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I notice Martha Ruiz is being punished for her colleague’s mistake here, and I wonder if there’s a bit of gender bias at play here?
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The Diversity Advantage Review
After reading The Diversity Advantage: Fixing Gender Inequality in the Workplace by Ruchika Tulshyan I can feel myself starting to get a bit frustrated with the book selection I’ve chosen. A lot of this is beginning to feel repetitive, and I somewhat regret opting to read so many books rather than doing research into more interesting and specific topics/aspects of bias. Compared to my previous readings, this one tackles gender equality from a more economic standpoint and rehashes many of the same arguments the others generally made from a more personal standpoint.
This book covered topics such as ensuring equal application pools with respect to gender, combating the pay gap, allowing flexible work schedules, maternity/paternity leave and re-entry into the work force, childcare, unconscious bias, sponsorship vs. mentoring, and getting women into the C-suite. Again, truthfully, now that I’ve read about these a few times, it’s just getting frustrating to continue seeing the same arguments being made. It also makes it difficult for me to write a summary of equal length to the previous books I’ve read, when the material was a bit fresher.
The one thing I really appreciated about this book is that they included a snippet about Kat Cole. I don’t really remember her discussing gender bias in class, since I remember her talking about her background the most and her difficult childhood stuck with me most, but Ruchika interviewed her and her commentary was very insightful. She attributes part of her success to the fact that she was working for companies early on that had strong female leadership in upper-level positions, and to the fact that very early on, she received really critical work (in comparison to many other women who are passed over for these high-impact opportunities in favor of men). Given this environment early on, she was able to thrive and find the courage to take on new opportunities. She also did her part in pulling women up the ranks with her; evidently at one point, her leadership team at Cinnabon consisted of about 80% women, and she needed to start being conscious of hiring more men to attain more balance. All this made me respect her even more.
Overall, I was uninspired by Tulshyan’s book. Yes, the economic perspective is important to think about when it comes to convincing HR managers and companies to create and implement inclusive policies, and in our world. However, it precludes the argument that even were gender equality not economically smart, it would be the right thing to do. It felt very impersonal (perhaps reminiscent of economics’ status as the dismal science), and in general is relatively repetitive. Given the publication date of 2016, it feels like more a summary of the perspectives offered by the likes of Sheryl Sandberg, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Iris Bohnet rather than a novel work.
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Project: Selected Written Communications
In considering what written communications I want to try and identify biases in, it seems most pertinent to first determine some of the biggest challenges that women face in the workplace. Based on several sources including Lean In, What Works: Gender Equality by Design, How Women Decide, Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family, amongst others, the challenges I’ve identified as being critical include
1) Women’s career advancement impeded by managerial bias
2) Companies retaining women (either due to women becoming mothers, or equal advancement, etc.)
3) Companies attracting female applicants to apply and join their organizations
Based on these three challenges, I’ve identified a few areas that I think deserve attention in corporate communications.
In combating impediments to career advancement, one of the areas where managers may have a strong impact on an employee’s upwards trajectory are recommendation letters and formal reviews. Since these are often reviewed during promotion decisions, the written communication is extremely important and it is especially critical to be as unbiased as possible. Unfortunately, several studies examining recommendation letters often support the hypothesis that men and women are portrayed differently in recommendation letters—in academic settings, women’s recommendation letters include more “doubt raisers,” and are portrayed as “teachers and students” versus men, who are portrayed as “researchers and professionals.”[1]
With respect to the ability of companies to retain women, company-wide and public remarks from upper management and C-suite leaders are critical in identifying the company’s views and direction when it comes to diversity. Satya Nadella infamously remarked during a public interview at the Grace Hopper Conference (a conference for advancing women in computer science, no less) that for women who hesitate to negotiate for a raise that “It’s not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along.”[2] His remarks were widely criticized, and reminiscent of tech’s larger problem when it comes to the gender pay gap and misunderstanding by upper-level management of the challenges women encounter in the workplace. He then backtracked, and sent a company-wide email saying that if women felt they deserved a raise, “you should just ask.”[3] Clearly these types of communications matter.
On the topic of attracting female applicants, companies have public personas and make active decisions about how to communicate important decisions to the public (such as new initiatives, C-suite promotion decisions, etc.). It is critical then, that especially in announcements of women promoted to leadership positions and press releases about the company, the language released to the press is as unbiased as possible.
I also think it’s worthwhile to address why I opted not to select job postings/descriptions. It’s one area of written corporate communications that many of the books I read consistently listed as having biased language with detrimental self-selection effects on gender balance in the applicant pool, and the one area that could be easily changed with just careful attention to word choice. I think that the goal of de-biasing job postings is entirely respectable and serves a critical function in the gender bias fight, but it seems that there are already several resources out there that facilitate better language in job postings such as Textio[4], which highlights words in job listings that have a gendered bent to them. I think that Textio has built a product that is more reliable than a product that I could build within a month, so I think my efforts are better directed elsewhere.
[1] Trix, F., & Psenka, C. (2003). Exploring the Color of Glass: Letters of Recommendation for Female and Male Medical Faculty. Discourse & Society,14(2), 191-220. doi:10.1177/0957926503014002277
[2] http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/10/10/355100973/microsoft-ceo-nadellas-remarks-add-to-techs-sexism-problem
[3] https://news.microsoft.com/2014/10/09/satya-nadella-email-to-employees-re-grace-hopper-conference/
[4] https://textio.com/
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New Investment Strategy?
This is not directly related to my Independent Study project, but in the process of my research, I found two interesting articles:
http://fortune.com/2015/03/03/women-led-companies-perform-three-times-better-than-the-sp-500/
http://fortune.com/2016/09/28/gsk-emma-walmsley-ceo-2/
The first cites that companies led by women tend to yield higher returns on the company stock.
The second cites that in highly publicized announcements of new female CEO’s, the company’s stock tends to fall a few percentage points.
I am so so curious as to whether anyone has actually tested what would happen if you were to invest solely in a companies taken over by a female CEO with a stock value drop the same day.
I wonder if anyone has tested this? Maybe this is an additional aspect that I could research just for my own curiosity.
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Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World Review
Joann Lublin’s Earning It: Hard-Won Lessons from Trailblazing Women at the Top of the Business World provided a different perspective than the books I’ve read thus far. This one felt much more personal, since Lublin solicited stories from successful women in leadership positions about their experiences with gender bias and discrimination (and sadly, in some cases, overt sexual harassment). This book along with the recent blog post by Susan Fowler regarding her time at Uber as a software development engineer are rather sad reminders that we as a society still have quite a fight ahead for true gender equality in the workplace.
This book takes a lot of the issues cited by the other books I’ve read and recounts personal anecdotes from women in leadership positions in business. Topics covered include getting an initial job, sexual harassment (this was an especially difficult topic to read about), career advancement, motherhood, finding mentors (both male and female), managing difficult men, executive presence, among others. Some of the stories were hard to read without getting angry, since they involved unfair judgment of these women simply due to their gender. One narrative that stuck with me involved a woman whose colleagues felt she was carrying on an illicit affair with her subordinates just because they would share rides to the airport, share elevator rides, and dine together during business trips. This is unfair to both parties involved and leaves me with the question—how can men and women be expected to work together if simply being in each others’ presence raises questions about conduct?
In terms of criticism, the biggest frustration I’ve had with regard to a lot of the books that have been published about gender bias in the workplace is that they fail to address many of the challenges of single women. I understand that many people do not choose to be single for their entire lives, so we may be a small population. However, many women starting their careers are single, and it seems especially relevant to discuss the implications of being older and single given that women are often questioned and even criticized for their decisions to remain unmarried or to not have children. Based on the counts of sexual harassment that women have faced in their respective companies, it seems that single women may be even at more risk for this. Given the comments by Susan Fowler on Uber recently, it seems like a discourse that needs to happen.
Overall, this book was a good read for my future, but perhaps not the best one in terms of doing research for detecting bias in language. It did a good job of offering a multitude of perspectives from different women, whereas the previous books I’ve read solicited some opinions from women aside from the authors, but was primarily written from the author’s perspective. It’s helped me identify the biggest day-to-day challenges that women face in the workplace, and made me somewhat hesitant about my own entry into the workforce post-graduation. The women who were interviewed are all clearly very successful in their fields, and handled gender-related setbacks with a combination of humor, grace, and defiance that seems difficult for any person to achieve.
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How Women Decide Review
I admit I was somewhat skeptical about reading How Women Decide: What’s True, What’s Not, and What Strategies Spark The Best Choices by Therese Huston. It seems incredible to me (and not in a good way) that there would be such a big gap in decision-making processes based on gender as the sole factor. Even after reading the book, I have a level of skepticism towards the arguments presented by Huston; some of the evidence she presents seem to be in favor of women being better decision-makers than men, but I disagree. I don’t think either gender necessarily makes objectively better decisions due to behavioral differences—I’m more inclined to believe that there are situations that favor overconfidence and situations that favor under-confidence, and other decisions favor risk-seeking behavior, and others favor risk-averse behavior. In making a determination about what constitutes the better default like Huston does (and it’s relatively in favor of women’s decision-making processes), I think it would’ve been a better approach to lay out the ways in which society encourages both men and women to behave, and the resulting impact on decision-making. Aside from that, this book made some interesting points about the differences in thought process that women and men experience based on how they’re primed to behave.
One of the various topics Huston covers is the idea of women’s “intuition.” This term seems to encompass the notion that women make decisions more based on their gut feelings rather than analytically. While it might appear complimentary to possess this so-called “intuition,” it actually serves to further biases in how we view women and men’s decision-making processes. Interestingly, women actually are better at reading others’ emotions based on their facial expressions than their male peers, and arguably this could be seen as some level of emotional intuition. However, there is some self-fulfilling prophecy here, given the high expectations on women to be able to read emotions and the correspondingly low expectations on men to be able to read emotions. Evidently, subordinates tend to be equally good at reading their superiors’ emotions regardless of their gender.
On the topic of risk taking, one of the interesting takeaways from this book is that whenever men feel that their masculinity is threatened, they tend to take more risks than they would normally. Just holding a heavy power drill versus putting on “fruity-scented” lotion encouraged men to bet 30% more on a gambling game afterwards. This was surprising to read initially, but upon further reflection makes sense. Gender bias places unfair expectations on men as well and a decision-making environment when someone feels compelled to meet a certain standard or potentially feel the need to compensate for something is bound to be problematic. Perhaps this is why Las Vegas is designed the way it is for maximum profitability...
In the context of language bias in recruiting materials, it is relevant to know from this book that women tend to underestimate their capabilities on skills traditionally seen as “masculine,” while men don’t tend to do so on skills seen as “feminine.” Thus, given the knowledge that women are less likely than to apply for jobs if they fulfill less than 100% of the requirements listed, recruiters should take extra care to ensure that job descriptions and skills needed for a job are gender-neutral. It is perhaps even advisable to err on the more “feminine” side of language in job descriptions to be more inviting to women applying.
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Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family Review
In comparison to Lean In and What Works, Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family reads less like an individual “how-to” manual of navigating gender inequality at work, and more like an analysis of the history of and the lead up to the current state of gender equality. While it also offers some suggestions on how to alter behavior to promote higher levels of equality at work, the suggestions (and actually, the whole book) were more focused on individual actions starting in the home.
I was most surprised by the way that Slaughter framed the cause of inequality currently—that is, that there are two primary functions in families—care and competition. Care refers to caretaking of the children and the household. Competition refers to earning money by working to support the family. Slaughter argues that before the first wave of feminism, women tended to manage caregiving, and men tended to manage competition. After early feminists fought for women to have the right to compete and provide for their families, women were then able to do both (though on the competition side, on a less equal scale compared to men). However, it wasn’t acceptable socially for men to do the caregiving after the first wave of feminism, and because of this, it’s been difficult to achieve true equality, even today. This intuitively makes sense; when there’s pressure on men to continue to be breadwinners and there’s a stigma against being a stay-at-home father, it makes it quite difficult for them to potentially shift focus to childcare while their wives pursue their professional goals. However, (and this might be naïve of me) I disagree with her theory that in a family, both parents cannot have balance. I don’t think that one needs to step back in order for the other to climb to and thrive in a high level position. That might be true of certain careers, and I don’t think balance is achievable at all times, but I think partners can take turns leaning in and scaling back, thus letting the balance of childcare and work shift back and forth. I think each person having more of a balance of the two as opposed to a focus on one or the other can allow them to be better in both roles; for instance, the emotional intelligence and patience developed from childcare can help inform decision-making in the workplace.
Beyond this, I was also struck by how balanced Slaughter’s book was in considering the many different perspectives of people who might be reading it; to be fair, she had the benefit of having written an article on the topic of women “having it all” in The Atlantic and receiving feedback (both negative and positive) on it. She suggests that gay couples actually are able to start from a more equal place when they discuss the issue of which person will take on more of what role, since gender biases don’t really apply. Additionally, even though Slaughter is a Democrat, and worked for Hillary Clinton, her commentary is rather non-partisan, and she includes a brief discussion of the care/competition dynamic from both a conservative and a liberal standpoint.
With respect to biased language, Slaughter discusses the danger of using euphemisms such as “leaving to spend time with family” in the context of being fired or asked to leave from a job. Additionally, women are more often asked how they balance both work and family than men; I imagine this is a topic that could be broached in written communications such as job descriptions, interview procedures/questions, etc.
Unfinished Business was an enlightening read. Though not heavy in practical actions to counteract bias, it gives a novel and (at least for me) unexpected explanation for its existence.
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What Works: Gender Equality By Design Review
Iris Bohnet’s What Works: Gender Equality by Design was a surprisingly refreshing read—it was highly data-driven and focused on actual courses of action that can be taken in a variety of different areas (education, recruiting/hiring, promoting, etc.) to promote better and unbiased decision making.
First, I think it’s just personally relevant to include a quick discussion of politics. Generally, I think any discussion of women’s rights tends to end up with a liberal bent, and reading this book was not really different in that regard. However, a lot of the concepts discussed here and in Lean In are actions that liberal voters and politicians tend to advocate for. It’s somewhat difficult for me to tell whether I’m just reading a certain set of facts in Bohnet’s book and I haven’t gotten to properly consider an alternate viewpoint (particularly for ambiguous and difficult tasks such as reducing inequalities in our education system), or if politics is just becoming less gray for me and more black and white in terms of the morality of certain stances. I’ve always considered myself to be a political moderate (perhaps slightly libertarian), so I can’t tell whether my political stances are evolving, or if I’m just reading a politically selective series of books.
Content-wise, I think Bohnet’s book focuses on a very practical organizational view of gender bias. She suggests clear courses of action to take in areas like hiring, testing, etc. Perhaps one of the more interesting takeaways for me was the idea there are clear implications of gender from a biological standpoint in the workplace. Men tend to produce more testosterone, and testosterone is correlated with riskier behavior. Evidently, in one trading simulation cited by Bohnet, male-only groups drove up prices so much that bubbles would form. Though I’ve known about these pieces of information individually, putting it all together was new; it’s possible that I’ve spent too long reading about and mentally denying that behavior is driven by biological differences between the sexes that reading about this surprised me. One of the design examples Bohnet cites in correcting for this particular gender difference was that the CollegeBoard noticed that males tended to guess more often than females, even when it was mathematically strategic to guess. As a result, CollegeBoard removed the penalty for guessing altogether, so that both genders would pursue a dominant strategy of guessing. Perhaps sadly, when I was practicing for the SAT, if I were not explicitly told at some point about the strategy of guessing when I could eliminate one solution, I don’t think I would’ve opted to guess for any problem, even if I had eliminated two solutions.
In written language, Bohnet argues that people of different genders self-select into applying for certain jobs based on the job description. This isn’t so much a statement of whether or not a certain person was qualified for a job, but rather a statement about whether a person felt like they would fit in the organization. For instance, including more “communal” words such as “committed, supportive, compassionate, interpersonal, and understanding” would encourage more women to apply, whereas including words such as “individualistic, competitive, ambitious, assertive, and leader” would result in more male applicants.
Overall, Bohnet’s book is quite practical. It covers a breadth of different situations and types of organizations, though I do think that many of actual design suggestions are perhaps a bit industry-specific to be widely practical.
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Lean In Review
As a book, I think it’s best to read Lean In after a few years in the work force (at least for me, settling down with a family is not something I have in mind for the near future). For the most part, I think I’ve had a decent amount of exposure just from talking to several MBA women about their experiences in the work place to many of the concepts introduced in the earlier parts of Lean In, so much of the novelty came from the section of the book regarding family considerations and workplace ambition.
Regarding family commitments and work, I can’t say I’ve yet had too much experience with this, aside from the child’s perspective. My parents sent me to China for a year or so when I was maybe a year old (not entirely sure) to live with my grandparents since they had just gotten out of graduate school and needed to continue working, so I imagine logistically (and only logistically) that made things a bit easier. I don’t remember any of this, but my mom says it was very difficult for her to be away from me that long, but at the time, their circumstances necessitated it. When I was a bit older, I went to daycare, followed by school. After school, some of my fondest memories were spending my afternoons with some of my neighborhood friends after school, when their grandparents babysat for my parents. From my point of view, there were definitely mothers and fathers that spent more time with their children, were involved with the PTA, etc. I think I just became more self-reliant and independent due to my parents’ work schedules. That said, to Sheryl’s point in the book about the gender imbalance (mothers feeling guilty for not spending even more time with their children, fathers not being able to because of structural frictions), I agree with her in the sense that there’s no such thing as work-life balance. In my limited experience, the best you can do is to take advantage of the time you have in both parts of life and to be efficient about the time you spend in both. I don’t fault my parents for being less present in my life—I appreciate what they did in the time they did spend with me.
Interestingly enough, I found the section about making your partner an equal partner was perhaps most relevant to my future. I’ve found that with people that I care about, I have a tendency to fuss more to make sure they’re comfortable than in school or work situations, where I’m hyperaware of gender inequality. I think that if I had read this book later, I would have allowed this tendency to manifest in my future relationships, but having been made aware of my tendency to try to do all the housework (if I have people over for dinner, all the preparation & cooking, and the subsequent cleaning), I will try to change this behavior.
My bigger concern is how to share the teachings of Sheryl’s book with other women. I read part of it on a flight to Seattle en route to visit Amazon’s campus for a post-offer fly-back event. When I arrived, I was especially attuned to my gender, both knowing the general imbalance in tech and having spent the larger part of the flight engaged in a book about gender bias. The day of the event, I noticed immediately that I was the only female in a group of twenty walking from the hotel. In the presentation room, having recently read the chapter about “sitting at the table,” I purposefully plopped myself down at the center table. Meanwhile, I noticed that many of the other girls who were there (luckily the ratio of the larger group was better than the ratio of my smaller group earlier) tended to sit at the edges of the room and in groups with other girls. I’m not certain how best to address this with strangers, and I imagine it’s something that I and other women would feel more comfortable discussing in a more familiar group, so for now, I think I’ll continue to heed Sheryl’s advice when it comes to myself, and share it if needed once I encounter female colleagues in the work place.
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