Uncategorized

Universities Must Do More to Stop Harassment: New Report

by

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, highly respected independent agencies, issued their first-ever report on sexual harassment and found that universities have failed to prevent sexual harassment. Pam Belluck of the New York Times writes that the conclusions of the 311-page report are the result of a two-year study started before the #MeToo movement began. Belluck notes that “academic workplaces are second only to the military in the rate of sexual harassment.” One study cited in the report found that 58 percent of academic employees report experiencing sexual harassment. The report also cited a 2017 survey by the University of Texas system of students in scientific fields that found the following rates of sexual harassment:

  • 20 percent of female science students.
  • More than 25 percent of female engineering students.
  • More than 40 percent of female medical students experience sexual harassment from faculty or staff members. In addition, female medical students experience sexual harassment from patients.
Belluck notes that the report identified three types of sexual harassment in universities:
  • Sexual coercion
  • Unwanted sexual attention
  • Gender harassment, described as “verbal and nonverbal behaviors that convey hostility, objectification, exclusion or second-class status.”
Gender harassment was by far the most common type women experienced. The National Academies report notes that the cost of any form of sexual harassment for women is high and can “undermine work and well-being in a whole host of ways.” For example, the experience can trigger depression, sleep disruption, cardiac stress, and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Lilia Cortina, a member of the study team. Cortina, a professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Michigan, notes that sexual harassment experiences can be even worse for women of color and lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women. The cost to the scientific fields themselves is also high because women leave and the fields are not able to retain a full range of talent. The National Academies report states that universities must stop focusing on “symbolic compliance with current law” and on avoiding liability for their institutions and instead focus on preventing sexual harassment. Belluck notes that the report offers fifteen detailed recommendations, including
  • Overhauling academic advising systems so that students and junior researchers are not at the mercy of one senior researcher for advancement and access to grants.
  • Establishing informal ways for students and staff to report sexual harassment.
  • Urging legislators to pass laws so people can file harassment lawsuits directly against faculty and not just the university.
  • Abolishing nondisclosure agreements where settlements are made. These agreements currently allow a perpetrator to move on to other academic institutions without disclosure of their inappropriate behavior.
  • Adopting training programs that focus on changing behavior, not beliefs.
Ultimately, the cultures of academic institutions have to change if sexual harassment is to be prevented. Power structures, policies, and procedures that protect powerful faculty and prioritize protecting the institution from liability will never be able to create safe and respectful work environments for students and staff.   Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash]]>

Closing the Gender Pay Gap: Innovations in Boston, Massachusetts

by

Nationwide, the gender pay gap in the United States has not changed much in decades. Katie Johnston of the Boston Globe writes that because of widespread discussion of this problem over the past three years, state and local governments have been passing gender pay equity laws and pay equity lawsuits are on the rise. The city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts are among those localities taking bold steps to close the gap. Anna Louie Sussman of the New York Times reports that in 2013, the city of Boston began to work with the Boston Women’s Workforce Council, a public-private partnership. Sussman explains that the Boston Women’s Workforce Council teams up with area companies and institutions to help them figure out ways to advance women. The council, along with the mayor’s Office of Women’s Advancement, started offering free salary negotiation workshops to women in 2016 and plans to train eighty-five thousand women by 2021. The council has also developed guidelines to help companies conduct pay audits to identify gender pay gaps and adjust salaries. Johnston reports that the Boston Women’s Workforce Council also started compiling anonymous data, collected from 114 companies in Greater Boston, to establish a baseline. Their analysis of 2016 wage data for Boston shows the disparity of wages for women:

  • White women earn 75 cents for every dollar white men make.
  • African American women earn 52 cents.
  • Latina women make 49 cents.
According to research conducted by the Institute of Women’s Policy Research, at the current rate of improvement in the United States, women will not reach wage parity until 2059. Sussman notes that as a result of the efforts to close the wage gap begun by the city of Boston in 2013, the state of Massachusetts passed the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act, which went into effect on July 1, 2018. The law states, “No employer shall discriminate in any way on the basis of gender in the payment of wages, or pay any person in its employ a salary or wage rate less than the rates paid to its employees of a different gender for comparable work.” In addition, this law prohibits employers from asking job applicants for their salary history. Johnston explains that the new law encourages companies to conduct pay audits and adjust salaries when gaps are identified. The law provides an incentive to conduct regular gender pay audits by giving the employers a defense against wage discrimination claims. She explains, “If a company can show that it conducted a pay survey within the last three years—and took steps to close any illegal pay gaps—it has an affirmative defense in court. If not, it could be in trouble.” The Massachusetts law outlines six instances in which pay differences are allowed between comparable positions, specifically if someone
  • Has more seniority
  • Has more education or experience related to the job
  • Has better performance reviews
  • Has higher sales or other quantifiable contributions
  • Lives in a more expensive city
  • Travels more
Johnston describes a recent discussion panel about pay equity where Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, whose office is tasked with enforcing the new state law, noted that adjusting payrolls and eliminating salary history questions is not enough. Closing the gender pay gap will also require companies to look into providing childcare, paid parental leave, and pregnant worker protections. She also recommends that companies hold unconscious bias training. I agree with Healey. No single change will fix the gender pay gap. We must address the problem with a number of strategies, like those described above. I feel encourage reading about innovative efforts like those in Boston and Massachusetts to close the gender pay gap. Let us know of innovations taking place in your city or state.   Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash]]>

Sexual Harassment Spotlight: Law Firms

by

The revelations keep coming about the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in every type of organization and profession. Not much has changed yet, which is why we have to keep the spotlight focused on revealing and stopping this behavior everywhere. Yvonne Abraham of the Boston Globe reports on a new study of sexual harassment in law firms. The new study, conducted by Lauren Stiller Rikleen, president of the Rikleen Institute for Strategic Leadership, for the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association (MWBA), surveyed 1,200 employees in Massachusetts law firms. Abraham notes that these employees described harassment and bullying experienced between 2010 and 2018—not ancient history—that they felt powerless to prevent. She cites Rikleen as explaining, “It is a younger person’s problem. Someone more vulnerable to power imbalances is less likely to speak up.” In addition, when employees see the complaints of other colleagues go unheeded, they do not feel empowered to speak out. Survey participants shared some of their experiences in law firms:

  • Unwanted hugging
  • Back-rubbing
  • Groping
  • Kissing
  • Lewd comments
  • Propositions by men in positions of power
  • Comments on women’s clothing or anatomy
  • Brushing by women too closely
  • Men watching porn on computers
  • Attorneys sending or sharing pornographic emails or images
  • Demeaning comments on race, religion, sexual orientation, or pregnancy
  • Powerful partners, including some women, yelling at and humiliating colleagues, including throwing files and other objects
The MWBA report notes that the primary challenge for law firms is, according to Abrahams, “the obscene gender imbalances in the upper ranks.” Abrahams notes that “Equal numbers of women and men have been graduating from law schools for more than a decade. Yet women make up just 19 percent of equity partners, and 30 percent of non-equity partners, at firms nationally.” In addition to creating more gender balance in the upper levels of management, firms need to make a real commitment to creating safe and respectful workplace cultures. Having a sexual harassment policy is meaningless if managers do not hold staff and partners accountable for their behavior. So much work still needs to be done.   Photo courtesy of Navaneeth KN (CC BY-ND 2.0)]]>

Dealing with Imposter Syndrome

by

Have you ever felt like a fraud or imposter—like you did not belong or deserve a promotion or award? I know I have. Kristin Wong, writing for the New York Times, explains that the imposter syndrome is a term coined by psychologists Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes in 1978 to describe an “internal experience of intellectual phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement.” In my experience as a leadership coach, imposter syndrome is not uncommon, but most people do not talk about these feelings and think they are the only ones having them. Imposter syndrome can cause people to hold back, hesitate, or fail to contribute their valuable ideas and skills. They may appear to “lack confidence.” When they have an opportunity to put a name to this experience and discover they are not alone, they often feel liberated and empowered. They also come to know that these feelings will reappear from time to time and that they need support from others who understand when this happens. I am a coach in several women’s leadership development programs and one of them, the Power of Self Program, administers an imposter syndrome self-assessment instrument during the first of six classes in the program. I have the opportunity to debrief my coaching clients who take this course to hear about the impact of having a name for the imposter experience. They are often surprised and relieved to discover they are not alone and that there are strategies they can use to overcome the debilitating impact of the syndrome. The imposter syndrome often becomes a central focus of our coaching work. Some researchers have found that imposter syndrome hits minority groups harder, which has also been my experience as a coach. Sometimes a coaching client struggles with an almost debilitating imposter syndrome when

  • They are a member of an underrepresented group in an industry or organization. When you don’t see other people like you, this can reinforce the feeling that you don’t belong.
  • They were raised in a culture where they were told they would not or could not do certain things. For example, many of my clients of Asian descent, especially females, have been told all their lives that they are not intelligent or worthy. It is the belief in some Asian (and other) cultures that parents will bring bad luck to their children if they say positive or encouraging things. They do the opposite to show their love and protect their children from bad luck. But this can cause difficulty for those children as adults trying to succeed.
  • They are raised in a culture, including Western cultures, where social norms dictate that women and men should adhere to traditional gender norms and roles. To do otherwise can feed the imposter syndrome.
  • They are functioning in a culture where racial/ethnic/class/caste norms prescribe roles and access to opportunity. Breaking through those barriers can be difficult, both externally and internally, as internalized oppression can accompany us on our life journey.
  • They cannot distinguish between their own internalized experience of oppression and actual discrimination, where the barriers really are external.
Wong cites Rosanna Durruthy, a global diversity leader, and Kevin Cokley, a professor of educational psychology and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin, as suggesting these strategies for dealing with imposter syndrome at work:
  • Join an affinity group to find people with similar backgrounds and experiences.
  • Recruit a mentor to serve as a professional anchor, preferably someone who has shared your experiences.
  • Document your accomplishments. Record positive feedback you receive and your accomplishments in a daily journal. A review of this journal can both help you get through an attack of imposter syndrome and create a record to draw from to make the case for your next raise or promotion.
  • Develop a mantra to remind yourself that you earned your success.
What has worked for you?   Photo courtesy of businessforward (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

Gender Norms Are Hard to Change: When Women Earn More

by

I remember when my spouse and I decided to move in together and share our lives. Both self-employed, we agreed that I would be the primary breadwinner while he fixed up our house and got a new business started. Then one night his mother called to chat, and his father shouted loudly from the background, “Tell that bum to get a job!” My partner struggled to keep his composure for a few hours afterward. His father had pulled the “man card” to make it clear that a real man would never let himself be financially dependent on a woman. Tara Siegel Bernard of the New York Times notes that gender roles in the United States have become more egalitarian over the past half-century. She points out that women now outnumber men in college and collect more degrees. In addition, the number of women earning more than their husbands in opposite-gender relationships has been slowly rising, and men are taking on more responsibility at home. Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times supports these observations with statistics from a recent study by the Census Bureau, which shows that about one-quarter of women now earn more than men in opposite-sex couples in the United States, up from 18 percent in the 1980s. However, both authors point out that despite these shifts, certain gender-role expectations persist. Miller cites a recent study from the Pew Research Center that shows 71 percent of people surveyed say that to be a good husband, men should be able to support a family. Only 32 percent said the same about women as wives. Bernard concludes that we have held on to the idea that men are supposed to provide but have loosened up on the idea that women have to be homemakers. One indicator of the stickiness of gender roles is reflected in the discomfort women and men feel about women earning more. Miller reports that in the Census Bureau study, in opposite-sex marriages, women understated what they earned while men overstated their earnings. The researchers called this “manning up and womaning down.” Miller notes that the Census Bureau report had some other surprise findings about the 23 percent of couples in which women earn more:

  • These women earned more than double the average earnings of women who did not outearn their husbands.
  • They are more likely to have college degrees.
  • They are more likely to be black.
  • Age and geography make no difference. Couples in which women earned more were as common in liberal cities as in the conservative South.
Miller also shared a large new study by economists at the University of Chicago, which found that women who outearned their husbands did significantly more housework and childrearing than their husbands—perhaps to make their husbands feel better about the situation. Generational differences are showing some changes in gender-role expectations—but old attitudes die hard for all of us and tend to reappear when we least expect them. Let us know what has worked for you to create truly egalitarian relationships.   Photo courtesy of Hernán Piñera (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

Pregnancy Discrimination and the Motherhood Pay Gap: We Need a #MomsToo Movement

by

We have heard a lot in recent months about sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the workplace, thanks to the #MeToo movement. But one form of gender discrimination we don’t hear a lot about is the deeply ingrained antimotherhood bias that takes a heavy toll on women’s pay and careers. Antimotherhood bias includes bias and discrimination against pregnant women, as reported by Natalie Kitroeff and Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times, who share a range of painful stories of women being fired or demoted for being pregnant. It also includes bias and discrimination against women once they have children, which is often casual, open, and unapologetic, according to Katherine Goldstein of the New York Times, even though this discriminations is illegal. This systemic bias is found in large corporations, such as Merck and Walmart, government organizations, and small businesses. Claire Cain Miller writes that antimother bias may account for most of the stubborn gender pay gap. Miller, Goldstein, Kitroeff, and Silver-Greenberg note these recent findings:

  • Research regularly shows that mothers are routinely viewed as less competent and committed to their jobs, even by other women, despite evidence to the contrary. This bias can result in women being bypassed for promotions, high visibility assignments, and bonuses when they have a child.
  • A study published in the American Journal of Sociology found that in instances where job candidates were equal in every other way, being a mother reduced the chance that a candidate would be offered the job by 37 percentage points. The recommended salary for mothers who were offered the job was $11,000 less on average than for childless female candidates. This hiring bias does not affect fathers at all. In fact, fathers tend to make more money than their childless male counterparts.
  • Couples today tend to have similar incomes at the beginning of their careers until their first child is born. Immediately after the first birth, the pay gap between spouses doubles, entirely driven by a drop in the mother’s pay, while men’s wages keep rising.
  • When women have their first child between the ages of 25 and 35, their pay never recovers, relative to that of their husbands. This is less true if the first child is born before 25 or after 35 because the woman’s career either has not yet gotten started before 25 or is already established by the time she is in her late 30s.
  • Each child chops 4 percent off a woman’s hourly wage, according to a study conducted in 2014 by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the pay gap grows larger for each additional child born.
  • Even in families in which both parents work full time, women spend almost double the time on housework and childcare. This often means that women work fewer hours, are paid proportionately less, and become less likely to get promotions or raises.
Why don’t women speak out about being passed over for promotions, visible assignments, and raises because of motherhood? Goldstein suggests that women may feel they have more to lose by speaking out. Women who are trying to have both a career and a family are pushing against negative judgment from both employers and society. They may internalize this judgment and feel guilty—and they have families to support and cannot risk being laid off or further penalized. Many lawsuits are working their way through the courts, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has had more complaints filed in recent times than ever before about discrimination against working mothers, but we still don’t hear much about this issue. What will it take to bring about change? Miller points out that more women running for political office may mean that this issue gets addressed. For example, Senator Tammy Duckworth recently became the first United States senator to give birth while in office, and she subsequently fought for changes in accommodations and practices, such as availability of a lactation room, to support mothers in the Senate. Research has also shown some other policy changes that can help women who are mothers:
  • Programs to help women reenter the workforce
  • Flexibility in when and where work gets done
  • Subsidized childcare
  • Time off for men after children are born so they can spend more time on childcare
Women may need to share their stories in a #MomsToo movement. What are your stories?   Photo courtesy of Ran Allen (CC BY 2.0)]]>

Creating Inclusive Workplaces for Transgender Workers

by

Anyone who knows a person who has transitioned from one gender identity to another knows the imperative for that person of getting alignment between their internal and external gender identity or between their internal gender identity and their external biology. Those of us born “cis gender,” or whose internal gender identity is the same as our external physical body, may find it difficult to understand the challenges for transgender people. As a cisgender woman, I feel myself to be a woman and I was born in a woman’s body. Consequently, I am not confused about my gender identity, and neither is anyone who sees or knows me. I try to imagine the tremendous courage necessary for a trans person to take a stand and announce to friends, family, coworkers, and employees that although they may have known you as a man, you have always felt that you are a woman, vice versa, or neither, and you are choosing now to live as your true self. Whether or not a transgender person undergoes surgery or other medical intervention to physically alter their body to align with their internal identity, they still have a lot to deal with to learn to live as a different gender or as a gender-fluid or gender-nonconforming person. A lack of internal and external alignment or an appearance that does not conform to binary stereotypes of gender can cause confusion, depression, and suicidal thoughts for a person who feels they are “living a lie.” Rejection by employers for being transgender also means that many transgender people live in poverty. As of 2016, thirty-two states did not have state laws to protect people from being fired for being transgender. An anonymous online 2015 survey of 28,000 adults, age eighteen and older from all fifty states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and United States military bases overseas, revealed widespread poverty and other difficulties for the transgender community, as reported by the National Women’s Law Center. The survey found that people who are transgender are twice as likely to be living in poverty as the general US population, with 29 percent living in poverty in 2015, compared to the overall rate of 14 percent across the country. For transgender people of color, the statistics are even worse:

  • 43 percent of Latinx transgender respondents live in poverty.
  • 41 percent of American Indian transgender respondents live in poverty.
  • 40 percent of multiracial transgender respondents live in poverty.
  • 38 percent of black transgender respondents live in poverty.
Claire Martin of the New York Times reports that 30 percent of transgender workers have been fired or denied a promotion. Robert Pear of the New York Times reports that recent court rulings have extended protections for transgender people in the workplace in certain states and set a precedent for future cases. The most recent ruling found that transgender people are protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which says that “gender must be irrelevant to employment decisions.” The ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit further states that employees may not be discriminated against because they fail to conform to “stereotypical gender norms” and that, as Pear explains, “discrimination based on transgender status is a form of sex discrimination.” The ruling also states that an employer’s religious beliefs do not justify discrimination. Pear also notes that with recent court rulings, many employers are moving to create or strengthen policies to prevent bias and discrimination against transgender people. Martin reports that organizations like TransCanWork, based in California, offer training programs and videos for employers. The Human Rights Campaign also offers toolkits for employers. Tash Wilder, senior consultant at Paradigm, recommends the following steps to create an inclusive workplace:
  • Create policies and benefits that protect trans people from discrimination or harassment.
  • Actively foster a culture where trans people feel a sense of belonging by
  • Allowing new employees to input their own demographic data into the human resources systems
  • Using names and pronouns that employees use, even if different than their legal name and pronoun
  • Providing gender inclusive bathrooms and locker rooms
  • Creating gender affinity groups that are welcoming, such as “Women and Gender Minorities”
More often these days, I am asked to introduce myself by my preferred pronouns when I enter new groups or organizations. This practice is helping me create new habits of mind and stop assuming that only two ways to identify one’s gender exist. My pronouns are “she, her, hers.” What are yours?   Photo courtesy of Misha Sokolnikov (CC BY-ND 2.0)]]>

Trouble for Women in “Manly” Jobs: Sexual Harassment and Discrimination

by

Women have always wanted access to blue-collar jobs but have not always been able to get it. As Susan Chira, writing for the New York Times, notes, blue-collar jobs generally pay higher wages and have been a pathway to the middle class. Women have wanted those higher-paying jobs for the same reasons that men want them—they have families to support, often as single parents. Chira reminds us that women only got access to higher-paying jobs after 1964, when Title VII of the Civil Rights Act forced open certain industries previously closed to women, including work in factories, shipyards, mines, and construction sites. Unfortunately, the sexual harassment that women encountered when they entered these fields still endures today. In a different article, Chira reports that sexual harassment remains endemic in many blue-collar professions because it was woven into the manufacturing sector as it evolved during the industrial revolution. For example, as women came from farms into the textile mills, “men reserved the highest-status, highest-paying jobs” for themselves. Chira explains that sexual harassment reflects male hostility to women who try to take “men’s jobs” because of this original sense of entitlement. Because society continues to see some jobs as for men only, many blue-collar professions remain male dominated, and studies show that “sexual harassment is more regular and severe in traditionally male occupations.” The sexual harassment that women still endure remains dangerous. For example:

  • A woman on a repair crew was deliberately stranded on top of a two-hundred-foot wind turbine by her male coworkers after enduring months of lewd taunts.
  • Men dropped tools on female coworkers or deliberately turned on electrical power when women began working on power lines.
  • One gold miner, Hanna Hurst, described her harassment at work as rougher than any she endured serving in the military in Iraq.
  • Women in construction are blacklisted and become unemployable if they report sexual harassment.
In May, 2018, Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times reported that two high-ranking women in the northern Virginia Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department filed federal civil rights charges. When they opposed a long pattern of sexual discrimination and harassment in the department, one was denied jobs and a promotion and the other was asked to leave the department. Tavernise reports that “women have sued [this] department six times for sex discrimination since 2005, and in most of those cases either settled or won.” But nothing changed because of a lack of support for change from senior leadership, so the two senior women decided to take their case to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at the federal level, so “they can’t ignore us anymore.” Chira writes that, not surprisingly, an analysis of employment from 2000 to 2016 shows female representation in blue-collar industries has shrunk by as much as 10 percent. Tavernise reports that the percentage of female firefighters has dropped from 5.3 percent in 2007 to 3.5 percent in 2017. Tavernise quotes Marc Bendick, an economic researcher who conducted a national study of female firefighters, as saying, “It wasn’t that the women couldn’t do the jobs, or didn’t want the jobs. It was what the departments were doing to them” that pushed them out of the profession. What will finally bring change? Chira cites several scholars who argue that only a fundamental reconstruction of organizations to be less hierarchical and a reexamination of pay scales for men’s and women’s work will result in lasting change. Some small successes among firefighters in Kansas City, Missouri, and female miners in Wyoming occurred when the jobs were redefined away from the traditional hyperbolic masculine image to a more collaborative one, giving hope that we will figure this out one day, if the will is there to do so.   Photo courtesy of Eric Kilby (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

Good News! MBA Programs Focus on Sexual Harassment Prevention for Future Leaders

by

The #MeToo era continues to have a positive impact on our culture, including on the training of future corporate leaders in MBA programs. Katie Johnston of the Boston Globe writes that “As the #MeToo movement continues to reveal how ingrained sexual harassment is in corporate culture, business schools have started taking steps to teach future leaders how to deal with, and eradicate, such behavior.” Johnston cites a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Business as saying, “People are waking up in business schools and realizing we’ve had a blind spot.” Johnston writes that while MBA programs had begun putting more focus on ethics and values after recent corporate scandals, such as the one at Wells Fargo last year, it was not until the Weinstein scandal that business schools began to add sexual harassment to the curriculum. In fact, in some cases the MBA students themselves took matters into their own hands before programs got the message. At MIT, the MBA students organized their own improvisation workshops about how to deal with sexual harassment. MIT now acknowledges that leadership must include being able to address both systemic and behavioral changes to eradicate sexual harassment. David Gelles and Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times quote Leanne Meyer of Carnegie Mellon as stating, “up until now, business leaders were largely responsible for delivering products. Now, shareholders are looking to corporate leaders to” take a stand on moral and social justice issues. MBA programs have started training leaders to do just that. Johnston, Gelles, and Miller describe some of the changes business schools are incorporating into their programs and curriculums:

  • New courses at MIT Sloan are dedicated to advancing equity and inclusion in the workplace.
  • A new ethics course at Stanford teaches how to create a workplace environment where people are comfortable reporting sexual misconduct.
  • Several schools are adding case studies, such as one on harassment at Uber.
  • Some students are forming male ally groups to support gender equity.
  • More courses show how leaders can create a workplace culture where sexual harassment isn’t tolerated.
  • At the Northeastern School of Business, a curriculum overhaul currently underway will weave issues facing working women into the fabric of its coursework.
  • Stanford Business School students study psychological research showing that people are more willing to challenge authority if at least one other person joins them.
Gelles and Miller note that the Forté Foundation is working with a number of business schools to help more women advance into leadership roles. More than two dozen schools have started groups based on the Forté model, including a group called the Manbassadors “for men committed to gender equity in business.” One male participant in the Manbassador program at Dartmouth explained that the goal is “making sure that as men we’re very aware of some of the privileges we’re afforded simply because of gender.” I don’t know about you, but I feel hopeful that because of these changes corporate cultures may really change one day to become equitable, inclusive, and safe places for women to work. The next generation of leaders appear to be taking the gender blinders off. Hopefully the corporate cultures they create will be equitable and inclusive for all currently disadvantaged groups.   Photo courtesy of Paul Lowry (CC BY 2.0)]]>

Women in the Military: Signs of Change

by

I remember when, in 1995, Shannon Faulkner was escorted by federal marshals onto the campus of the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, as the first woman to be admitted to this southern military college. Richard Fausset of the New York Times reminds us that Faulkner fought a two-and-a-half year legal battle to gain admission. Now, twenty-three years later, Sarah Zorn, a twenty-one-year-old college junior, has been selected by a panel of staff members and students to become “the Citadel’s first female regimental commander—the top cadet.” Fausset writes that change came slowly at the Citadel, and administrators now admit that for the first ten years or so after the courts forced the institution to admit women, resistance to change remained deeply ingrained and only slowly diminished. Institutional policies and practices were eventually revamped for the better:

  • Women are welcome and, in many cases, thriving on campus.
  • Ten percent of the graduating class this year were women.
  • Female cadets, on average, maintain a higher grade point average and are more likely to graduate than men; 75 percent of women graduate.
  • Sexist comments directed at women are unusual from male cadets and the women generally feel respected by their male colleagues.
  • The continued evolution of the Citadel culture found uniformed cadets marching for the first time in the Charleston Pride parade.
Let’s stop a moment and breathe in this good news. Change is possible, but it takes clarity and commitment on an institutional level to make it real and lasting.   Photo courtesy by James Willamor (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>