The Gender Agenda

Survival in uncertain times

Hello again. As mentioned last week, here is a guest entry from Pauline Crawford of Gender Dynamics, in which she asks us to consider that men and women bring different qualities to provide the answer - but do we know the question?  Do we need to re-shape the playing field?

“In today’s economic crisis, is it possible that the answer can be right in front of our eyes? While we are now faced with a serious financial situation, political misdemeanors and banking chaos, there is much talk about ensuring that we engage the ‘right’ people at the top to sort out a different future scenario.  Women can bring the change to the boardroom that is needed - but are both sides ready and willing to change together?

If we are to co-create the future together, men and women have an opportunity now to start the conversation about business again, rather than keep trying to fit people into the old playing field and try making it level.  It’s time to actually dig it up and design a new one.  This blueprint needs to acknowledge the life factors that affect both genders in business, and to not throw out all the old elements.  However, it must take a serious look at the player’s natural abilities, acquired technical skills, professional contributions and life requirements.  Men and women bring different perspectives in terms of personal and professional contributions to the business mix; they also require different things naturally.  Half of the workforce is female and yet the business blueprint and the majority of rules and regulations are still decided by ‘male’ influence. There is still inequality in pay, a gender gap and limited opportunities within the corporate world for women to rise to the top.  There are still too few women in the boardroom even though there is a renewed desire for more women to move into the top positions and the evidence is growing that a mixed top team creates the most innovative and sustainable output. Women opt out, get blocked, or go off to run their own business.

For many years I have seriously wondered why there are so many barriers to women at the top - and have concluded from my study, life observations and gathering of evidence, that the mystery lies not in the attributes of women but in the ‘playing field’ of business being unchanged for over two centuries.  If we lay out a new business blueprint that encompasses economic, societal and life requirements, and the natural differentials that we observe in men and women, we might embrace more accurately the lifestyle necessities as well as the business imperatives that men and women have.  

For women this would take account of their career as well as regarding their family desires and possible dependant relatives in a new way. For men, a new view might release them from their conditioned position as the breadwinner and enable them to co-parent where desired.

If we take away the problems that have besieged women on the way to the top and allowed a playing field that draws on natural strengths of the ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, I believe we can grow ‘green shoots’ for new business fast.  The new blueprint includes masculine and feminine characteristics to be fulfilled in appropriate balance, and all roles and functions aligned efficiently.

We need to qualify gender differentials at a deeper level.  This is not just about men and women; it’s about masculine and feminine elements in us all, it’s about our biology, neurology, emotional patterns, experiences, stereotypes and perceptions; it’s about our sexuality, our culture and our personalities. 

It has long been known that men, biologically, have a laterally organised brain, more focused on task, logic and thinking processes as natural business strengths; but some men do bring their intuitive ‘emotional feminine’ energy to work as their best natural strength. It is commonly understood that women are more relationship-focused, and with their bilateral, more networked brain bring a natural multi-tasking ability to the boardroom. Women tend to be nurturing, emotional and intuitive at heart, yet many women have a natural robust ‘masculine’ sense of business and bring that to the table. The confusion has occurred where women have changed their whole behaviour to match their ‘masculine’ brain and gone into business as a ‘man’, or when a man feels he cannot utilise his intuitive nature in conflict with an expectation of male business behaviour.

Creating the new blueprint ‘together’ means bringing both parties into one conversation - not one into the other. Like two computers, a PC and a MAC®, men and women speak the same language from a different hard drive, and are built differently.   As we work and study the joys of masculine (M) and feminine (F) traits in business and in human nature - in both men and in women – we discover that the overall picture of gender dynamics is a more complex matrix than the usual male -female view.  We can indeed observe and define six 'dynamics' in physicality (mapping body-types) and mind functions (profiling natural mind set and motivations). Exploring gender dynamics, at this deeper level within each gender, can both explain and open up communications and relationships in mixed teams that leverages more than the sum of the parts. Once understood, a wise leader can know what each man and woman brings to their ‘playing field’ and hone the best team to win.

If business potential comes from honing new resources aligned to market needs, we have all we need – it’s the configuration that needs attention.  With a return to our natural strengths, and by taking a willing step forward together, men and women can bring an inspired scenario of the future into view. 

Creating the future together needs to start with a new blueprint and a new inspiration.

President Obama is a fine example of a balanced masculine man who has a truly inspiring ‘feminine’ sense of emotion and who values relationships and mutuality in all he does. When he calls for mutual trust, people of all gender types listen.  We too can combine these masculine and feminine attributes in business by valuing our gender dynamics as a fundamental principle of survival and eventual new growth.  We have all we need born within us, let’s take a good look!”

Pauline’s personal story: I am a masculine-minded woman and I have mis-understood my gender dynamic myself over the years.  I enjoy having a logical mathematical mind set, use rational thinking more than emotional response; however I also have the multi-tasking and natural relationship skills that many women have innately, and I now have a growing sense of intuition. The latter has been something I have developed over the last five years as I recognised I was not being true to my 'female' core nature. In the past I would have easily played the ‘male’ part in business and ignored my feminine emotional strengths. Now I can fulfill the balance required.

The power of connections

Hello again.  Following on from my recent thoughts on networking, I’ve also been thinking about how powerful it can be to keep an open mind and have an inquisitive spirit when you’re out and about and meet new people.  In the last few weeks and months, the following chain of events has happened to me.

In March, I spoke at the PwCWomen event for International Women’s Day, as described here.  After the event, I got chatting with Christine, who is the chair of Women in Banking and Finance.  A few days later, she emailed me and asked if we could catch up over coffee sometime, as she wanted to bounce around a few ideas with me. I’m always happy to meet for coffee, so we did, got along very well and exchanged some interesting thoughts and suggestions.

Fast forward to the end of May and Christine invited me to attend the Women in Banking and Finance annual lunch at the Dorchester in central London (for non-UK readers: lovely hotel. Lovely.  Stay there when or if you win the lottery. Say no more.) So along I went, wondering who, if anyone, I would know – to which the answer was, aside from Christine, not a soul!  But that was OK – because sometimes, when at these events, it can be all too easy to stick chatting to the people who you do know and not emerge from your comfort zone in order to meet new acquaintances. 

But I was forced out of my fur lined rut, and so I chatted and mingled and went through to the lunch – where I had the huge good fortune to be seated adjacent to two absorbing women. They both run their own very different gender diversity consulting firms, and are so well connected that I have Address Book Envy.

As if a wonderful venue, delightful lunch companions, and a spirited speech (in which she called for quotas for women in leadership roles) from keynote speaker Baroness Denise Kingsmill (reported here in the Guardian) wasn’t enough, I also won a prize in the raffle, thus continuing the recent winning streak with which I’ve been blessed.  But the luck didn’t end there, as Pauline, my neighbour at the table, also won a prize, as did one of the other guests at table 16.  I won a designer silk dress, Pauline won dinner for 6 at a top London restaurant and the other lady (another Pauline, #2) won a huge bouquet of flowers.

Then Pauline #1,  who runs a fascinating company called Gender Dynamics, and I discovered that we are actually neighbours in the same suburb of London, so we agreed to meet for, yes, coffee and learn more about each other’s roles and interests.  And when we did so, Pauline mentioned that, in her experience, women tend to be very open to the idea of just getting together to bounce ideas around without there being a clear agenda or a defined objective or gain, whereas some men would only go ahead with a similar meeting if there was a very clear idea of what was in it for them at the outset.

Over skinny lattes, Pauline and I discussed our ideas and interests, and I asked her to write me a guest piece for the Gender Agenda, which she has now done – so watch this space, as that will be our next article.  She also asked me if I would like to learn more about the Downing Street Project (DSP); to which my response was: “Is that similar to the White House Project? I blogged about that last year …”

And yes, it is indeed a UK version of the successful and high profile White House Project – check out the website link on the right for more details but, in a nutshell, it’s a UK based, cross party political supported initiative aimed at promoting and enabling “balanced leadership between men and women at every level of society, up to and including 10 Downing Street.”

Pauline then threw open her famed address book even more widely and introduced me to Lee Chalmers,  the director and founder of the DSP, and I am now scheduled to attend the DSP’s launch event at the House of Commons next week.

And all of this has come from chatting to Christine back in March…

Finally, here’s a brief update from my colleague Lynn, who wrote a piece for us in January, prior to starting her new role running PwC South Africa’s programmes to support women and the corporate and social responsibility agenda.  I hadn’t heard from her for a while, so I gave her a nudge and back came this reply, in response to me saying – “So, what are you up to, these days?”:

“All is well this side, just incredibly busy. Over the last five Saturdays we have been building a house in Orange Farm (which used to be an informal settlement/squatter camp). The PwC volunteers do so much – mixing concrete, laying bricks, painting, etc. I have attached a photo from last week - the house is in the background. I'm not in the photo as I am taking it.

I also have an orphanage with which I'm working closely. I was there yesterday. They had sent in an urgent appeal for some money, as their car had broken down, and out of the 40 orphans (all AIDS orphans), five of them have special needs and have to go to a special school - so without the car, they were unable to go to school. So to cut a long story short, we had a golf day and raised funds for the charity. I went around to go and do a site visit to see the extent of their problems, and I saw that their boiler had burst, which meant they had no hot water and the ceilings had come down from the damage it caused. They had only onions, carrots and one cabbage for dinner that night. Yet all the kids were happy. They were all playing outside and just looked loved. So yesterday we went back with two car loads full of food and the cheque. They were over the moon.

I'm also working on a number of projects on the gender front - first up is piloting 'My Mentor' - which we’ll be starting in July. I'm also working on a local version of a booklet to help and support our working parents, organising a networking event called 'Hot Tables' - similar to speed dating, except one PwC Partner stays on a table, 8 people join it and then you start a business discussion for 8 minutes before you move tables onto the next Partner.

And I have also become an assistant assessor on our Khula Nathi programme (which is a course aimed at our high fliers, trying to help them to partner level) – in order to start monitoring our female intake on the programme.”

Did anyone else feel exhausted just reading that? I certainly did.  Way to go, Lynn!

Until next time –
Cleo

When will this segment of the glass ceiling ride off into the sunset?

Hello again. 

For our first article in June, here is a wonderfully thought provoking piece from my colleague, published author and virtual friend Beverly Barna, based in Tampa, Florida. In her article, Bev jumps into a time machine and goes back to 1998 to remember a time when… and considers the extent to which things for women in the workplace and the attitudes encountered have now changed.  Or have they?

According to a recent news story and an interview, Sir Stuart Rose, Chair of retailer Marks & Spencer, believes that there are now “…really no glass ceilings, despite the fact that some of you moan about it all the time.”  The Observer newspaper’s article referenced here refutes this statement with some useful reminders of numbers (a gender pay gap of 17% in 2008, anyone?) and the reality for many women, courtesy of the Fawcett Society.

Sir Stuart’s stance put me in mind of the wise words on bias issued at our book launch event last month, when Binna Kandola suggested that, “if you’re comfortable in your environment, you’re unlikely to question if where you are is a meritocracy.”

Here is Bev’s article, which reminds us that some things are both universal and untouched by the hand of time.

“A lot can change in a decade. Eleven years ago, I was two years away from having my daughter, four years away from publishing my first book, and two moves away from my job with PwC in Tampa’s Knowledge Services Organization (KSO). September 11 was just a gleam in Osama bin Laden’s eye. GM topped the Fortune 500 list. And folks were still frantic about a certain White House intern and a besotted blue dress.

I had been out of Corporate America for six years by then, having left a top financial services company and the sooty streets of urban New Jersey for the warmth and havoc of post-Hurricane Andrew South Florida. I took classes, wrote articles, ran a marketing department for a large Palm Beach non-profit, basked in Florida’s special flakiness, felt in many ways, liberated.

I was able to look back on my six years in the corporate arena with fresh understanding and clarity. I started writing a weekly humor column for American Cities’ South Florida Business Journal : 700- to-1,000 words summing up a corporate quirk or exorcizing some lingering political poltergeist.

My topics, my way. It was, as they say these days: Sweet!

Last week, I was doing something that would not have been a verb back in 1998. I was Googling around the web, in search of knowledge and inspiration. And I came upon a particular article that was one of my favorites from my “Business Journal” days: a rumination on the differences in the way men and women are viewed in the workplace and how the rules vary by gender.

I like it because it’s a spot-on observation of a phenomenon that is rarely discussed. I love it because it was a collaboration with a dear friend. Here was the part she inspired from the Friday, March 13, 1998 piece, ”Men could get hosed by an incredible set of dynamics," South Florida Business Journal, with an assist from my pal, then a Human Resources vice president in Washington, DC:

So I go into this meeting today, she reported, and there are three guys in there, and me. We're all basically at the same level in the management scheme. But the difference is, I have to be on my best behavior at all times, while they're sitting around like it's Super Bowl Sunday.

This one has got his feet up on the credenza, the other one's scratching himself, and the third one has his arms flung over his head like a baboon and he has these huge sweat stains under his arm pits. All I could think was,” imagine if I did any one of those things during a meeting, I would be out of there so fast.”

The other night, I asked my perfectly poised friend if she had a fresh example for our dear readers. We will call him the Marlboro Manager. He comes to his executive office in dress shirt, dress pants. And high-heeled cowboy boots. But it’s not the boots alone that earn him mention here. It’s his body language: knees as far apart as Obama and Cheney. And an overall attitude that blares: You are all just squatters in this world that is really all mine, all about me.

Now. Imagine a woman sporting that gear and that ‘tude. Picture a middle-aged woman in a decent yet unremarkable blouse and slacks. Wearing Texas-large high-heeled boots with leather as thick as a Deep South (US) accent. See her straddling a conference room chair as if it were a palomino. There is: No way she would be able to carry on in that mode and retain her authority (such as it might be) and her peace of mind (such as that might be, especially these days).

She would be talked about, spoken to, spoken down to, and generally made a pariah until she found some way to compromise between who she is and how she is perceived. And she most likely would have to scurry about, trying to repair the perceptual damage. Or decide to go elsewhere, perhaps working somewhere behind a counter, where the offending footwear and riding posture remained out of sight. She would be, as Barbara Bush famously said, known as that word that "rhymes with ‘rich’.”

As it happens, I once wore to the office at a former job a Carole Little jacket. It was classically cut, perfectly fitted, black, with small silver and turquoise studs dotting the lapels and a little fringe across the collarbone. Not for the Boardroom. But not for the dude ranch, either. A colleague passed my desk. And under his breath, but not my radar, he breathed, in a derisive, dismissive tone one would think reserved for someone who had pilfered his sheep: “Cowgirl”. I could hear his eyes roll. 

My friend and I, and no doubt others in our story, have moved on.

Yes. Lots can change in eleven years. But not everything. 

As I was writing this, my 8-year-old daughter was watching one of her favorite TV shows; it features two pre-teen girls, host and co-host of a web-based comedy show for kids. In tonight's episode, a commercial network was looking to add them to its line up. But they wanted to oust the feisty sidekick. Seems they deemed her too aggressive. (I have found her to be pretty amusing, as these things go.) The girls stuck together and declined the deal, the better to sustain their relationship. Would that such would happen more often. But that’s another topic for another day. 

Oh, the hu-woman-ity.”

Thank you, Bev.  And remember that, if you too have a story to share with the Gender Agenda, I have a copy of “The Value of Difference – Eliminating Bias in Organisations”, signed by Binna Kandola and dedicated to “A Gender Agenda blog reader!” to give away.  Normal blog rules apply: please write me an article, of c. 500-600 words, describing how bias has impacted your life or career in some way, and what actions you took to overcome it.  Feel free to change names and identifying details in order to respect your privacy, but do share your story, which we will publish in a future edition of the Gender Agenda.  I look forward to receiving your entries – the closing date for receipt of them is later this month, on Friday 19th June.  Thank you.