Women Make Conversations Real; Real Conversations Drive Real Change
Melinda Gates was recently interviewed on Brene Brown’s podcast about her book, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World. It was clear that Gates has learned through her travels that when women are empowered as leaders — societies, cultures, and countries do better.
In fact, there is significant data that supports why it is crucial to bring women into leadership in politics, in companies, and on Boards.
While the conversation was inspiring, it was the end of the conversation that stuck with me most — for very different reasons. Towards the end of their chat, the two discussed a very sobering statistic:
The U.S. economy lost 140,000 jobs in December 2020 — and all of them were held by women.
Add to that a McKinsey report which showed that women — especially women of color — are more likely to have been laid off or furloughed since March. Another study cited one in four women have considered scaling back from work, or leaving the workforce entirely, due to demands for caregiving at home and added pressure.
This is a problem. For EVERYONE, not just women.
And this problem also isn’t because of COVID, COVID just intensified it.
Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, and even one of our own clients — Gavriella Schuster have spoken about these issues long before COVID. Schuster, a 25-year Microsoft vet and Corporate Vice President of the global Microsoft One Commercial Partner Team, has made it her mission to increase women’s presence in the field, calling the challenges for women in technology a ‘recipe for disaster.’
“By percentage, there are fewer women entering technology; there are more jobs in technology, and more women are being displaced by the technology.”
So WHY, in the 21st century where a female holds the office of Vice President of the United States, is this still an issue?
Consider these Key Drivers:
Unpaid Work. UN Women, the United Nations’ entity dedicated to gender equality and women’s empowerment, suggests unpaid work — from cooking to cleaning and childcare–is essential for households and economies to run yet it is not being valued. This has become even more clear during Covid where women feeling the burden of childcare more so than men.
Here in the United States, we haven’t had a Medical and Family Leave Act until 2020. This says a lot about how childcare and eldercare are valued.
Gates noted that in the U.K., women work 100 minutes of unpaid labor more than men, and in the U.S. it’s 90 minutes. On average, over a lifetime, that’s about seven years more unpaid work than men.
The Office for National Statistics in the U.K. estimated the value of this unpaid work to be close to £19,000 per person in 2016 (approximately $23,500).
So women are not being ‘compensated’ for their contributions in the same way.
Less Investing In Women Founded Companies. Research shows that even though women-founded companies generally produce a stronger ROI — Venture Capital and source funding is significantly less for women-founded companies.
According to research by All Raise, only 15% of venture capital funding is allocated to female founders. And in fact, the growth rate of funding injected into female-founded companies has plateaued over the last few years.
Yet, data collected by First Round Capital, for example, found that the female-founder companies it invested in performed 63% better than the all-male founding teams it had funded. And research from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation found that women-led teams generate a 35% higher return on investment than all-male teams.
Despite increasing concern and advocacy, we really haven’t done much to address the discrepancy.
Women Leaders As Onlys. Another critical piece to this puzzle relates to the challenges women have moving into leadership roles where there are not many other women. A McKinsey & Company report shared this:
“Senior-level women are nearly twice as likely as women overall to be “Onlys” — the only or one of the only women in the room at work. That comes with its own challenges: women who are Onlys are more likely than women who work with other women to feel pressure to work more and to experience microaggressions, including needing to provide additional evidence of their competence.”
We know women are more likely to experience discrimination in the workplace than men. But the study shows the odds are even higher when women find themselves alone in a group of men.
They are far more likely than others to have their judgment questioned than women working in a more balanced environment (49 percent versus 32 percent), to be mistaken for someone more junior (35 percent versus 15 percent), and to be subjected to unprofessional and demeaning remarks (24 percent versus 14 percent). If they are treated like this, no wonder they get overlooked for promotion.”
In general, there is still a great deal of female discrimination and sexism that goes unaddressed in the workplace. And it’s significantly worse for women of color.
So How Do We Drive Real Change:
The answer isn’t just new policies or more training.
It starts with having REAL conversations. One of the biggest issues is finding ways to have open, real conversations about what is really happening within your organization or team. Too often things get handed over to HR for training, legal, or policy changes, and the real conversations aren’t had. The sources of tension aren’t fully realized and dealt with. So real transformation doesn’t happen.
This isn’t just an HR problem. Leadership needs to have real and candid conversations about their own behavior and bias. That isn’t going to be easy.
There needs to be ways for feedback to make its way back to the top. Too often feedback or agreements are put into legal arrangements which shut down real change. These agreements protect the company from having to talk and deal with the impact of longstanding complicit acceptance of sexism in the workplace.
Until we can have real conversations, real change will continue to be difficult.
Blameless Accountability. Many years ago, there was a shift in manufacturing environments that allowed anyone to speak up about a safety issue and be heard — not punished. I know that is still a struggle in some environments, but it’s the direction we need to head to really achieve gender equity as well.
This is not about making men in the workplace wrong.
All of the behavior listed above has long been in place and been accepted. And while we are beginning to challenge them more, some of these unconscious behaviors and beliefs are not malicious as much as totally unconscious.
Bringing awareness, not just through punishment and policy — but by speaking up and addressing situations when something is said or done that seems inappropriate.
This is a behavior both men and women can more readily adopt.
March is Women’s Empowerment Month.
We are committing to help more women in leadership positions — and who want to be in more leadership positions. We want more women in leadership — in organizations, in government, on boards, and in homes. Not because women are better, but because diversity and inclusion are our economies and our culture’s best resource.
Equality and equity for both men and women are what will bring out the best for all.
