Advancing Women in the Workplace: Why is this so hard??!
Last week, IBM published a study about advancing women in the workplace.
One key finding was that in spite of the increased discussion about the importance of gender diversity in the workplace, most companies are not actively prioritizing it as a strategic initiative. Two stats that jumped out to me as I read the study were:
IBM's study is likely not new news; but I certainly appreciate that my employer is contributing to the discussion about how to drive gender diversity in the workforce - and this is a topic I am passionate about. In reading more about this topic, I stumbled across an article in the Atlantic, which I related to because I think IBM (and some other professional firms) are working hard to keep women in the workforce.
The author wrote "it would be an easy story to say that my consulting firm pushed me out—but it was the opposite. They tried hard to keep me. They let me work from home often and take time off for appointments. "Just get the job done," they said. That was the problem, though—getting the job done was all about giving everything to the job, and that wasn't sustainable for me once I had a child."
I obviously found it fascinating and so as I started to write a blog about this and basically wrote my own white paper about Caroline's POV on this issue and challenge - so, welcome to Caroline's white paper on advancing women in the work place - and why this is so hard!
Over the past year, my personal opinion on the challenges of being a working mom have evolved... based on actually having personal experience with being a working mom. I think this breaks into two conversations about what this looks like - what we do and the habits we get into at home vs. in the office.
At Home
Let me start by saying that I really, really relate to the author of the Atlantic article; and one of my biggest struggles as a working mom has been how I give my all to my job while also giving my all to being a mom. The reality is that you cannot give your all to both things; and I think this is where we - women - generally fail because we burn ourselves out and beat ourselves up.
Some things at home do start out being more of the woman's responsibility; especially for a mom who breastfeeds, feeding a newborn starts out as entirely the woman's responsibility. This then permeates a bit into being "better" with the baby because the mom is spending more time with the baby, spending time soothing the baby, understanding the baby's cues, etc. It's easy to see how this starts at birth and never stops. Likewise, with a mom who takes maternity leave, she is the primary caregiver from the get-go.
One thing I've observed though is that sometimes this translates into not letting the Dad take responsibility because it's easier, you are better at it, you see them doing it wrong, etc. At the end of the day, listening to your baby cry is literally gut wrenching - for both parents. I am not a scientist, but I'm sure there are all sorts of physical reactions that literally will make you do anything to get your baby to be happy. So, you can easily see why and how the person who is the most efficient with soothing the baby falls into the role of the soother.
Obviously this discussion ties into gender roles and helping at home - and the pressure that mothers end up feeling about being the primary caregiver for their child. When you have care giving responsibility for your child, it is really hard to take on as many leadership obligations at work, because you just have less time in the day.
If I'm being honest, this is something that I didn't really understand, have empathy with, or relate to prior to having Charlie.
Translating this into my reality, day care opens at 7am, but Charlie's classroom doesn't open until 8 and so she goes into another classroom if she gets there before 8; drop off is A LOT harder when she gets dropped off in the other classroom (aka a lot of tears and grabbing for us). Johnny usually drops her off in the morning, but even when I'm working from home, that means that I can't start my day before 7:45 or 8; if I am dropping her off, that means I'm not at my computer until 8:30 at the earliest. Charlie's daycare closes at 6, but we generally try to pick her up by - both because it's a long day for her and we want time at home with her! This means wrapping up your work day or at least the productive part of your work day before you get her because while she is pretty good, she is noisy on calls after 5. Because I work with people across the US, I do often have calls between 5-7. While people have been very patient with her being noisy in the background, the reality is that, I am clearly not giving these calls my full attention once she is home. Between 5:30 - 7, we are busy getting dinner ready, feeding Charlie, getting her in the bath and getting her down for bed. Then at 7, we have to feed ourselves and clean up the house. So, even if I was going to do more work, which I do some nights, but make every effort not to do, I couldn't really start until 8 or 8:30 most nights. The reality is that in balancing all of this, I've lost at least 2-3 productive hours that I had prior to having Charlie every day. This is 10-15 hours a week(!!!!!)! (Important note here - this is not just a working mother problem - it is a working PARENT problem.)
This may have been a long discussion of schedules - my point is that I'm not sure that the issue is that women don't WANT to take on leadership obligations; it's just that with the time spent doing the bare minimum with your kids, you don't have as much TIME to do a good job with the leadership obligations.
So - how do we solve this beyond just acknowledging it as a problem?
I've written about my struggles with feeling guilty. I do actually think that, for the most part, I've done a good job with "work / life balance" and setting boundaries - I just feel a lot of guilt that I don't do as much as I feel like I "should" be doing or "could" be doing. When I miss meetings that "everyone else" is going to, I feel like I am missing key networking opportunities, or not establishing myself as well as I should be in this part of my career. These comments are not news - lots of women write about, talk about, or experience this.
I think one of the key differences here is that - for the most part - men don't beat themselves up in the same way women do. When I talk about this with Johnny, who struggles with the same time challenges that I do and is in every way an equal parent to Charlie (more on this in a minute), he just takes this at face value. He acknowledges he has less time, but he just views it as contributing in the way that he can contribute. He doesn't beat himself up, he doesn't feel guilty, and he doesn't compare himself to others.
Solving this for myself means really, actively working on the guilt that I feel - acknowledging it and moving beyond it. I am awesome, and I'm a good mom, and I need to let go of guilt.
Second, for women to advance in the workplace, we need to "allow" our husbands to be equal. Coming back to the first point I made about how women naturally are the primary caregivers, we need to give our husbands the time with our kids to learn the things we have learned in the hours care giving and not diminish our husbands when they are trying. I am super lucky because Johnny is amazing with Charlie and has always been amazing with Charlie. But one of the things I've observed is that I think that sometimes women create a dynamic where their spouse is less good at caregiving because they don't let their husbands do things or "take away" responsibility when their husband does it differently than they would. Johnny and I naturally fell into some of our routines because of our personalities, our life experience (he has a lot more experience with kids than I do having grown up in a big family), and also because my work schedule requires some travel, so I have physically not been here to do some of this.
I will say - even that last paragraph seems pedantic; anyone who knows Johnny knows that I am not "allowing" him to do anything. If I'm Type A, Johnny is in every bit my Type A match. But, I do think it's important to acknowledge the elephant in the room here, which is that societally, most of us expect the women to do a lot of this work at home, including women.
For example, when I travel overnight for work, I get a lot of questions basically asking "OMG, what is your daughter doing!!?"
...
(*insert eyeroll emoji here*) ... obviously, she is with Johnny. Did you think I forgot about her? Left her at daycare? Or, people will assume that because I am traveling our moms are in charge of Charlie; the first guess is not that Johnny is in charge. (Note - do you think Johnny (or any man) ever gets this question when they travel?)
Likewise, Johnny and I have both noted that Father's Day cards generally fall into the category of "Dad, you're a doofus, but we love you," and that it is really hard to find cards that don't comment about the general inabilities of men to parent; whereas the cards for Mother's Day are more in the category of "Mom, you keep our family together, do it all, and we want you to know how appreciated you are." I'll leave this discussion there - but we need to change that dynamic.
At Work
With everything that I said about the At Home piece, there is an equal (and greater) element of figuring out this dynamic At Work. I have recently gotten to participate in some interesting discussions of this topic in some of our senior leadership team meetings at IBM. I believe that IBM fits into the "first mover" category from the study, where IBM is being very intentional about driving gender diversity, discussing gender diversity, and working towards creating an environment where this can be possible. IBM has really changed quite a bit in this way over the past 8.5 years that I have been working here, and it's a change for the better.
While we are one of the few organizations with a female CEO, in some ways, I think having some top female leadership has hindered progress towards gender diversity in middle management. For a while, the CEO of IBM, Head of GBS (or consulting business), and Head of GBS North America were all women. While this is awesome (!) (!!!), I think a lot of people looked at it and were like "Check! Diversity problem solved!" when the reality is that we were struggling with the same problem that many companies do / did; women - across all industries - leave the workforce in their childbearing years.
It is a really interesting challenge from multiple angles:
I'm not sure that IS the answer.
The reality is that we want more female leadership involved in all pieces of our business -- sales, delivery, mentorship, recruiting, presenting, etc. etc. etc. However, those women do have actual jobs to do and so if their time is spent being the female POV in everyone else's work, they don't actually have time to do their own jobs (also, see the whole discussion above re: having less time as a working parent).
Just like entrusting Dad's with an equal share of parenting and reminding ourselves (mom's) that spending time at work is not something to feel guilty about - I think the answer here is around emphasizing positive mentorship of male leadership to more junior female leadership.
Speaking personally, I currently work for and with a lot of (wonderful) men. I do not have the benefit of a direct female mentor in my direct reporting chain who I work with on a day-to-day basis. I can (and have) solved for this myself by surrounding myself with a network of awesome women - as well as working with my leadership to identify more senior women who I can connect with and who can mentor me. BUT - the reality is that my happiness and satisfaction at work is at least partially dependent on having the men who I work for being thoughtful of my personal situation and connecting with me personally about it. This is not a male / female thing. This is about being a good manager.
On that note, I have been incredibly lucky to work for people like Roger Hasson, Jim Bales, and Shannon Miller who have been so incredibly supportive of my personal situation.
I want to recognize these wonderful people who I work for because the reality is that it takes a leap of faith on both of our parts. Prior to having Charlie, I had never personally worked with a women in a leadership role who went out on maternity leave and came back and stayed in the same role in consulting. This means there was not a model for me to follow - nor was there a model for my leaders in terms of what to expect from me. So, they took a leap of faith and assured me (they had to do this many times, so I am also thankful for their patience!) that they would help me make it work. They didn't have a perfect answer. They couldn't tell me step by step what we would do or what I would do or how I would manage my travel. But, they promised me that they would help me figure it out. And then, when I came back, they checked in. They asked me how it was going, how I was doing, was I okay. They continue to ask. They make me feel cared for.
To summarize this, when I think about what employers could to further advance women in the workplace, my answer is not that different than any conversation about how to keep employees happy in the workplace - have management that treats employees as individuals and recognizes the constraints of their personal situations, and helps them navigate it.
My last thought on this topic (for now, at least), is that the discussion here is for the good. I started writing this blog because I wanted the women on my team to hear candid thoughts from someone who was navigating being a working mom. Some of the things that I have posted are very personal and somewhat scary for me. But, I wanted to add to the dialogue and to let them know that someone was figuring it out based on what works for my family.
One key finding was that in spite of the increased discussion about the importance of gender diversity in the workplace, most companies are not actively prioritizing it as a strategic initiative. Two stats that jumped out to me as I read the study were:
- "58 percent say fewer women than men want to take on leadership obligations."
- "Mindset matters. We asked survey respondents how long it will take for their industries to exhibit an equal balance of women and men across all leadership levels. On average, they estimate 54 years—more than two generations into the future."
IBM's study is likely not new news; but I certainly appreciate that my employer is contributing to the discussion about how to drive gender diversity in the workforce - and this is a topic I am passionate about. In reading more about this topic, I stumbled across an article in the Atlantic, which I related to because I think IBM (and some other professional firms) are working hard to keep women in the workforce.
- 43% of qualified women are leaving careers or off-ramping for a significant period of time
- Only 74% of professional women will rejoin the workforce in any capacity, and 40% will return to full time jobs
- What lands companies in the best companies for working mom's list are perks and benefits like pumping rooms and parental leave policies; and while important, there is a significant cultural component that is often ignored.
The author wrote "it would be an easy story to say that my consulting firm pushed me out—but it was the opposite. They tried hard to keep me. They let me work from home often and take time off for appointments. "Just get the job done," they said. That was the problem, though—getting the job done was all about giving everything to the job, and that wasn't sustainable for me once I had a child."
I obviously found it fascinating and so as I started to write a blog about this and basically wrote my own white paper about Caroline's POV on this issue and challenge - so, welcome to Caroline's white paper on advancing women in the work place - and why this is so hard!
Over the past year, my personal opinion on the challenges of being a working mom have evolved... based on actually having personal experience with being a working mom. I think this breaks into two conversations about what this looks like - what we do and the habits we get into at home vs. in the office.
At Home
Let me start by saying that I really, really relate to the author of the Atlantic article; and one of my biggest struggles as a working mom has been how I give my all to my job while also giving my all to being a mom. The reality is that you cannot give your all to both things; and I think this is where we - women - generally fail because we burn ourselves out and beat ourselves up.
Some things at home do start out being more of the woman's responsibility; especially for a mom who breastfeeds, feeding a newborn starts out as entirely the woman's responsibility. This then permeates a bit into being "better" with the baby because the mom is spending more time with the baby, spending time soothing the baby, understanding the baby's cues, etc. It's easy to see how this starts at birth and never stops. Likewise, with a mom who takes maternity leave, she is the primary caregiver from the get-go.
One thing I've observed though is that sometimes this translates into not letting the Dad take responsibility because it's easier, you are better at it, you see them doing it wrong, etc. At the end of the day, listening to your baby cry is literally gut wrenching - for both parents. I am not a scientist, but I'm sure there are all sorts of physical reactions that literally will make you do anything to get your baby to be happy. So, you can easily see why and how the person who is the most efficient with soothing the baby falls into the role of the soother.
Obviously this discussion ties into gender roles and helping at home - and the pressure that mothers end up feeling about being the primary caregiver for their child. When you have care giving responsibility for your child, it is really hard to take on as many leadership obligations at work, because you just have less time in the day.
If I'm being honest, this is something that I didn't really understand, have empathy with, or relate to prior to having Charlie.
Translating this into my reality, day care opens at 7am, but Charlie's classroom doesn't open until 8 and so she goes into another classroom if she gets there before 8; drop off is A LOT harder when she gets dropped off in the other classroom (aka a lot of tears and grabbing for us). Johnny usually drops her off in the morning, but even when I'm working from home, that means that I can't start my day before 7:45 or 8; if I am dropping her off, that means I'm not at my computer until 8:30 at the earliest. Charlie's daycare closes at 6, but we generally try to pick her up by - both because it's a long day for her and we want time at home with her! This means wrapping up your work day or at least the productive part of your work day before you get her because while she is pretty good, she is noisy on calls after 5. Because I work with people across the US, I do often have calls between 5-7. While people have been very patient with her being noisy in the background, the reality is that, I am clearly not giving these calls my full attention once she is home. Between 5:30 - 7, we are busy getting dinner ready, feeding Charlie, getting her in the bath and getting her down for bed. Then at 7, we have to feed ourselves and clean up the house. So, even if I was going to do more work, which I do some nights, but make every effort not to do, I couldn't really start until 8 or 8:30 most nights. The reality is that in balancing all of this, I've lost at least 2-3 productive hours that I had prior to having Charlie every day. This is 10-15 hours a week(!!!!!)! (Important note here - this is not just a working mother problem - it is a working PARENT problem.)
This may have been a long discussion of schedules - my point is that I'm not sure that the issue is that women don't WANT to take on leadership obligations; it's just that with the time spent doing the bare minimum with your kids, you don't have as much TIME to do a good job with the leadership obligations.
So - how do we solve this beyond just acknowledging it as a problem?
I've written about my struggles with feeling guilty. I do actually think that, for the most part, I've done a good job with "work / life balance" and setting boundaries - I just feel a lot of guilt that I don't do as much as I feel like I "should" be doing or "could" be doing. When I miss meetings that "everyone else" is going to, I feel like I am missing key networking opportunities, or not establishing myself as well as I should be in this part of my career. These comments are not news - lots of women write about, talk about, or experience this.
I think one of the key differences here is that - for the most part - men don't beat themselves up in the same way women do. When I talk about this with Johnny, who struggles with the same time challenges that I do and is in every way an equal parent to Charlie (more on this in a minute), he just takes this at face value. He acknowledges he has less time, but he just views it as contributing in the way that he can contribute. He doesn't beat himself up, he doesn't feel guilty, and he doesn't compare himself to others.
Solving this for myself means really, actively working on the guilt that I feel - acknowledging it and moving beyond it. I am awesome, and I'm a good mom, and I need to let go of guilt.
Second, for women to advance in the workplace, we need to "allow" our husbands to be equal. Coming back to the first point I made about how women naturally are the primary caregivers, we need to give our husbands the time with our kids to learn the things we have learned in the hours care giving and not diminish our husbands when they are trying. I am super lucky because Johnny is amazing with Charlie and has always been amazing with Charlie. But one of the things I've observed is that I think that sometimes women create a dynamic where their spouse is less good at caregiving because they don't let their husbands do things or "take away" responsibility when their husband does it differently than they would. Johnny and I naturally fell into some of our routines because of our personalities, our life experience (he has a lot more experience with kids than I do having grown up in a big family), and also because my work schedule requires some travel, so I have physically not been here to do some of this.
I will say - even that last paragraph seems pedantic; anyone who knows Johnny knows that I am not "allowing" him to do anything. If I'm Type A, Johnny is in every bit my Type A match. But, I do think it's important to acknowledge the elephant in the room here, which is that societally, most of us expect the women to do a lot of this work at home, including women.
For example, when I travel overnight for work, I get a lot of questions basically asking "OMG, what is your daughter doing!!?"
...
(*insert eyeroll emoji here*) ... obviously, she is with Johnny. Did you think I forgot about her? Left her at daycare? Or, people will assume that because I am traveling our moms are in charge of Charlie; the first guess is not that Johnny is in charge. (Note - do you think Johnny (or any man) ever gets this question when they travel?)
Likewise, Johnny and I have both noted that Father's Day cards generally fall into the category of "Dad, you're a doofus, but we love you," and that it is really hard to find cards that don't comment about the general inabilities of men to parent; whereas the cards for Mother's Day are more in the category of "Mom, you keep our family together, do it all, and we want you to know how appreciated you are." I'll leave this discussion there - but we need to change that dynamic.
At Work
With everything that I said about the At Home piece, there is an equal (and greater) element of figuring out this dynamic At Work. I have recently gotten to participate in some interesting discussions of this topic in some of our senior leadership team meetings at IBM. I believe that IBM fits into the "first mover" category from the study, where IBM is being very intentional about driving gender diversity, discussing gender diversity, and working towards creating an environment where this can be possible. IBM has really changed quite a bit in this way over the past 8.5 years that I have been working here, and it's a change for the better.
While we are one of the few organizations with a female CEO, in some ways, I think having some top female leadership has hindered progress towards gender diversity in middle management. For a while, the CEO of IBM, Head of GBS (or consulting business), and Head of GBS North America were all women. While this is awesome (!) (!!!), I think a lot of people looked at it and were like "Check! Diversity problem solved!" when the reality is that we were struggling with the same problem that many companies do / did; women - across all industries - leave the workforce in their childbearing years.
It is a really interesting challenge from multiple angles:
- You have a different pool of qualified talent with which you can promote and select executives
- You have a different pool of qualified talent from which you can hire
- You have a limited pool of female leadership who can mentor up and comers
I'm not sure that IS the answer.
The reality is that we want more female leadership involved in all pieces of our business -- sales, delivery, mentorship, recruiting, presenting, etc. etc. etc. However, those women do have actual jobs to do and so if their time is spent being the female POV in everyone else's work, they don't actually have time to do their own jobs (also, see the whole discussion above re: having less time as a working parent).
Just like entrusting Dad's with an equal share of parenting and reminding ourselves (mom's) that spending time at work is not something to feel guilty about - I think the answer here is around emphasizing positive mentorship of male leadership to more junior female leadership.
Speaking personally, I currently work for and with a lot of (wonderful) men. I do not have the benefit of a direct female mentor in my direct reporting chain who I work with on a day-to-day basis. I can (and have) solved for this myself by surrounding myself with a network of awesome women - as well as working with my leadership to identify more senior women who I can connect with and who can mentor me. BUT - the reality is that my happiness and satisfaction at work is at least partially dependent on having the men who I work for being thoughtful of my personal situation and connecting with me personally about it. This is not a male / female thing. This is about being a good manager.
On that note, I have been incredibly lucky to work for people like Roger Hasson, Jim Bales, and Shannon Miller who have been so incredibly supportive of my personal situation.
I want to recognize these wonderful people who I work for because the reality is that it takes a leap of faith on both of our parts. Prior to having Charlie, I had never personally worked with a women in a leadership role who went out on maternity leave and came back and stayed in the same role in consulting. This means there was not a model for me to follow - nor was there a model for my leaders in terms of what to expect from me. So, they took a leap of faith and assured me (they had to do this many times, so I am also thankful for their patience!) that they would help me make it work. They didn't have a perfect answer. They couldn't tell me step by step what we would do or what I would do or how I would manage my travel. But, they promised me that they would help me figure it out. And then, when I came back, they checked in. They asked me how it was going, how I was doing, was I okay. They continue to ask. They make me feel cared for.
To summarize this, when I think about what employers could to further advance women in the workplace, my answer is not that different than any conversation about how to keep employees happy in the workplace - have management that treats employees as individuals and recognizes the constraints of their personal situations, and helps them navigate it.
My last thought on this topic (for now, at least), is that the discussion here is for the good. I started writing this blog because I wanted the women on my team to hear candid thoughts from someone who was navigating being a working mom. Some of the things that I have posted are very personal and somewhat scary for me. But, I wanted to add to the dialogue and to let them know that someone was figuring it out based on what works for my family.
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