International Women's Day - About having an open conversation to #BeEqual

Last year, I wrote an impassioned blog post about why getting to equality is so hard; this year, I have a bit of a different flavor for International Women's Day. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a conference where one of the panels (for all attendees) was an interview with senior female leaders in utilities. One of the panelists spoke about the need for men to proactively sponsor junior female talent, highlighting how women and men sometimes have different styles in seeking mentorship relationships and so to be successful, men need to take an active role in seeking out these relationships too.


After watching the panel, several male colleagues and I had a very interesting conversation about it. They mentioned that many of the industry events and conferences that they go to have sessions for women in {insert conference topic here}; but in general, the sessions are not open to men. Our conversation then continued about (my summary, not theirs) the perils of this subject as a man. I think most of the men who I work with and for genuinely want to do the right thing as it relates to driving more gender equality in our workforce; with that being said, I think in the #metoo era, there is a genuine hesitancy about how to do it in a way that is appropriate and comfortable for everyone. They were sharing how enlightening that listening to the conversation about the challenges women have faced was and how much they appreciated being part of the conversation.


This is certainly a sticky subject - and stickier than I think the twitter-sphere would want you to believe.

For example, basically across the board, every single young woman who has worked for me as a new college hire has needed to work on their tone of voice in facilitating meetings. Young women tend to do two things pretty consistently: say statements in the form of questions and trail off the end of their sentences into a much higher pitch. Both of these things diminish what the young women are saying and make them sound less professional as well as make them sound like they are not confident in what they are saying. It is something that the young women need to be coached on and actively work on - and something I have actively worked on myself. With that being said, I have noticed that this type of feedback is often really uncomfortable for men to give younger women.

Another example is about professional appearance. For men, professional appearance is pretty straightforward and "uniform" across the board. If it is business casual, a button down and khakis is pretty much universally accepted and if business formal, a suit. For women, this... is more complicated. There is a much wider range in terms of acceptable clothing for women across dress codes; however, without a doubt how you dress affects how you are perceived in a work (or any) environment. I have been in a number of different situations where women have not presented themselves well in a professional environment and men have felt very, very, very uncomfortable addressing it with them for fear of creating an "HR violation."

I don't blame them. Our environment is quick to accuse and quick to become an echo chamber. The pendulum has swung from being not interested in the challenges women faced and not listening to the harassment women experienced to being hyperaware of it. And that is mostly a good thing. The trade-off however is that I think a lot of men - in trying to do the right thing - shy away from giving women the feedback that they need to move to the next level ---- particularly when the feedback is something that is a bit more gender specific.

The second element of this subject that I think contributes to this is that a lot of women are not comfortable being open and honest about their experiences. For example, I have written here about how pumping -- and it was something I was SUPER NERVOUS to write about in an open forum. But one thing I realized is that I had quite literally never heard a woman at IBM talk about her experience with pumping. So, one thing that I tried to do while I was breastfeeding was just talk about it like it was a fact and not a dirty secret that I was hiding (note - I've actually written about this too - ending the plague of secret parenting). Things even like: "I need to step out of this meeting to pump, I will be back in 20 minutes." Likewise, last year, I was up for partner, and I was very nervous that because I was expecting a baby, I would be expected to defer my partnership candidacy. To make partner, I had to do quite a bit of preparation for our partnership interviews during my parental leave - but that was something that I was willing to do "for the greater good" - of my family and frankly to achieve my own career aspirations. With that, it was up to me to communicate what I wanted and what I was comfortable with to my leadership. Thankfully for me, I've experienced nothing but support from the {mostly male} leaders around me - and I recognize that I am super lucky to work with and for the people that I do - and that not every woman's experience is what mine has been.

On a more humorous note, there are things that make it hard for women that men have the power to fix but just don't know -- for example, in one of our New York offices, there was one lone lightbulb that flickered in the "pumping room" (an old storage room). But - clearly no male leaders were going into the pumping room - and so it took a woman being open and talking about the challenge to get the environment fixed. But, I have to admit, that I pumped in that room using my phone as a flashlight and didn't say anything to anyone because I didn't want to be a problem -- so even someone like me, who is pretty outspoken, didn't say anything about what is a stupid and easy problem to fix.

I still have conversations pretty often with women - and especially with women who are expecting a baby - about being worried that they will be passed over because of being a young mother or being a young female. While the environment has changed very tremendously in being able to talk about this subject -- and policies have changed -- I think the reality is because there are not a lot of women in "middle management", this is still a real issue as we break this ceiling and get more women into roles of executing these policies.


So, how do we solve this?

There clearly isn't an easy answer, but I think two things might help:
1) We need to have actual conversations with men AND women about these issues because women cannot solve this alone and need men to mentor, advocate, and coach them in the workforce. What was eye opening to me about the conversation at the recent conference that I attended is that a lot of this conversation is only for women and with women -- and that men want to know how they can help shift the tides. I generally don't love the term "ally" because I think it feels a bit froofy; but the sentiment is right - we need to have middle management leaders who are willing to be a bit uncomfortable - or be a bit vocal on this subject - to move the ball forward (so, yes, we need them to be an "ally").
2) I think we all need to rise up to the need to have "tough conversations" at work - but recognize that we need to bring our own humanity to the conversation. Acknowledging that a subject is uncomfortable is okay. Something to the effect of - "hey, I care about you and your development, and I'm a bit nervous to talk to you about this, but I noticed something that makes you less effective in meetings and wanted to bring it to your attention." I think these topics need to be addressed in a sensitive and thoughtful way - but they need to be addressed nonetheless.