Gender issues

There's been a lot of discussion about Adria Richards' reaction to men's sexual banter at a recent Tech conference . It's interesting that the conversation so often turns to critiquing how women react to men's sexist behavior and the effects of those reactions on men's careers, and away from critiquing the men's behavior and its effects on women's careers. Some women may not find sexual banter at work offensive, but research shows they are few and far between. Research also shows that regardless of how people feel about it, sexual banter in the workplace is harmful -- especially to women, but often to men as well. Finding sexual banter offensive and being harmed by it doesn't mean one is weak, just as finding racial banter and jokes offensive and being harmed by them does not mean one is weak. It's individually adaptive to go along with or try and act like members of the majority group when one is outnumbered. There are even rewards for critici

If you look at the pictures of speakers at Harvard’s Gender and Work Conference on this blog, you’ll notice that most of them – 81% (17/21) – were women. That might be expected given the numbers of women and men who study gender and work. Strikingly, 71% (12/17) of the women who spoke were blonde (this only occurred to me after two people of color pointed it out). The proportion of natural blondes in the U.S. is  18% . Are blonde women more likely to study gender, or are we more likely to get away with it? As the whitest of white women, are we more likely than other women to get prestigious faculty positions* and invitations to speak? Note that only two of the 21 speakers at the conference were not white, and only 9 did not have blue eyes. It is painful to admit that one has had an unfair advantage in the game of success. It does not have to mean we did not qualify, but it does mean that similarly qualified others did not get to play, or played on a steeper grade with inferior eq

The following are my notes from Schmader's presentation at the  HBS Gender & Work Conference , February 28, 2013. William James: How to make sense of the “booming buzzing complexity” of the world. Stereotypes are schemas to make sense of our world. Mental “binders of women,” “dogs,” “cities,” etc. Women: 13-17% representation in TV, Wikipedia, Hollywood, Op-Ed writers, etc. We assume that people are what we see people do. Women must be caring, nurturing, and men must be more leaderly. Some empirical evidence for differences, but statistical effect sizes are small. Stereotypes constrain the paths we take, and the way we think. Dads as important gatekeepers: Croft, Schmader & Baron (in prep): Dads play a strong role in girls’ perceptions and beliefs. Egalitarian dads (in attitudes and domestic contributions) lead to higher future aspirations in daughters, play preferences for more gender-neutral and male-typed tasks and toys.  Cheryan,Plaut, Davies, Steel (2009)

The following are my notes from Bielby's presentation at the  HBS Gender & Work Conference , March 1, 2013. HR Magazine  article on detecting hidden bias , Wall Street Journal article suggesting a fix for gender bias  by evaluating people in enough numbers (select groups of employees, rather than individual employees) -- these solutions are way too simplistic, one cannot remedy the habits of the mind so easily. Ten years ago [ 2003 Dukes v. Wal-Mart Expert Witness Report ]: Counterstereotypic images, habits of mind do not change easily and bounce back. Is it all about cognitive mistakes of well-intentioned folks? Diversity training doesn't really work. Making end-runs to bypass stereotypes. Even if it's in our heads, remedies are organizational. Cotter, Hermsen & Vanneman (2012): Occupational gender desegregation stalled out in the 1980s & 90s [tables such as this and this  displayed] Simple tinkering with gender-neutral fixes will not necessarily help; this i

The following are my notes from Vescio's presentation at the  HBS Gender & Work Conference , February 28 2013. Vescio’s research originally focused on how powerful men treat less powerful women [for example  Vescio et al., 2004 ]. She studied patronizing behavior that derives from perceptions of women as warm but incompetent. She has documented the consequences of this patronizing behavior to women (in the lab) and how this patronization of women leads to performance detriments for women.  Now: What happens when women perform as well as men? The core components of masculinity are: High power/high status (to lead rather than to follow) Being “tough” emotionally, mentally, and physically Not being feminine (this makes masculinity special and different from other social identities) Masculinity is socialized in male groups (Pascoe, 2007; Kimmel, 2008). Masculinity is performed by men for men. [I’d say it's also performed for women and for the self.] Masculinity is easily threat

Hannah Riley Bowles Laura Kray The following are my notes from Bowles' & Kray's presentation at the  HBS Gender & Work Conference , February 28, 2013. There are three generations of research on gender and negotiations: 1.      Who has the advantage, men or women? When she was a post-doc at Northwestern University, Kray kept getting asked by her MBA students, “Who has the advantage in negotiations, men or women?” She didn’t have an answer. So she passed the question back to the class, and their lay wisdom fell along the following lines: (1) men have the advantage because they don’t want to lose to women and (2) men have the advantage because they’re more competitive than women. Initial research showed the following main effects for gender across studies: Men were more likely to initiate negotiations, be more competitive, claim value for self, and to create value. Women were more likely to engage in cooperative behavior, maintain higher ethical standards, and to be subjec

The following are my notes from Kellogg's talk at the  HBS Gender & Work Conference , March 1, 2013 Kellogg conducted an ethnography of U.S. surgical practice after a patient died when given the wrong medicine from a resident who had worked 19 hours straight. Now medical residents can "only" work 80 hours per week. Studying work-family and gender hierarchy in medical organizations, she found that organizations might comply on paper with reforms, but not necessarily in practice. Surgical residents before this law was enacted worked 120 hours per week -- this was accomplished by being on-call overnight etc. Then float teams were created to reduce on-call hours for residents. With implementing organizational change, conventional wisdom is to involve both reformers and defenders of the status quo in negotiating a solution. However, she found just the opposite: The need to keep reformers and defenders separate, because defenders will prevent reformers from discussion, supp

We crossed the border into Michigan last night and stayed outside of Detroit. Driving south this morning we drove past repeating neighborhoods of small houses, some still lived in, many boarded up, and others looted. Some homes showed evidence of interior fires. The neighborhoods were interspersed with the occasional large abandoned building. Bumpy patches made the highway rough, and it was lined with an unusual amount of litter: plastic bags, cups, truck tires that had peeled off long ago, abandoned cars, and every so often an animal carcass. It looked like a scene preceding a Mad Max world. Maybe Pottersville. Billboards asked drivers if they had a plan in case of a health emergency and advertised a solution; others promised weight loss to the obese; those with mortgage troubles were offered help for a price; and casinos advertised Camaros and cash prizes. A heavy ache grew inside me and I felt close to tears as my Canadian daughter practiced the words to the Star Spangled Banne

The following are my notes from Perlow's talk at the  HBS Gender & Work Conference , March 1, 2013 I went to Disney World last week with the kids, and noticed smart phones everywhere. They were being used to take photos, call home, entertain the kids with games, and to do work. At one point a kid fell while her dad was working on his phone and the mother exclaimed, "Enough work already! We’re on vacation." The boundary between work and life is increasingly blurred. It's not a woman’s issue, it's everybody’s issue. Approaches to getting us to help our employees to work better (e.g., flexibility, six sigma, empowerment) usually translates to any extra time getting reinvested in work. Such initiatives struggle because they don’t get people to open up and rally around the change they’re aspiring to. The two worlds of organizational change and work-family balance can be brought together. Seeking better lives can lead to work re-design which can lead to better

There's another media frenzy going on about just how awful women can be to each other as leaders, and sometimes as subordinates, in the workplace. The problematization and pathologizing of women's relationships at work is nothing new. No doubt Queen Bees do exist: There are women who pull the ladder up behind them after promotion, who undermine other women they see as competitors or threats, and who fail to meet our expectations for women to be warm, nurturing mentors who support and promote other women sister-style. There is also no doubt that Kings-of-the-Hill exist: Men who push other men down when they get near the top, men who prefer sycophants to independent minds, and men who bully their subordinates. These men conform to our expectations of " bad but bold " male behavior, however, and they are viewed as strategic, rather than as suffering from a gender-based pathology. The good thing about recognizing the existence of Queen Bees is that it reminds us that hav

The following are my notes from Dovidio's talk at the  HBS Gender & Work Conference , February 28, 2013. Social inclusion is essential to equality. Discrimination is systematic exclusion. Exclusion is painful. But superficial inclusion cloaks injustice and takes the form of subtle contemporary bias. Contemporary bias: there are explicit attitudes about racism and sexism and there are implicit attitudes. Explicit and implicit attitudes are only weakly correlated. Most Americans (80%) say they're not racist or sexist [explicit attitudes], but 60-70% of the population is racist/sexist according to implicit measures of bias. Most people will rely on explicit attitudes when a situation is unambiguous, and when what needs to be done is absolutely clear. Most discrimination occurs when a situation is ambiguous (i.e., what is right and wrong behavior is not defined) or justifications are possible for racism and sexism (such as "merit"). Devine (1989) study of Black and

Jennifer Allyn, PricewaterhouseCoopers Cathy Benko, Deloitte Joanna Barsh, McKinsey & Company The following are my notes from Allyn, Benko & Barsh's comments at the  HBS Gender & Work Conference , March 1, 2013. Robin Ely : This is a practitioner panel of women with roles in their companies to advance women. She asked each speaker to speak for 10 minutes to address what has really worked well for their companies -- a strategy in their firm that has accelerated the advancement of women -- and what is a challenge for them today (keeps them awake at night) and something we might be able to help them do (research challenge). Jennifer Allyn, PwC One problem: Women moving between companies, get a raise, but usually lateral move that sets them back in seniority -- how to get women to stay longer so they’re there long enough to advance. Change the structure: Company used to rank the people against their peers in terms of annual performance, but if you haven’t been there all yea

The following are my notes from Padavic & Ely's presentation at the  HBS Gender & Work Conference , March 1, 2013 Women make up only 11% of executive officers in companies. Work-family conflict is the dominant explanation given for this in the media ( Ramarajan,McGinn, Kolb, 2012 ). McKinsey, Bain, BCG concerned about losses, etc. Women are reluctant to take advantage of flexibility policies. Invitation from a consulting company to investigate and design intiatives to increase women’s promotion rates and stem the loss of women in associate ranks. But gender can’t be understood alone. The employer was not as interested in hearing about cultural change and norms as about work-family. Firm’s focus is on supporting women to leave work, rather than to stay. Why does work-family persist as the dominant narrative and intervention strategy, given its uneven success in advancing women’s careers? Problem gets translated into one only faced by women. Partners in the consulting firm in