Klaus goes on to quote Belinda Parmar, head of the tech consultancy Lady Geek, as saying, \u201cgender equity is not a \u2018women\u2019s problem,\u2019 it\u2019s a society problem.\u201d I could not agree more, and we need to do more to change workplace culture.\nKlaus notes that over the past twenty-five years, many large organizations have invested significant resources to promote women\u2019s leadership conferences and workshops as their way of supporting the advancement of women, yet not much has changed in the representation of women at the senior levels of management. Women comprise only 3 percent of CEO positions in the United States. Women\u2019s leadership conferences and training programs create networks and provide crucial support, especially for women working in male-dominated industries. They help women face the challenges of cultural biases and stereotypes that men don\u2019t have to deal with. For example, women have to negotiate differently than men to be effective, and they have more difficult challenges around executive leadership and self-promotion because of the \u201clikeability factor.\u201d\nThe issue is that American corporations think that investing in conferences is enough to fix deep and systemic issues. Klaus notes, \u201cRelying on women\u2019s conferences and trainings to fix the problem amounts to little more than checking a diversity box and sidelining the issue of gender equity.\u201d Women cannot change organizational cultures, which are held in place by policies, procedures, and deeply ingrained society biases, without the engagement of men. Men hold the power and must be part of the solution.\nFortunately, Klaus reports that we have some positive examples of how men can become allies:\n\n\n