Men need to take action - and take on more caregiving - to help women advance in their careers
How many times has the women's movement believed it was approaching a tipping point in terms of gender parity in the world of business, only to see its hopes shattered?
Despite decades of campaigning, progress continues to be glacial with conscious and unconscious biases leading to everything from poor female representation on company boards to a failure to achieve equal pay and a lack of work flexibility.
These workplace challenges were highlighted yesterday at the annual meeting of the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEP), which I chaired at the United Nations headquarters in New York. For one thing, less than a tenth of the thousands of corporate members of the United Nations Global Compact, which organised the conference along with UN Women, have actually signed up to the eight voluntary WEP principles.
Joe Keefe, president and CEO of US investment firm Pax World Management, who this week won a WEP leadership award, says the issue of gender inequality is akin to apartheid.
"In different cultures it comes in different guises," he says. "But it is still oppression and inequality and is the great human rights issue and business issue of our time."
Women hold only 14% of US corporate leadership jobs, a percentage that hasn't changed in the last decade, notes Steve Almond, the chairman of global management consultancy Deloitte. In continental Europe, that number is just 10% despite the fact that more women achieve college degrees than men, and the figures are even worse in other developed countries such as Japan.
One action Almond took was to ask male members of his 32-strong board to step aside so that women could take their places. This led to the percentage of women jumping from a paltry 6% to 25%.
"In my experience, most of the male leaders of our big clients and the big companies around the world are not resistant to change," he says. "They are just not recognising their own unconscious perpetuation of the status quo. And until that is recognised, the pace of change will remain glacial."
The change needs to come from the top, Almond says: "Too often, responsibility is delegated to Human Resource departments or another task force. Organisational change happens when the CEO takes personal responsibility for a strategic objective and sets clear targets."
Over her 40 years working for and with corporations, Barbara Krumsiek, CEO of US investment management company Calvert Investments, has had "a front row seat" in observing women's progress through their careers.
"While many companies have stated policies that would seem to support the growth and advancement of women professionally, there is all too often a lack of demonstrable performance against those stated policies," she said. "I would encourage every senior leader to personally seek metrics and data that show policies are actually working – and I'd like to see companies disclose this data."
The slow progress raises the question of whether the movement should carry on chipping away at the mountain of prejudice against women or whether an altogether new approach is necessary.
One reframing that certainly caught the attention of participants is the idea that for the women's movement to succeed, it needs men to rethink their own beliefs about their sense of masculinity and power.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, says that it is essential for men to recognise that being a caregiver can give them the same status in society as succeeding in the workplace.
While many women are expected to juggle both their work and home lives, she points out that no male CEO has made it to leading the boardroom while also being the lead parent.
Slaughter, who stirred up controversy with her article, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All", in The Atlantic, said at the UN event: "We tell girls they can be caregivers, career women or any blend of the two. We tell boys that their value is measured only by their earnings and status.
"Men need to value caregiving as much as bread winning. We will not fully empower women if we have not fully empowered men. This is not a woman's issue or a man's issue, but a human issue."
The conflict many men feel is illustrated by a growing body of research which shows that while American men recognise they would like a better work-life balance, those men who do prioritise family are stigmatised and viewed as weak.
Attitudes are starting to shift – helped by much more visible fathers in the public eye, from Brad Pitt to Barack Obama – Slaughter, who served as director of policy planning for the US Department of State, says we are only at the start of the journey.
She points to the mathematics. If we want half of business leaders to be women, then that means some men will have to stop also competing for those jobs.
"My proposition is that we will not get there by focusing on women but on women and men," she says. "We've had a lopsided revolution. Men held the power and we thought, 'how do we break into a man's world?' But unless an equal number of men move into caregiving, we are never going to get the balance we need.
Even though most couples both have to work, someone has to have the lead career – and right now, that's mostly the men, she added.
"The only way to get to 50% women is if 50% of the men are willing to be lead parent or caregiver for part of the career. We are raising our daughters with more choices than our sons. We tell men your value depends on how much money you make or how powerful you are, and not that you can be at home and have an unbelievable relationship with your kids. You can be as masculine if you are the caregiver."
If this sounds like mission impossible and "preposterous", Slaughter says it is no more radical than it was in the 1950s and 1960s to say women were not born to be in the home.
She also points out that cultural mores do change and that while at the time it appeared weird to introduce the woman's prefix of "Ms" in addition to "Miss" and "Mrs", the change had been critical in breaking female stereotypes.
Of course, it's not just up to men to change their behaviour. Slaughter says mother-in-laws also need to change their perceptions of what their daughters' husbands do.
Perhaps even more difficult, although essential, is for women to let go of some of their control in the home if men are to be primary caregivers. As Slaughter says, women must allow "guys to do it their way". Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.
How many times has the women's movement believed it was approaching a tipping point in terms of gender parity in the world of business, only to see its hopes shattered?
Despite decades of campaigning, progress continues to be glacial with conscious and unconscious biases leading to everything from poor female representation on company boards to a failure to achieve equal pay and a lack of work flexibility.
These workplace challenges were highlighted yesterday at the annual meeting of the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEP), which I chaired at the United Nations headquarters in New York. For one thing, less than a tenth of the thousands of corporate members of the United Nations Global Compact, which organised the conference along with UN Women, have actually signed up to the eight voluntary WEP principles.
Joe Keefe, president and CEO of US investment firm Pax World Management, who this week won a WEP leadership award, says the issue of gender inequality is akin to apartheid.
"In different cultures it comes in different guises," he says. "But it is still oppression and inequality and is the great human rights issue and business issue of our time."
Women hold only 14% of US corporate leadership jobs, a percentage that hasn't changed in the last decade, notes Steve Almond, the chairman of global management consultancy Deloitte. In continental Europe, that number is just 10% despite the fact that more women achieve college degrees than men, and the figures are even worse in other developed countries such as Japan.
One action Almond took was to ask male members of his 32-strong board to step aside so that women could take their places. This led to the percentage of women jumping from a paltry 6% to 25%.
"In my experience, most of the male leaders of our big clients and the big companies around the world are not resistant to change," he says. "They are just not recognising their own unconscious perpetuation of the status quo. And until that is recognised, the pace of change will remain glacial."
The change needs to come from the top, Almond says: "Too often, responsibility is delegated to Human Resource departments or another task force. Organisational change happens when the CEO takes personal responsibility for a strategic objective and sets clear targets."
Over her 40 years working for and with corporations, Barbara Krumsiek, CEO of US investment management company Calvert Investments, has had "a front row seat" in observing women's progress through their careers.
"While many companies have stated policies that would seem to support the growth and advancement of women professionally, there is all too often a lack of demonstrable performance against those stated policies," she said. "I would encourage every senior leader to personally seek metrics and data that show policies are actually working – and I'd like to see companies disclose this data."
The slow progress raises the question of whether the movement should carry on chipping away at the mountain of prejudice against women or whether an altogether new approach is necessary.
One reframing that certainly caught the attention of participants is the idea that for the women's movement to succeed, it needs men to rethink their own beliefs about their sense of masculinity and power.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, says that it is essential for men to recognise that being a caregiver can give them the same status in society as succeeding in the workplace.
While many women are expected to juggle both their work and home lives, she points out that no male CEO has made it to leading the boardroom while also being the lead parent.
Slaughter, who stirred up controversy with her article, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All", in The Atlantic, said at the UN event: "We tell girls they can be caregivers, career women or any blend of the two. We tell boys that their value is measured only by their earnings and status.
"Men need to value caregiving as much as bread winning. We will not fully empower women if we have not fully empowered men. This is not a woman's issue or a man's issue, but a human issue."
The conflict many men feel is illustrated by a growing body of research which shows that while American men recognise they would like a better work-life balance, those men who do prioritise family are stigmatised and viewed as weak.
Attitudes are starting to shift – helped by much more visible fathers in the public eye, from Brad Pitt to Barack Obama – Slaughter, who served as director of policy planning for the US Department of State, says we are only at the start of the journey.
She points to the mathematics. If we want half of business leaders to be women, then that means some men will have to stop also competing for those jobs.
"My proposition is that we will not get there by focusing on women but on women and men," she says. "We've had a lopsided revolution. Men held the power and we thought, 'how do we break into a man's world?' But unless an equal number of men move into caregiving, we are never going to get the balance we need.
Even though most couples both have to work, someone has to have the lead career – and right now, that's mostly the men, she added.
"The only way to get to 50% women is if 50% of the men are willing to be lead parent or caregiver for part of the career. We are raising our daughters with more choices than our sons. We tell men your value depends on how much money you make or how powerful you are, and not that you can be at home and have an unbelievable relationship with your kids. You can be as masculine if you are the caregiver."
If this sounds like mission impossible and "preposterous", Slaughter says it is no more radical than it was in the 1950s and 1960s to say women were not born to be in the home.
She also points out that cultural mores do change and that while at the time it appeared weird to introduce the woman's prefix of "Ms" in addition to "Miss" and "Mrs", the change had been critical in breaking female stereotypes.
Of course, it's not just up to men to change their behaviour. Slaughter says mother-in-laws also need to change their perceptions of what their daughters' husbands do.
Perhaps even more difficult, although essential, is for women to let go of some of their control in the home if men are to be primary caregivers. As Slaughter says, women must allow "guys to do it their way". Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.