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Why Men Need Women at Work: What Men’s Hormones Have to Do with It

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Therese Huston of the New York Times writes that “history has long labeled women as unreliable and hysterical because of their hormones.” Interestingly, new research shows that men’s hormones fluctuate, too, both naturally and artificially, with possibly dire consequences for the rest of us. Prescriptions for testosterone supplements, often for a condition called “low-T,” are heavily advertised on television and social media and have increased from 1.3 million to 2.3 million in just four years. As Huston notes, the availability and popularity of these supplements makes new research on testosterone possible. She reports the following findings:

  • When men take testosterone, they make more impulsive—and often faulty—decisions.
  • High testosterone can make it harder to see flaws in one’s reasoning.
  • Testosterone may lower activity in the brain’s orbitofrontal cortex, which affects self-evaluation, decision making, and impulse control, and cause overconfidence in one’s reasoning ability.
  • Fluctuations in testosterone shape one’s willingness to collaborate.
So, am I the only one who is nervous about our impulsive president of the United States, who has a hard time seeing flaws in his reasoning and is high on overconfidence and low on willingness to collaborate? He controls the nuclear codes, surrounds himself with military generals (all white men), and threatens war on other nations in early morning tweets. The White House needs to place a lot of strong women in influential positions to offset all this testosterone, but the picture is not a good one. Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post cites research by economist Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute that shows that “the highest-paid staffers in the Trump White House are primarily men: Nearly 74 percent of the top 23 staffers are male. By contrast, in the Obama White House of 2015 only 52 percent of the highest-paid staffers were men.” And did I mention that the gender pay gap has also tripled in Trump’s White House? In a previous article, I wrote about research that suggests that both race and gender diversity improve organizational performance and decision making due to the following:
  1. Better and deeper critical thinking. The presence of cognitive friction might mean that people work harder to examine their own assumptions and deepen their reflections in the presence of conflicting opinions and information.
  2. More engagement with different perspectives. Different perspectives bring new ideas, and working harder to understand a different perspective can bring about a change in position.
  3. Better error detection. Deeper critical thought and engagement provide more opportunity for errors to be revealed.
  4. Less groupthink. Individuals are more likely to form their own opinions in diverse teams than to just follow along with those like them.
We need a balance of perspectives—and hormones—for good leadership in our government and organizations. In fact, our survival may depend on it. Have you ever worked somewhere with an unbalanced team? If so, how did it affect decision making and collaboration at your organization?   Photo courtesy of businessforward. (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

Good News: Women Are Getting Involved in Politics

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Here is a piece of good news for all of us: women’s involvement in politics is skyrocketing.  The ways to get involved are endless, including petitioning Congress, attending meetings and rallies for causes you support, holding elected officials accountable for their votes, registering voters, and running for office.  Running for office can include running for school board, town council, state legislature, governor, or US Congress.  Gail Collins of the New York Times writes that “groups that help prepare women to run for office are reporting an unprecedented number of website visits, training-school sign-ups and meeting attendance.” Why is it good news for all of us that women are preparing to run for office?  Studies show that women, as a group, are better at working with others.  Collins points out that female senators in Washington have regular bipartisan dinners, while I have observed that the men, even those in the same party, cannot work together or agree.  In the recent past, women senators were able to work together, across the aisle, to move stalled legislation forward. Brittany Bronson of the New York Times mentions the state of Nevada as a case study of the positive impact for everyone when women are well represented in legislative bodies. 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. This translates to a focus on issues important to women that are usually ignored by male legislators, such as family-friendly policies in the workplace, the gender wage gap, and the “pink tax”—the extra amount women are charged for feminine hygiene products. The female legislators of Nevada have also sponsored legislation supporting the Equal Rights Amendment and eliminating copays for contraception. Collins notes that if more women get into office, “it’ll be about time.”  She explains:

  • Women hold under 25 percent of the seats in the nation’s state legislatures.
  • Women hold just under 20 percent of the seats in Congress.
  • There are only six women governors.
  • We have never had a woman president.
Encourage the women you know to run for office, or run for office yourself.  Support and vote for women, and get involved in any way you can.  The more women are engaged in politics, the better it will be for all of us.   Photo courtesy of businessforward. (CC BY 2.0)]]>

The First Women Graduates of Army Infantry Training

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The Army is not making a fuss about it, but this is one of those moments in history that is a big deal: the first eighteen women, out of forty-four accepted for Army infantry training, recently completed the grueling boot camp and graduated. These are the first women to complete infantry training in two hundred years. Dave Philipps of the New York Times writes that the Army is not making a fuss because it has taken great pains to develop “gender-neutral performance standards to ensure that recruits entering the infantry were all treated the same.” Philipps explains that in 2013, the Obama administration ordered the military to open all combat positions to women. Prior to 2015, the Army did not allow women in combat positions. Nonetheless, during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, women who were not technically in combat roles were forced into firefights while serving in support roles. The Army was able to witness how well women performed in combat with nearly 14,000 women awarded the Combat Action Badge for engaging with the enemy. Because these women were not formally in combat roles, though, they did not receive combat pay, and, Philipps explains, they were “barred from the core combat positions that are the clearest career routes to senior leadership.” Obama opened these opportunities to women, and in 2016 the first class of women entered the Army infantry training program, despite warnings that

  • Women would never be able to handle the demands of the infantry.
  • The presence of women would destroy its all-male esprit de corps.
These naysayers were wrong. In boot camp, women and men trained together in mixed-gender squads from before dawn to after dark. Some of the original forty-four women who entered the training dropped out, as did some of the men. The standards were the same, and no special treatment was given to anyone. These women worked hard to forge this new pathway for women, and they deserve to be acknowledged for their accomplishment.   Photo by The US Army, CC BY 2.0  ]]>

The Long March to Break the Highest Glass Ceiling: The Next Step Taken

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Women in the United States struggled many years to win the right to vote, and we still have not been able to win the presidency. At least fifty-two other countries in the world have had a female head of state—some countries multiple times—but we have not. Hillary Clinton’s recent run was not successful, but she took us one more step along a very long journey for women in the United States. Gail Collins of the New York Times reminds us that when women implored the men writing the US Constitution to include women’s rights, the men laughed and ignored the request. It took almost another 150 years for women to win the right to vote in 1920. Once the struggle to win the vote got underway in earnest, it took fifty-two years of nonstop campaigning to win, and the campaigns were often met with violence, arrests, and mockery. We won the vote, but we still have not gotten the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) passed, which would put American women into the Constitution. I marched in the streets for the ERA and cried when it failed to pass. I am still waiting. Collins notes that even after winning the vote in 1920, women did not vote as a bloc; they voted more like their husbands, “on the basis of ethnicity, economic class, and geographic location,” a pattern that was also reflected by white women voters in this election. Collins points out that, unlike in the Civil Rights Movement, “where black Americans had grown up as a separate group, victims of endless injustice and brutality,” and fought together against the white majority (and are still fighting), white women were not a separate enslaved group. Collins explains that while white women had precious few rights themselves, “they were living in the bedrooms and parlors of the male authority figures. . . . When they rebelled, they were laughed at.” As we just saw in the 2016 election, women are still not a voting bloc. In fact, Susan Chiara explains that 53 percent of white women voted for Trump. Joan C. Williams, writing in the Harvard Business Review, notes that although a majority of married women, college-educated women, minority women, and unmarried women voted for Hillary, “WWC [white working-class] women voted for Trump over Clinton by a whopping 28-point margin—62% to 34%. If they’d split 50-50, she would have won. Class trumps gender,” and it probably always has. Chiara cites Nancy Isenberg, author of the book White Trash, as saying, “class shapes gender identity.” Chiara notes that racial fears and perceived competition with African Americans and immigrants for good jobs and opportunities are a higher concern for WWC women than is sexism. This may illuminate why the release of the Access Hollywood tapes with sexist remarks by Trump about women did not turn many WWC women voters away from Trump. The fact that Hillary Clinton ran for president as the first-ever female nominee of a major political party is a step along the road for US women. Margaret Chase Smith and Shirley Chisholm were the first women to try for the nomination of the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, but they did not win their party’s nomination. Now Hillary Clinton has broken that barrier. She did not win, but Sarah Lyall describes the profound moment for many women on Election Day when, carrying with them mementos of long-dead grandmothers and mothers, they finally got to vote for a woman for president! Women proudly marched to the polls in groups wearing white to symbolize the suffragists, in pantsuits or wearing “Nasty Woman” t-shirts. Groups of women put flowers on the grave of Susan B. Anthony, who fought for suffrage but died before women’s right to vote became law. Mothers drove daughters past the childhood home of Hillary Rodham Clinton in Illinois to point it out to them. Hillary Clinton did not win, but she took us the next step along the path. Thank you, Hillary.   Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire © 2016 by Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0  ]]>

Gretchen Carlson, Formerly of Fox News: How to Stop Sexual Harassment

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Gretchen Carlson went public about the sexual harassment she endured from Roger Ailes as an employee of Fox News and got Roger Ailes fired. Carlson did not agree to stay silent when offered a settlement as part of a nondisclosure agreement, and she got fired. It took courage to go public, and, subsequently, many women have come forward to tell their previously undisclosed stories of sexual harassment. In her article in the New York Times, Carlson notes that, according to the National Women’s Law Center, “almost half of all women have been sexually harassed at work. And those are the ones who have been brave enough to reveal it.” In a previous article, I explain why sexual harassment is still so prevalent in the workplace. Carlson has committed herself to taking action to create workplaces free of sexual harassment for our daughters––places where offensive comments about women will not be dismissed as “locker room talk” and sexual assault will not be tolerated. She explains that while women need to feel able to come forward and say, “This is not OK,” creating harassment-free work environments will require more than women speaking up after the fact. She offers the following suggestions:

  • Companies should not be allowed to force newly hired employees to sign contracts that require secret arbitration of all discrimination disputes, including sexual harassment claims. Carlson explains that secrecy silences women and leaves harassers free from accountability. In addition, arbitration rarely favors the accuser and cannot be appealed. Carlson plans to testify before Congress to help fight forced arbitration, and we all need to weigh in with our representatives to support legislation to stop forced arbitration contracts.
  • We should reassess whether human resources (HR) departments are the right places for victims to lodge their complaints. As demonstrated by Carson’s case at Fox News, HR and corporate legal departments are often loyal to the company executives who hire them and see their job as protecting the company by covering up the misdeeds of executives to prevent lawsuits. In fact, when I was consulting to companies in the 1990s and early 2000s about how to set up policies and procedures that would create harassment-free environments for employees, a best practice was to have an outside ombudsman, often an employment law firm, on retainer to represent the interests of the employees. After this time, arbitration clauses were added to employment contracts and this route to safety for employees was closed off.
  • We should reassess sexual harassment training given by companies. I agree with Carlson that such training is often a corporate façade that creates the illusion of compliance with antiharassment laws. While Carlson suggests that harassment training should be assessed for effectiveness, I maintain that training without effective reporting procedures that bring perpetrators to justice can never be effective. In other words, don’t blame the training. Employees always know when “no tolerance” statements are insincere or not backed up by procedures with teeth to protect them.
  • We should be conscious and intentional about raising both boys and girls to show respect to each other at school and at home.
  • Men should hire more women into positions of power and stop enabling harassers. Carlson states that men and women need to work together: “This is not only a women’s issue. It’s a societal issue.”
Gretchen Carlson lost her job when she took on Roger Ailes. We all need to endorse her efforts to end sexual harassment and support her on her path to whatever is next in her career. Good luck, Gretchen, and thank you!   Image: “Black and White, City, Man, People”]]>

What Is Misogyny? A New Word with an Old Meaning

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Image courtesy of pixabay.com.[/caption] I have been designing and facilitating women’s leadership-development programs for more than twenty-five years, and I always include a segment on misogyny.  I begin by asking for participants to raise their hands if they have heard the term misogyny before—usually no one has, until this year.  This fall, when I asked the question, almost every woman in the audience raised her hand and knew the definition:  having or showing a hatred or distrust of women.  The women in my most recent program were from the whole spectrum of political ideologies, but this year’s election campaign elevated both the term misogyny (which is not really a new word but had almost disappeared from use) and awareness of the behaviors associated with it to the level of national discourse.  Misogyny has always been with us, but we often didn’t see it, had become numb to it, or did not have a name for it.  This election campaign brought misogynistic attitudes and behaviors to the surface and out in the open. It’s also possible that some misogynistic behaviors are increasing because of the campaign rhetoric.  As an example, Ginia Bellafante of the New York Times reports that in September of this year, six women, each walking separately in midtown Manhattan in the early evening hours, were approached by young men who tried to light them on fire. Only females were targeted in these attacks.  Bellafante suggests that Donald Trump’s campaign inflicted damage on our culture by bringing to the surface male rage.  It has always been there, somewhat hidden, but may have been unleashed.  She reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, discovered during the past four years a “dark world of woman hatred” in online forums that denigrate and condemn women as liars, cheaters, whores and social cancers” and advocate their imprisonment and collective rape.  Remember the phrases liar and lock her up during the campaign?  These phrases were not created by Donald Trump just for Hillary Clinton.  The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that for “the radical right in recent years, misogyny has become an increasingly common means of articulating broader discontent.” This is quite a serious matter.  Here are some other examples of misogyny in the United States today:

  • One in five women and one in seventy-one men in the United States have been raped.
  • Every day in the United States, more than three women are murdered by husbands or boyfriends.
  • Many universities in the United States are under pressure for sheltering athletes and coaches accused of rape and of disbelieving their accusers. For example, in the Stanford rape case involving swimmer Brock Turner, the university sheltered him, and his father defended him by explaining that he should not be punished because he was “only having a little fun” when he sexually assaulted an unconscious woman on campus. Turner was eventually convicted after a large public outcry forced his arrest.
  • A survey last year of twenty-seven college campuses by the Association of American Universities found that 23 percent of women responding reported experiencing sexual assault since enrolling in their university. Harvard found sexual assault to be widespread on campus with 31 percent of the class of 2015 reporting some form of it.
  • Because of misogyny, it is difficult for women to be elected to high offices, such as president of the United States or secretary general of the United Nations. There has never been a woman in either role.  After seven strong and qualified women were recently rejected as the next leader of the United Nations in favor of one more man, one female diplomat explained, “Misogyny is baked into this system.”
Let’s be clear.  It is not only men who can enact misogynistic attitudes and behaviors.  Women often internalize misogyny and hold other women to harsher standards, undermine the success of other women, and generally withhold their support of women leaders. What’s to be done?  I think the women of the 2012 Harvard soccer team who were the focus of a “scouting report” by the 2012 men’s soccer team that exhibited misogynistic practices of objectifying the women said it best in their Harvard Crimson article:
‘Locker room talk’ is not an excuse because this is not limited to athletic teams. The whole world is a locker room.  The actions and the words of the 2012 men’s soccer team have deeply hurt us.  They were careless, disgusting, and appalling.  As women of Harvard Soccer and of the world, we want to take this experience as an opportunity to encourage our fellow women to band together in combatting this [misogynistic] type of behavior because we are a team and we are stronger when we are united.  To the men of Harvard soccer and to the men of the world, we invite you to join us, because ultimately we are all members of the same team.  We are human beings and we should be treated with dignity.  We want your help in combatting this.  We need your help in preventing this.”
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Why Women’s Voices Are Needed in Public Affairs but Are Missing

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Does watching Mika Brzezinski get constantly interrupted by Joe Scarborough every morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe make you as angry as it makes me? And, yes, I do know that Scarborough interrupts all of his guests, but Brzezinski is his coanchor and often the only woman at the political round-table discussions hosted by the show. I often find watching how she is interrupted, talked over, and disregarded so upsetting that I have to turn the show off. She is smart and has a lot to say, but she is continually not allowed to make her points. Unfortunately, as I wrote in a previous article about research on women getting interrupted in business settings, this happens everywhere. Now new research, described by Marie Tessier of the New York Times, addresses the consequences of women’s voices being underrepresented in public affairs due to more frequent negative interruptions in meetings and harsh feedback online. When women don’t feel that their opinions are valued, they become less willing to share them. Tessier notes that researchers report that women’s voices are underrepresented in many public affairs settings like school board meetings, town meetings, rural community meetings, and online news sites. The researchers found that “women take up just a quarter to a third of discussion time where policy is discussed and decisions made, except when they are in the majority.” This includes online discussions of public affairs where “women’s voices are outnumbered three to one in news comments, according to data from the University of Sydney and Stanford University.” What are the possible consequences of women’s voices being underrepresented in public affairs? Tessier suggests these outcomes:

  • Democratic institutions may not accurately reflect the will of the people.
  • Issues of particular concern to women, such as care for children, older people, and people with disabilities, may not become funding priorities.
  • In Congress, the police, or the military, where women are underrepresented, there is a greater danger of policy decisions being skewed against survivors of sexual assault, against prosecution of sexual assault offenders, or against gender pay equity.
Strategies to increase the representation of women’s voices include the following:
  • Increase the number of women on school boards and in meetings. Women are interrupted and disregarded less often when they are in the majority.
  • Increase the number of women in leadership. Women speak more when a woman is leading.
  • Build networks, teams, and alliances to get ideas heard.
  • Institute a “no interruption” rule in meetings and rules to ensure equal floor time for women.
I have written more about ways to help women get their voices heard. What has worked for you?   Image: “Men and Women at a Town Hall Meeting” By: CDC/Dawn Arlotta  ]]>

Gender Shrapnel: A New Book on Gender-Based Discrimination

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gender-shrapnelGender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace, a new book by Washington and Lee University professor Ellen Mayock, is focused on academia but offers understanding of and solutions to gender-based discrimination in all types of organizations. Mayock’s core concept of “shrapnel” is especially intriguing. She explains that “shrapnel” describes the regular insults and slights that build up over time and inflict real damage. While the meaning of the term “shrapnel” is similar in this context to the term “microaggressions,” frequently used in dialogues about the impact of racism, I find shrapnel to be more accurate in describing the potential seriousness of the injuries inflicted by subtle discrimination. Whether it refers to gender or race or is used to describe other group-level discrimination, it is an equally useful concept. In the context of gender, Mayock explains that discrimination occurs when gender-based norms in society that “follow a patriarchal flow are replicated in the workplace.” According to Mayock, this can take the form of men feeling marginalized for showing emotion at work or taking family leave, of women struggling to be heard and get credit for their good ideas, and of trans women and men being ostracized and insulted. Mayock offers strategies like training sessions aimed at understanding gender and intersectional dynamics and the importance of sending consistent institutional messages about rectifying gender-based discrimination. It is not enough to write into an organizational value statement that discrimination is not tolerated. One example of an organization sending a strong institutional message about gender-based discrimination occurred recently when the first female president of Harvard University, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, canceled the entire season of the winning men’s soccer team. Foust acted in response to the male team’s longstanding practice of keeping numbered ratings of the body parts of members of the female soccer team on a spreadsheet. The president sent a strong message that sexual objectification of women, which conditions and reinforces “rape culture” in our society, will not be tolerated at Harvard. It seems to have taken a female university president to send this strong message at a major university. I highly recommend Mayock’s book to anyone who wants to understand and stop gender shrapnel in his or her organization. What instances of gender shrapnel have you witnessed or experienced at your workplace? How was it addressed?   Photo: “Shrapnel” by Todd Huffman License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode]]>

Sexual Harassment and Assault: A Costly Tax for Women

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I am the survivor of both sexual assault and rape, and I understand all too well the high cost, or tax, that women pay for being treated as sexual objects.  I experienced sexual assault as a child, an adolescent, a young woman, and a middle-aged woman. I have never talked about most of these experiences, but I believe that women now need to speak out to make it clear that disrespecting women is a real problem, not just “locker room talk.”  Sexual assault and violence are serious problems all over the world and not small problems in our country.  Amanda Taub of the New York Times reports the following:

  • One in four women in the United States have been sexually assaulted.
  • One in five women in the United States are victims of rape or attempted rape.
The cost to women who experience sexual assault and harassment in its many forms—many of which were clearly described in the Access Hollywood tape that recorded Donald J. Trump boasting of grabbing, groping, kissing, leering, and committing other violations of the personal boundaries of women without their consent—occurs on many levels.  The cost can be emotional trauma that can be permanently damaging to one’s confidence and self-image, not to mention the pain and humiliation of rape.  I particularly resonate with Taub’s description of the impact of sexual assault on women as an “opportunity tax.” Women are taught early in life that they are responsible for avoiding sexual assault and that it is their fault if it happens to them. Taub cites social scientist Professor Leong, who explains the opportunity tax: “Whereas men can freely seize opportunities, women must pause and weigh the costs of” meeting alone with a professor, going out to dinner with a male client, networking after hours with colleagues at a conference, meeting alone with a potential investor, or going on a business trip with a male boss. Because of sexual harassment and assault, many women quit jobs, leave professions, or step back to avoid risk, thereby damaging their careers and limiting their life choices. A lot of women have come forward to tell their stories since Trump’s words and tone in the Access Hollywood recording struck a chord with many of us. We are outraged by the dismissal of his remarks as “locker room talk.”  Jonathan Miller sums up Trump’s statements well, writing that they reflect a “rape culture” in our larger society.  He explains that talking about objectification of women’s bodies results in the cultural conditioning of men and boys to feel entitled to treat women as sex objects. This is also described by Sam Polk as “bro talk.” Yes, Trump’s comments struck a nerve.  Kelly Oxford posted a tweet sharing her experience of sexual assault on Friday night when the Access Hollywood tape was released, and by Monday morning twenty-seven million people around the world shared first-person accounts or visited her Twitter page.  Shortly before the Access Hollywood tape came to light, I published an article on why sexual harassment happens, and received more than two hundred stories and comments and over 10,000 viewings from readers all over the world on LinkedIn.  The following are a few of those comments from my readers:
  • I work in silence. It’s not nice bosses that have the upper hand over employees. Female Housekeeper
  • I was in a position in which a high ranking male would look at various parts of my body in a very lewd manner. When I filed a complaint, it became his word against mine and nothing was done.  I was asked to transfer to another location. Female Technician
  • I think a lot of sexual harassment begins at home. Dad belittles Mom, Mom tries to keep a straight face because the kids are watching.  Daughter grows up and gets married to a man much like Dad.  This carries over into the daughter’s work life—trapped, not knowing which way to turn, ignoring degrading remarks in order to put food on the table. Female Author and Business Owner
  • One college professor grabbed my backside while at a business club event. Another offered to give me a better grade if I “went out” with him. I took the lower grade.  Things like this happen more frequently than reported. Female Technical Professional
  • This is still a huge problem. I recently wrote about my own experiences with sexual harassment by an executive and admitted my own fear of speaking out because I worried it might damage my reputation. Female Entrepreneur
  • In India, a deeply rooted culture of patriarchy plus inherent misogyny form a dangerous basis of judging the seriousness of any sexual harassment complaint made at the workplace. Female Financial Advisor in India
It is not easy to speak out when demeaning and traumatizing things happen to you.  It helps when we can share our stories and know we are not alone.  We must come out of the shadows with our stories and support each other.  Together we can pressure our society to stop perpetuating a rape culture and to end this opportunity tax for women. Please share your story here, if you have one to tell.   Photo: Daniel Kruczynski License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode  ]]>

"New Rules for Women" Blog

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Welcome to the launch of my new blog, “New Rules for Women.”  I hope this blog will stimulate conversations about the issues and challenges that women face in the workplace. It can also be a place where we celebrate our strengths and exchange ideas for how to build upon them.  I hope that both women and men will engage in these conversations as a way to understand each other better and learn to support each other more.  We need to work together to bring about the many changes needed in our work environments to make them more inclusive of all of us and make our organizations more productive.   I look forward to hearing from you.]]>