{"id":759,"date":"2015-07-13T09:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T13:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=759"},"modified":"2015-07-13T09:00:12","modified_gmt":"2015-07-13T13:00:12","slug":"our-discomfort-with-powerful-women-what-we-can-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/blog-posts\/our-discomfort-with-powerful-women-what-we-can-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Discomfort with Powerful Women: What We Can Do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-760\" src=\"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/blog-1-226x300.jpg\" alt=\"blog 1\" width=\"226\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/blog-1-226x300.jpg 226w, https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/blog-1.jpg 396w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 226px) 100vw, 226px\" \/>I recently met a woman from India while we both waited for a train. The first question she asked me was, \u201cWhy have you never elected a woman leader in the United States, as we have done in India?\u201d All I could say was, \u201cThat\u2019s a good question.\u201d She went on to ask, \u201cDo you think Hillary Clinton will win the election this time? Is the United States ready yet for a woman leader?\u201d I truthfully answered, \u201cI really don\u2019t feel confident that we are ready. The facts are not very encouraging\u2014and I hope I\u2019m wrong.\u201d\nIn a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/06\/05\/opinion\/our-problem-with-powerful-women.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&amp;smid=nytcore-ipad-share\">recent article in the <em>New York Times<\/em><\/a>, Bryce Covert cited these discouraging facts:\n\n\n<ul>\n\t\n\n<li>There has not yet been a woman elected to the White House.<\/li>\n\n\n\t\n\n<li>The US Congress is less than 20 percent female.<\/li>\n\n\n\t\n\n<li>In 2009, the year after Hillary Clinton conceded the nomination for president to Barack Obama, 13.5 percent of the top jobs in Fortune 500 companies were occupied by women. By 2013, that number rose to only 14.6 percent.<\/li>\n\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\nCovert goes on to note two troubling trends:\n\n\n<ul>\n\t\n\n<li>Women and minorities usually make it to corporate leadership in times of crisis.<\/li>\n\n\n\t\n\n<li>They face backlash and added challenges once they get there that men don\u2019t face.<\/li>\n\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\nCovert cited one study of large companies on the London Stock Exchange, which found that those companies who had put women on their boards \u201chad just experienced consistently bad stock performance, while companies were generally stable before they appointed men.\u201d Covert also cited a large study of all the promotions to chief executive at Fortune 500 companies over a fifteen-year period. The study found that \u201ca company\u2019s return on equity was consistently and significantly negative just before a woman or a minority got the job.\u201d Because companies are commonly in crisis when women get the chance to take a senior leadership role, it is harder for women to succeed and more likely that they will be forced out and blamed for the problems.\nThe second trend shows that once hired, women and minorities face challenges and forms of backlash that make success more difficult. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/06\/05\/opinion\/our-problem-with-powerful-women.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&amp;smid=nytcore-ipad-share\">Covert cited polling<\/a> that shows both women and men prefer to have men in senior executive positions. (I have written in a <a href=\"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/many-women-prefer-male-boss\">previous article<\/a> about the preference for male bosses.) In addition, Covert reported research on backlash against women when they act assertively at work. He noted that \u201cfemale leaders are more likely to be called abrasive, strident, aggressive and even emotional.\u201d\u00a0 Women of color are also more likely to be called angry and militant when they act assertively. (Read more about this dynamic in another of <a href=\"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/women-smile-work\">my previous articles<\/a>.)\n\n\n<h2><u>What We Can Do to Help Pave the Way for Women Leaders<\/u><\/h2>\n\n\nBecause all change has to start with ourselves, we can take steps to fix these problems:\n\n\n<ol>\n\t\n\n<li>Support women\u2019s leadership in general. Remember, studies show that both women and men prefer having men as leaders, so we can reverse this trend by starting to be more supportive, in general, of women leaders at all levels and positions.<\/li>\n\n\n\t\n\n<li>Notice your own reflex reactions to quickly judge or feel uncomfortable with women leaders. I recently caught myself starting to be critical of a book by a well-known woman. I challenged myself to look for the value in the book, and I found plenty of value. Challenge yourself to ask, \u201cWhat else could be true?\u201d when you find yourself with an urge to negatively judge a woman.<\/li>\n\n\n\t\n\n<li>Whatever your political persuasion, challenge others when they judge a woman candidate as too aggressive, too ambitious, strident, or angry. These were many of the negative adjectives, often expressed by women, that were used to describe Hillary Clinton when she ran in 2008. Challenge people to speak about qualifications, facts, and issues, instead of personal characteristics.<\/li>\n\n\n<\/ol>\n\n\nYes, we have work to do as a country to be ready to elect a female president, but by pushing through our unconscious bias and making conscious choices based on awareness, facts, and issues we can get ready to support women leaders. We can challenge ourselves and others to become aware of unconscious bias that stacks the deck against women leaders. Think about how important it is for girls to have more role models so that they are encouraged to aspire to be all they can be. Your decisions today will impact their future.\n&nbsp;\nImage credit: Photo courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/de.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/User:Ralf_Roletschek\">Ralf Roletschek<\/a>, Wikimedia Commons\n&nbsp;]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[62,109,225,338,339,424,457,551,612,634],"class_list":["post-759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-bosses","tag-clinton","tag-gender","tag-leaders","tag-leadership","tag-obama","tag-politics","tag-stereotypes","tag-women","tag-workplace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}