diversity

Six Reasons Why We Need More Women in Government

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Decades of research show that women make a difference in elected office. Women do govern differently, yet we are losing representation in the United States. Claire Cain Miller, writing for the New York Times, reports these results of the November 2016 election:

  • The number of female governors dropped from six to five.
  • The number of women in Congress stayed the same at 104, or 19 percent of the seats in the House and Senate. One seat was gained in the Senate and one lost in the House.
  • Thirteen states will send no women to the new 115th Congress.
Why does this matter? Miller summarizes a large body of data that shows six reasons why we need more women in government:
  1. Women are more collaborative and bipartisan than men. Miller reminds us of the time in 2013 when Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, joined with several other Senate women representing both parties to create a plan to reopen the government after a Senate-led shutdown. Research shows that women build coalitions and reach consensus more quickly because they interrupt less, listen more, pay attention to nonverbal cues, tend to be less partisan, and use democratic leadership styles instead of the autocratic styles favored by many men.
  2. Women push for more policies meant to support women, children, social welfare, and national security. Women in Congress pushed to get health-care coverage for women included when the Affordable Care Act was being passed, pushed for the enforcement of sexual harassment prevention and adjudication rules in the military, fought to get women included in medical trials, and fought for the inclusion of child-care vouchers in welfare reform.
  3. Women sponsor and cosponsor more bills. Women actually do get bills passed at the same rate as men, except when the bills affect women, health, education, and social welfare issues. In these cases, bills sponsored by women are more likely to die in committee because Congressional committees have few women chairs and fewer women’s voices.
  4. Women bring 9 percent more federal money home to their districts.
  5. Women are significantly more likely than men to sponsor bills in areas of civil rights, health, and education. Men sponsor more bills in agriculture, energy, and macroeconomics.
  6. A higher share of female legislators correlates with less military spending and decreased use of force in foreign policy. Researchers at Texas A&M University report this based on data from twenty-two established democracies gathered between 1970 and 2000. The exception is when women are in executive positions, where they seem to be more hawkish, possibly to overcome stereotypes about women being weak.
Women bring different skills and priorities to governance. Without significant numbers of women in power, though, our voices are not heard, nor are our issues prioritized, passed, and funded. I recently wrote about this as a similar challenge in the arena of public affairs. Women have been running for office in larger numbers in recent elections without making much progress in increasing our representation. We continue to need more women to run for public office. Government desperately needs our leadership style, our ability to collaborate and build coalitions, and our focus on issues of importance to women. I urge you to contact Emily’s List or your national political party to find out how to run for office in the next election. We all need you.   The image in this post is courtesy of Senator Stabenow  (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

Diversity Improves Performance: New Research Findings

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Exciting new research reported in the New York Times from Columbia University and the University of Texas provides much needed evidence that racial and ethnic diversity on teams improves performance. While I have always felt the truth of this finding from my own experiences, it is good to see empirical evidence that supports the practice of inclusion. This new research, added to other studies showing that gender diversity also improves performance, should encourage more intentional inclusion of race and gender diversity on teams and in classrooms. The new study on racial and ethnic diversity was conducted in both the United States and in Singapore. Participants were assigned to either homogeneous or diverse groups to make decisions on the sales value of stocks. To ensure that any differences in outcomes were the results of diversity and not culture or history, diverse groups in the United States included whites, Latinos, and African-Americans. In Singapore, the diverse groups were Chinese, Indian, and Malay. The authors report that the findings were “striking.” The decisions of the diverse groups were 58 percent more accurate, and the more time they spent interacting in diverse groups, the more their performance improved. In contrast, the homogeneous groups in both the United States and in Asia were more likely to copy others and spread mistakes. The authors suggest that the homogeneous groups seemed to “put undue trust in others’ answers, mindlessly imitating them. In diverse groups, across ethnicities and locales. . . . diversity brought cognitive friction that enhanced deliberation.” In other words, the presence of diversity produced better outcomes 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.
Studies on gender diversity in teams, reported in an earlier article, found that gender-balanced offices produced 41 percent more revenue than single-sex offices. The factors that might account for higher performance in gender-balanced teams are probably similar to those accounting for higher performance in racially diverse teams:
  1. More voice for everyone. When there are roughly equal numbers of women and men on a team, it is more likely that both women and men will be able to get their ideas heard and be able to influence the culture of the team.
  2. More perspectives. A diversity of perspectives is bound to result in better decisions and solutions and help avoid groupthink.
  3. More skills. A broader range of skills and experience is available in diverse teams which could contribute to better results.
Given these findings, shouldn’t all work teams, leadership teams, and classrooms strive to be intentionally diverse? We can all benefit from diversity.     Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

More Women Are Leaders in Family Businesses Globally: A Magic Formula for Creating Gender Parity

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I grew up in a family business started by my grandparents and continued by my father, his six siblings, and their spouses. The business was a chain of clothing stores in small towns in the Midwest. While each sibling owned their own store or two, a number were jointly owned by all the family members, and these were run by my father as the corporate CEO. I began working in the business, as did most of my siblings and cousins, around the age of eight. Because I was the oldest of my three siblings and showed interest and business acumen, I understood from an early age that I was being groomed to take over for my father some day to run both our individual store and the jointly owned businesses. I was exposed to and mentored in every aspect of the business, and the fact that I was female never came up as an issue with anyone in the extended family. It was a great disappointment to all when I discovered during college that my path in life lay elsewhere and I declared that I would not be joining the business after college—but that is a story for another day. It was with both pride and recognition that I read about recent research, conducted in 2014 by Ernst & Young (EY) and Kennesaw State University, which found significantly higher rates of women in senior leadership roles in family businesses globally. When I thought about my own experience, this finding made sense, and the implications suggested by the authors seem exciting and important. Why are these findings important? This research gathered data from 525 of the world’s largest family businesses. The responses are from twenty-five of the largest family businesses in each of twenty-one countries with global markets. The authors note that family businesses are not insignificant players in the global marketplace. In fact, they are anchors of the world economy, and as a whole they create 70–90 percent of the global GDP and 50–80 percent of jobs in the majority of countries worldwide. The research found that the 525 participating family businesses average about five women in the C suite, 55 percent have at least one woman on their board, and 70 percent are considering a woman for their next CEO. These statistics are considerably higher than overall global business statistics, even though a great deal of research exists that shows having women in leadership roles makes economic sense for businesses:

  • Companies with more women in leadership increase focus on corporate governance, corporate responsibility, talent dynamics, and market acuity.
  • Publicly listed companies with women on the board tend to outperform those without in key metrics such as share price, return on equity, net income growth, and price-to-book value.
  • A gender-balanced board is also associated with better corporate social performance in community, customers, environment, and supply chain. These activities improve business outcomes in areas such as risk management, corporate and brand reputation, and recruitment and retention.
The authors suggest that “family business may offer a path forward for all businesses seeking to achieve gender parity.”

A Magic Formula for Creating Gender Parity

The study authors summarize the family business formula for success for bringing women into leadership roles as the following: Role Models + Long-Term Thinking + Inclusive Environment = Women in Leadership
  • Role models: Women are inspired to be leaders when they see women in positions of power. When I was growing up, I was surrounded by capable women business leaders who were my mother, aunts, and cousins. Consequently, I never doubted that I could be a leader in our business if I wanted to.
  • Long-term versus short-term thinking: Family businesses are focused on long-term sustainability because they are focused on the business as a legacy to be preserved for future generations. Other types of business entities tend to be focused on delivering short-term results to respond to investor expectations. Also, the average tenure of a family business CEO is twenty years compared to six years for the CEO of a public company.
  • Inclusive environment: Family businesses are built on relationships and on balancing a focus on both family and the business. The relationship focus includes activities that keep both family members and employees more cohesive and engaged with each other and the business. The authors also note that “diversity in leadership, including gender diversity, is positively correlated to employee engagement and satisfaction—factors that drive retention and increase cohesion.”
In other words, family businesses have shown that having more women in leadership is good for business, and they have found a formula for how to make that happen!   Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

Women in the Military: Cracking the “Brass Ceiling”—Winning a Battle, but Not the War

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The announcement by the Obama administration at the end of 2015 that all combat roles in the military will be open to women is indeed a victory for women. This opens 220,000 jobs previously closed to women. While I wish we lived in a world without war where we did not need a military, that is not the world we are in, and I am happy that the women who want combat roles and military careers are now able to have access to them. Women in the military have long felt that the official restrictions on them having combat roles were unfair. While they have been allowed to serve in combat zones, until now they were not allowed to officially hold the combat positions required for career advancement. This change is part of a long march to inclusion by the military, starting in 1948 with racial integration and continuing in 2011 with lifting the ban on gays in the military. Why do I say that this change wins a battle but not the war? Mariette Kalinowski, a former Marine, writes in the New York Times that while the “brass ceiling” is cracked, it is not gone because the military culture of hypermasculinity has not yet changed. She notes that the system is still stacked against women because of attitudes and beliefs by the older male leaders in charge. Dave Philipps of the New York Times cites Lt. Col. Kate Germano who agrees that the Marines, who are still 93 percent male, in particular “have a climate of non-inclusivity and justify it by talking about combat effectiveness, but a lot of it is based on emotion and not fact.” Elliot Ackerman further supports this position by noting that “the focus by the Marine Corps on physical fitness avoids the real barrier to integration—the hypermasculine culture at its heart.”

What Are the Benefits of Integrating Women in the Military?

  • Dave Philipps points out that not only did a recent Marine Corps study find that there is no detriment to the morale in mixed-gender combat groups, but gender-integrated groups excelled at complex decision making.
  • Philipps also reports the same study found that while women scored lower on many physical tasks, they scored higher on mental resilience and had fewer mental health problems.
  • Kalinowski suggests that a benefit of gender integration in the military, which must include a change in the culture, could be a reduced risk of sexual harassment and assault. She posits that because discrimination and rape are tools of dominance and control, removing the source of the control by changing from a hypermasculine to a gender-inclusive culture will cause the source of the motivation to keep the status quo in place to disappear. In addition, she suggests this change could result in a lower incidence of sexual violence in the larger society.
Kalinsky notes, “We’re up against a quiet, strong prejudice that has everything to do with our biological ability to create life, and nothing to do with our willingness and ability as soldiers.” The decision by the Pentagon to open all combat roles to women is an important next step, but this war is not yet won. Let’s keep looking for ways to support women in the military.   “FET: Female Marines Build Relationships in Helmand” by DVIDSHUB is licensed under CC BY 2.0]]>

Melinda Gates: The First Woman of Women

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I found it inspiring to read in Forbes magazine that Melinda Gates, of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has decided to put women and girls at the center of her focus to end poverty in the world. Other philanthropists and bankers (such as Muhammad Yunus, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for microloan practices that target women) have shown that investing in women results in significant improvement in the standard of living for families and communities. Caroline Howard writes in Forbes that Melinda Gates, who has $41.3 billion in foundation assets to invest, “has become the most powerful person on the planet whose singular focus is women and girls.” Gates explains that in looking for a woman who would champion issues of poverty for girls and women for the Gates Foundation, she eventually realized that she herself was the best person to do it. Her passion comes from knowing that

  • Women account for six out of ten of the world’s poorest people.
  • Women account for two-thirds of the illiterate population.
  • 58 percent of all primary school dropouts are girls. One year or more of primary school boosts a girl’s future wages by 10–20 percent.
  • The International Monetary Fund calculates that 3.9 million women and girls are “missing” annually: about two-fifths are never born; one-sixth die in early childhood; more than one-third die during their reproductive years.
  • 289,000 women died during pregnancy and childbirth in 2013.
  • Closing the employment and wage gap between men and women would increase women’s income by $17 trillion globally.
Gates sponsors a range of initiatives to alleviate poverty for women and girls that are all connected, such as
  • Family planning
  • Maternal and prenatal health
  • Infant health
  • Education
  • Microentrepreneurship
What can you do? The Gates Foundation is well funded, but there are many smaller foundations that are focused on alleviating poverty for girls and women in the developing world. These foundations need donations and volunteers to support their work. My favorite foundation is VGIF (Virginia Gildersleeve International Fund), and I encourage you to go to the Fund’s website and read about its work at www.vgif.org. A lot needs to be done for girls and women. Do you know of any foundations doing similar work? Let me know in the comments section.   Photo courtesy of Russell Watkins/Department for International Development (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

CFO: One Role Where Women Make More Than Men

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The recent focus on the gender-wage gap has raised awareness for several young women in my life who are clear that they do not want to be paid less than men for doing the same work. Do you know a young woman who is looking for a career where women make more than men? According to Sarah Skidmore Sell of the Orange County Register there is one: CFO (chief financial officer). The high pay for women CFOs is not due to women outnumbering men in the position—a recent survey found only 60 female CFOs at S&P 500 companies compared to 437 men. Sell reports that “the median pay for female CFOs last year rose 11 percent to $3.32 million. Male CFO pay rose 7 percent to $3.3 million.” Sell also acknowledges that the high median pay for female CFOs is partly a result of their small number and tendency to work for the largest companies, where compensation is higher than at smaller companies. Nonetheless, with all the emphasis these days on encouraging girls and women to consider training for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers, focusing on a finance career is another good option—and why aim for the top as a CFO? The CFO role has risen in importance since the financial crisis, when companies became aware of the need for a high-level role focused on both day-to-day operations and the long-term strategic view as the right-hand person to the CEO and the board. The CFO role is also now considered an excellent training ground for advancement to CEO.

Tips for Becoming a CFO

Carol Lippert Gray of the Journal of Accountancy notes that “there is no clear-cut path to the CFO suite,” but you can acquire skills and experiences to become CFO-qualified. Robert Half, of Robert Half Finance and Accounting, recommends the following steps to prepare yourself for a CFO role:
  1. Become a CPA (certified public accountant) or earn an MBA—or do both. A CPA license will give you training in a wide range of skills, including forensic accounting and compliance. An MBA will increase your understanding of business operations.
  2. Widen your customer service experience.
  3. Broaden your understanding of technology.
  4. Position yourself as a team builder and consensus seeker, which will encourage people to trust your judgment.
  5. Consider comptroller and treasurer positions, both of which can increase your experience with funding and strategy execution in preparation for CFO duties.
CFOs report high levels of satisfaction with their role. The journey to get there is long, but CFO could be a great career goal.   Photo courtesy of Financial Times (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

Why It Matters That Boards Are Not Diverse

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I just read some surprising statistics about the lack of diversity on corporate boards and why this matters. Stick with me on this topic. This information explains a lot, and I promise it will give you new perspective on why the glass ceiling stays in place for women and minorities—and what needs to change.

The Big Picture

I live in Massachusetts where a combination of universities, foundations, and local news organizations have come together to put a spotlight on the lack of diversity on the boards of publicly traded Massachusetts companies. Research reported by the Boston Fund and the Boston Globe in late 2015 showed the following:
  • 80 percent of directors of publicly traded companies in Massachusetts are white men, while white men make up only 36 percent of of the state’s population.
  • Minorities make up 7 percent of directors and are 26 percent of the population.
  • Women make up 16 percent of the directors (and some of these are also women of color), yet make up 50 percent of the population.
These figures compare to national surveys showing that women and minorities make up 26.7 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 companies, while the boards of small and midsize are firms generally much less diverse. Boards play a critical role in guiding organizations and are not just rubber stamps. They are in charge of hiring and firing CEOs, ratifying key decisions and setting long-term direction and policies. Yet when boards are not diverse, they are not providing the best possible leadership for organizations. A recent study of 2,000 companies by Wake Forest University found that companies with more diverse boards pay higher dividends and enjoy more stable stock prices. So why are boards so slow to diversify? The answers may surprise you.

Turnover Is Low on Boards

One of the answers to the question of why boards are slow to diversify is that turnover is very slow. In fact Shirley Leung of the Boston Globe explains:
  • Turnover of corporate board seats in Massachusetts is only 7 percent per year because there are no term or age limits for most board seats. This is also true nationally, and many directors stay in their seats for decades.
  • The incumbent white men do not want to give up their seats. Why would they? The median pay for corporate directors was $258,000 per year in 2014 for fewer than five hours of work per week. In addition, the pay for directors has risen faster than the wages for average workers.

Why the Impact on the Glass Ceiling Is High

The impact of boards that are not diverse on the glass ceiling for women and minorities is high: only 3–4 percent of corporate CEOs nationally are women, and only five Fortune 500 CEOs are black. Making this link between the lack of diversity on boards and the glass ceiling was an eye-opener for me, but think about it. Boards are responsible for hiring CEOs and they may well be overlooking talented women and minorities for CEO roles. Studies show that people tend to hire people who look like them and with whom they feel most comfortable. It’s a vicious cycle. Boards need to become more diverse in order to be more open to hiring women and minorities in CEO roles, yet you must be a current or past CEO to be considered qualified for most director seats. Because there are so few women and minority CEOs to draw from, boards continue to lack diversity, and the glass ceiling stays in place. One author recently proposed that the solution is term limits for directors so that seats can open and be filled by more women and minorities. Boards will also need to expand their criteria for eligibility to talented individuals who may not yet be CEOs to fill these seats as they open. As is happening now in Massachusetts, these changes are only going to occur if there is a lot of public pressure. What can you do? Here are some suggestions:
  • Write to your local newspaper and explain why diversifying corporate boards is important.
  • Write to your legislator and demand that laws be passed to require boards to diversify.
  • Educate your friends and neighbors about the need for boards to diversify.
  • If you are an investor, exercise your vote or write about your concerns to the companies you have invested in.
Let’s make our voices heard!   Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>

Strategic Relationships at Work: Creating Your Circle of Mentors, Sponsors, and Peers for Success in Business and Life—A Book Review

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Wendy Murphy and Kathy E. Kram have written an important book about why we all need developmental support networks for both career success and personal well-being—and how to develop those networks. The book is practical and easy to read, with lots of research-based examples and tips. Reflection activities at the end of each chapter encourage the reader to apply the concepts immediately to her own career and life. What I found most interesting were these points about mentoring that I had not considered: Formal and informal mentors. The authors reviewed scores of studies and conducted several of their own that revealed that having a formal mentor, often assigned in a workplace program, is valuable but not enough. We need a network of mentors, both formal and informal, to reach our goals and enable us to “cope with stress and thrive during times of change.” Trends in the changing nature of work. These trends require that we take charge of our career development and have multiple types and sources of mentoring. The authors identified the most significant trends as the following:

  1. Job mobility—it is not uncommon for people to work in multiple organizations during their working lives.
  2. Globalization—the world we live in is increasingly connected, and we need to keep learning from different people how to be effective across cultures and national boundaries.
  3. Technology—technology creates new challenges for how to both engage and disengage from work.
  4. Pace of change—the pace of change has become very fast and can be overwhelming. We need to be able to adapt and change continually.
Essential skills for developing your network. The authors note that the basic ingredients for developing a productive mentoring network are relationship-building skills. Core to relationship skills are self-awareness and social skills. Social skills include listening, giving and receiving feedback, empathy, conflict management, and the ability and willingness to share aspects of your story. Concrete suggestions for how to develop these skills are included in this book, as well as in Daniel Goleman’s book Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships. How to develop a mentor. The authors encourage readers to be proactive and reach out to people who are potential mentors. They suggest some steps to take in this process:
  1. Get clear about your own strengths and career goals. Select potential mentors who might know something or someone who could help you move forward on your path.
  2. Invite a potential mentor for coffee or lunch for an informational interview.
  3. Ask thought-provoking questions, such as the following:
    1. Could you tell me about your career path? How did you get to the position you are in today?
    2. What are the most important lessons you’ve learned from each promotion or change?
    3. What are the best and worst aspects of your current job? Of your current organization?
    4. How would you advise someone who wanted to follow a similar career path?
Types of mentors. A recent article in the Boston Globe suggests there are three kinds of informal mentors who meet different types of needs:
  1. The co-mentor—someone who is your equal with whom you can exchange skills, knowledge, and encouragement.
  2. The remote mentor—someone outside of your organization who can give you a fresh perspective.
  3. The invisible mentor—someone who you can learn from with little or no direct interaction. This can be a role model who inspires you and whom you may never meet in person.
Other tips. Diversity matters. Be intentional about developing informal mentoring relationships with people from different social contexts than your own. Broader perspectives can challenge your thinking and open up new networks for you. This book is worth spending some time with. Each career move and stage of life brings new challenges in choosing and navigating your path. Periodically update your mentoring network to keep it fresh and diverse so that you have the support you need throughout your life. We all need support.]]>

Three Reasons Why Organizations Need More Women in Leadership

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Sallie Krawcheck in Time magazine highlights three reasons why organizations need more women in leadership:

  1. Prevent Groupthink. Women can add much-needed diversity of perception. Sallie Krawcheck tells her story of being fired from her position of running Smith Barney at Citigroup during the financial crisis. She was fired for diverging from the groupthink of the financial industry by daring to suggest that clients should be partly reimbursed for losses caused by Smith Barney’s selling them high-risk products. Before she was fired, Sallie reports that she would not have said that her approach to decision making was related to her gender. After she was fired, however, Krawcheck’s research helped her understand that women tend to be more risk-averse and client-relationship focused—a value they can bring to the workplace and that she tried to bring to Smith Barney and the industry.
  2. Increase Stock Prices. Recent research shows that stock prices of businesses that have women in corporate leadership roles tend to be higher than those of their counterparts. These businesses perform considerably better and pay larger dividends to economic investors, even during economic downturns.
  3. Increase Pay Equity. Krawcheck, in an article in Forbes, also points out that companies with more diverse leadership teams have lower gender pay disparities throughout the workforce.
It’s not that women are better leaders than men; it’s that the diversity of perspectives women bring to a leadership team are complementary and can help prevent groupthink and challenge conventional wisdom. Women often bring greater focus on relationships and fairness to decision making. But it’s also very important that there be more than one token woman (or token anyone) on the team to have a chance of different perspectives being seriously considered. These are three of the reasons why organizations need more women in leadership, and I’m sure there are many more. What reasons come to mind for you? What examples do you have of times when diversity made a difference?]]>