I was talking to the young daughter of a friend. She had just earned her MBA from a top school and was about to take a job with a big-name technology company.
I told her: "I have a good friend there. It's great place for women. She's president of the Women's Leadership group." Whereupon I offered an introduction.
After an uncomfortable pause, she said: "I'm going to sound arrogant. I just got top marks at a school that most people can't even get in. I was picked over something like 300 candidates for this job. I beat out a lot of men to get it. I don't think I need extra help. In fact, a lot of women I know see those groups as a distraction -- just a place to go to complain. I've even heard that being too active in them hurts your relationship with male co-workers."
When you add up all the recent gender scorecards, she has a point. Given world-shaking female progress, why women and not a club for left-handers?
Numbers of women equal or are surpassing men in virtually all the professional schools. New Census figures show that working women are, on the whole, better educated than men. Female managers at the entry and mid level are roughly 50-50 with men.
Men were disproportionately hammered by the recession -- some call it the "mancession" -- because they were concentrated in hard-hit industries and their higher-salaries made them a target of opportunity for the cost-cutters.
We're starting to see the term "gender fatigue." We've been talking so long about female equality in the workplace that it feels like arguing that women should have the right to vote.
No doubt, we've traveled some distance from the days when women who joined corporations were simply tossed into the steno pool to tread water -- until they married, left, and never returned.
But why, despite the progress, are companies still losing talented women at a rate that has caused the thought-leaders to invest in ambitious efforts to retain them. The ultra-cynical might say it's an investment that is nice to trot out for class-action suits. More realistically, companies see a talent drain in an era of globalization. Some ten years ago, McKenzie & Company labeled the competition for the best talent a "war."
Like most ideas that quickly acquire their own buzz words, the "opt out revolution" that hit the headlines several years ago, and had women fleeing corporations in droves, has been overstated. Women leave for many reasons -- family being the main one.
Still, says one Catalyst study, a third of women who left corporations departed because they didn't feel they were taken seriously. Many are quitting to start their own businesses. The entrepreneurial urge can strike anyone. But according to California's Cheskin Research, women are striking out on their own at twice the rate of men.
Blatant discrimination has legal recourse, and most companies have evolved to a state of gender-blindness in policy and practice. But large organizations have been devising exclusions for those who don't fit the mold a lot longer than we've been trying to defeat them. Culture is subtle.
Writing in Salon, Caryl Rivers says that the much-heralded moves of women into top spots isn't always what it appears. "Women's gains," she argues," are hard-won and easily lost." She points to a Yale study that found that small mistakes were more likely to knock a woman out of a senior position than they would a man -- a phenomenon known as "the glass cliff." Carly Fiorina may have tumbled off one at HP. A team of British researchers also found that women tend to be appointed over qualified men to positions at the top when there was a high risk of failure.
As in physics, for every expert opinion there is an equal and opposite expert opinion. But, still, there are indications that, differences company to company duly noted, the reality of gender equality in American corporations falls short of the sunny pronouncements.
Or as I told my friend's newly "MBA'ed" daughter: "Before you write off a women's leadership group, ask a few of the members: "Why do you need it?"
A decade or so from now -- with fairer representation of women in top leadership positions -- that question may finally be irrelevant. Until then, it can't hurt to ask.
Follow Dr. Peggy Drexler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpeggydrexler
One of the reasons so many women get burnt out in corporate America is because they are trying to forge forward the masculine way. This is exhausting in any profession. We have so much more energy and power when we tap into the energy which naturally resonates with the feminine. There is an exercise I teach women, which takes 5 minutes. When they do this before entering the board room, they will command attention just from their presence alone, before uttering a word.
Once we understand the qualities of the masculine and feminine energy, and how to access them in an enlightened manner, greater harmony and abundance is created in relationships in both business and love.
Thank you Peggy for drawing attention to this subject.
love and blessings
Taylore
http://www.SensualSage.com
We should all be honest with ourselves, the "workplace" is a zero sum game. There are only so many jobs and so many high paying salaries to go around. Why would men want to "give up" some of what they have, just in the name of equality? It isn't in their collective best interest. Likewise, why would women "stop" at 50/50, rather than continue to project an image of inequality in an effort to obtain a larger slice of the pie?
The bottom line is that "women's groups" like the ones discussed in this article should be viewed in a similarly negative light as would "men's groups" if such a thing indeed existed. Women that feel unequal (not harassed, threaded, etc.) should work harder, just like their female counterparts that have achieved so much in this country, and world. This is the true reason the young woman in this article did not want to be associated with such a group. She is a winner, and doesn't want to be associated with people that whine about something they should just work harder to fix.
I say, good for her.
As for referencing a "strip club" you should be ashamed of yourself. In fact, such reference, and not your gender, is why no one thinks you have anything important to say.
And where in the world did you get the idea that women are "not truly interested in equality, but rather getting MORE than men"? That is a ridiculous assumption on your part.
I don't think the assumption that a group will continue to advance its interests in a zero sum game as far as possible is "ridiculous" at all. I think the opposite assumption is the "ridiculous" one.
This is not to say that the women's groups are as effective as they could be. The world does move on, the culture does change (though slowly as you have pointed out) and the teaching and networking processes we use have to change accordingly. It's an exciting and transformational time for women--but only if we make it so.
I'm not so sure "small mistakes" were Carly Fiorina's problem. Given the abundance of info on her situation, evidence is on the side of much larger errors in judgment and a complete deficit in character. The only "glass cliff" aspect of her total fail is more a matter of Fiorina's lack of the kind of political connections that provide cover for comparable males at Wall St. firms.
After 23 years, I have opted out (much to my financial disadvantage) because the the long term psychological toll that ultimately resulted in a sense of chronic alienation wherein I simply could not be in that environment anymore.
Young women be warned. A lot of what you expience will be so nuanced that it might take a couple of years to even identify it. Also, sadly, almost every female engineer I know eventually opted out.
Because you may be "a good friend" but the executive isn't going to care about that, he's going to care about your accuracy in performance observation and your dispassionate business contribution. Remember it's "Enterprise First", you second. A distant second.
Can you make that distinction and keep your friend ? Will you lie ? To who ? Youself ? Your employer, you know Sally gets in late and is terrible at business grammar but you don't say anything. She's up for a promotion or job opportunity within the company, she wants YOUR name on her reference to share with the hiring Manager. Do you give it ?
That's just one example of how tough it is to keep friends at work in a volatile competitive environment. Your social skills have to be wise and enduring and successful. You'll work for people not academic test graders. People. Wise people who have been there a long time.
Arrogance is not a virtue of a college graduate entering the work force. That you have to earn over
It seems unlikely to me that women will get equal pay for equal work very soon in the USA. Under the present political circumstances males are lucky to get a job. Personally I employ more women than men and pay them equally. They are all graduates and all mathematicians.
This just goes to show the absolute necessity of women's professional groups. When has a male professional ever worried that golfing or drinking in exclusively male groups is going to "hurt his relationship with female co-workers"?
And it's not as though there are only exclusive women's clubs. Many large cities have all-male private clubs; at some of them, women are not even allowed through the door. Harvard has eight all-male clubs. And if you've never heard of the Bohemian Club, google it. Word has it that some very high-level decisions get made there - and of course, girls aren't allowed.
Or maybe not...
I used to work with a woman who used to post centerfolds from gay porn magazines on the walls of her office - and boy oh boy, did most of the men in the office ever avoid HER. Perhaps those men should've been a little less sensitive, eh?
Their degrees mean nothing when it comes to slicing meat or running a cash register.
Life is all about building relationships. You don't win when you dismiss opportunities.
If they talk BEYOND that, then they do matter.
Men let themselves be exploited too, it is called attention seeking.