10. Let's Start Talking About It

The below is a summary of Chapter 10 of "Lean In", Sheryl Sandbergs' book.

"We need to speak out, identify the barriers that are holding women back, and find solutions.

The laws that protect women and minorities and people with disabilities, among others, from discrimination are essential, and I am not suggesting they be circumvented. But I have also witnessed firsthand how they can have a chilling effect on discourse, sometimes even to the detriment of the people they are designed to defend. I don't have a solution to this dilemma and will leave it to public policy and legal experts to solve. I do think this is worth some serious attention so we can find a way to deal with these issues in a way that protects but doesn't suppress.

Most people would agree that gender bias exists... in others. We, however, would never be swayed by such superficial and unenlightened opinions. Except we are. Our preconceived notions about masculinity and feminity influence how we interact with and evaluate colleagues in the workplace.

(…) The researchers wanted to determine if a man's home arrangement affected his professional behavior. It did. Compared to men in modern marriages, men in more traditional marriages viewed the presence of women in the workforce less favorably. They also denied promotions to qualified female employees more often and were more likely to think that companies with a higher percentage of female employees ran less smoothly. The researchers speculated that men in traditional marriages are not overly hostile toward women but instead are “benevolent sexists”--holding positive yet outdated views about women. (Another term I have heard is “nice guy misogynists.”) These men might even believe that women have superior strengths in certain areas like moral reasoning, which makes them better equipped to raise children—and perhaps less equipped to succeed in business. In all likelihood, men who share this attitude are unaware of how their conscious and unconscious beliefs hurt their female colleages.

Another bias arises from our tendency to want to work with people who are like us. Armed with this information, managers should take a more active role in mixing and matching when assigning teams. Or, at the very least, managers should point out this tendency to give employees the motivation to shake things up.

The key is to avoid unnecessary sacrifice. This is especially hard since our work culture values complete decication. We worry that even mentioning other priorities makes us less valuable employees.

We have a long way to go before flextime is accepted in most workplaces. It will only happen if we keep raising the issue. The discussions may be difficult, but the positives are many. We cannot change what we are unaware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.

'Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact last in your absense.' Harvard Business School's Associate Dean Moon and Professor Frances Frei

Social gains are never handed out. They must be seized. Leaders of the women's movement—from Susan B. Anthony to Jane Addams to Alice Paul to Bella Abzug to Flo Kennedy to so many others—spoke out loudly and bravely to demand the rights that we now have.

'A feminist is someone who believes in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes'

We can no longer pretend that biases do not exist, nor can we talk around them. And as Harvard Business School has demonstrated, the result of creating a more equal environment will not just be better performance for our organizations, but quite likely greater happiness for all.