Chapter 3
Obstacles to Success and Solutions for Overcoming Them
IT'S CLEAR THAT WOMEN ARE NOT EQUALLY represented in companies or among entrepreneurs—they are in the minority everywhere, or at least they're a minority in key decision-making posts, rare in the senior levels of management, and almost completely absent in executive committees and at the board level of major groups. Yet they represent at least 50 percent of the work force—and even if many women set up and lead SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises), they're not in the high-growth sectors or present among the leading entrepreneurial companies. The distribution is so uneven that even the most sexist members of society admit that it can't only be attributed to lack of talent or work ethic.
In Part II, we highlight the main social and cultural obstacles that prevent women from getting to the top, and provide solutions as to how to get around them.
We asked six experts to help us analyze the persistence of gender inequality in business—and how we can find a way around these obstacles.
Our experts are highly acclaimed in their respective fields, and, through their actions and thinking, they exert a strong influence on public opinion. They are all deeply committed to ensuring that women achieve their rightful place in business life.
Whether they are professors in universities, chief executives, headhunters, or event organizers, not one of them has ever lost sight of the obstacles they had to overcome to reach the positions they now occupy.
What they tell us is a mine of information and in-depth analysis on the gender gap in business. But more than that, our experts lead us to conclude that a clear corporate policy to reverse gender inequality can quickly and significantly change mind-sets and reality.
The Obstacles
The first obstacle is in the heads of women themselves.
Women in the workforce today were raised in the inherited roles of gender difference. Through their upbringing and in their schools, they absorbed an intellectual and cultural set of values in which power and money is the responsibility of men, and raising children is the responsibility of women. Men, who are still the decision makers in business life, were raised with the same values and hold to the idea that women have to make a choice between family or work—and taking on both is contradictory. This upbringing leads to a series of prejudices, which Audra Bohannon (senior partner at Korn Ferry) lists for us: women are not assertive enough to assume leadership roles, they're too emotional, they're more tactical than strategic, and so on.
These prejudices are dangerous because, as Valérie Bernis (executive VP at ENGIE) tells us, it means women spontaneously choose the roles of specialist or expert—advisory roles—and not the more visible roles of general manager or leader.
If any progress has been made—and it has—it's because both men and women are beginning to see these prejudices as stereotypes.
And this is a good first step—because behind the stereotype is bias.
Research tells us the decision-making behavior is influenced by biased reasoning, based on false hypotheses, prejudices, or assumptions. For example, the assumption that a mother will refuse a job where the hours don't fit with family life means that she isn't even offered the job. Interrupting a woman when she is speaking in a meeting—and Margaret Neale (professor at Stanford University) thinks this happens a lot—is more acceptable than interrupting a man. And women's upbringing has not prepared them to object to such rudeness. Although a man will use every means to make himself heard, a woman will usually keep quiet, and her ideas or proposals will not be heard—and what an opportunity the meeting will miss. Margaret Neale also tells us that men and women are treated differently in appraisals, and that any benefit of the doubt will be given to men but almost never to women, mainly because criteria used in appraisals are biased towards men, and lead to the unexpected consequences of good intentions.
Deborah Gillis (president and CEO of Catalyst) tells us that women don't have any access to the “hot jobs”—visible jobs that carry power, such as international roles, senior positions in the finance or budget departments, responsibility for major teams. This means there are no role models—so the vicious circle of gender inequality keeps on turning. One of the reasons this happens is that women don't find influential sponsors—who, by advocating and taking a risk on someone, can make a career. Christiane Bergevin (Executive VP at Desjardins Group—Canada) gives us an amusing, but very typical, example of this impossible encounter (Chapter 8).
All these obstacles make up the famous glass ceiling. Though women are around 50 percent of the workforce in the United States, though they exceed men in terms of qualifications at university level, though they control 73 percent of American household spending, they manage only 5 percent of companies in the S&P 500 and hold only 19.2 percent of directorships in the same sample. Above all, women earn significantly less than men with identical backgrounds, education, and experience.1
Other obstacles, sometimes more trivial, stand in the way of women entrepreneurs.
In this world of rapid technological change and new business models, networks are, more than ever before, sources of information, exchange, and opportunities. For a range of reasons, women have fewer networks and benefit less from them than their male counterparts. Cultivating this form of social capital is encouraged in men, while women feel guilty about spending any time on networking and therefore less time with their families.
Among other psychological obstacles preventing women's success is their tendency to want to know something, rather than be known for it. We would not go so far as to say it's the opposite for men, but it is true that men are more likely to draw attention to their achievements and their ambitions than women.
Access to finance is an obstacle rarely highlighted but it exists—and not only in developing countries. Inequality in terms of finance is present everywhere, and the United States is no different, as Irene Natividad (president of the Global Summit of Women), tells us. We see that banks are more likely to lend to men because men have a different attitude to debt than women. But the different treatment does not stop with banks—venture capital funds also extend a better welcome to projects headed by men than by women.
The Solutions
Many of the solutions can be found in the obstacles themselves.
If prejudices are so strong, and have such consequences, can we get rid of them? And if so, how?
The answers are age old: but they are based on lack of awareness and lack of will.
Today's women are far more informed than their mothers about gender inequality—not only in social life, but also in economic life. In addition, there are more women in the job market, and work isn't simply a supplementary salary but a means of personal and professional development—and the means to financial autonomy. More informed, and more ambitious, women are therefore sensitive to the gap between them and men. At the same time, their investment in a working life has made their demands more visible, and what used to be a feminist issue, is now a social issue.
The obstacles can be overcome by a two-pronged approach: collective and individual.
The first is political—in the wider sense. This includes structural decisions that create a sustainable change on the landscape in favor of women.
The fight against stereotypes has become a national issue in a number of developed countries: educational programs, television broadcasts, laws and regulations checked with a fine toothcomb to ensure that all traces of discrimination are eliminated.
In addition to these general measures are more targeted efforts to encourage a greater number of young girls to choose STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects, an area that currently has a majority of men but that opens up career prospects in innovative and exciting areas for women.
Christine Lagarde (managing director of the International and Monetary Fund) reminds us that education in developing countries is a means of emancipation and equality for young girls.
In terms of salary, the California Fair Pay Act, which took effect as of January 1, 2016, and which could be imitated in other states, aims to make it easier for employees to contest wage inequalities, and guarantees equal pay for equal work.
The policy on quotas is another example of political will. Several European countries have passed and enforce laws for more equal representation of women in boards of directors. Wherever these measures have been taken, there have been spectacular results. As Irene Natividad puts it in the 2015 Corporate Women Directors International report, “quotas are working to accelerate women's access to board seats.”2 In France for example, where the situation had been similar to that in the United States, the number of directors increased significantly, and the aim of 40 percent of women directors on board by 2017 will very probably be achieved.
To make sure that this movement is not only limited to women at the top of the pyramid, we also need to see strategies voluntarily implemented throughout companies and the inclusion of gender diversity into corporate governance codes.3 Most of the world's major groups have set up equality and diversity programs to eliminate inequalities in their workforces. Programs aimed at closing the gender gap demonstrate a diverse range of actions. Thus, for example, we see major groups—and not so major groups—financing crèches or reviewing their appointment and promotion criteria so as not to penalize women returning to work after maternity leave. Similarly, companies modify their criteria for selecting employees with high potential by not restricting their choice to the 28-to-32 age group, where women are under-represented because of child rearing.
On a more individual note, women are becoming more involved in networking and mentoring in all their forms—from classical mentoring to reverse mentoring and to intercompany mentoring. Several examples of these programs and their outcomes are presented in Part III.
In the same spirit, companies are developing sponsoring programs, particularly focusing on high-potential women. Irene Natividad, in another area, tells us about her “political mothers”—those sponsors who taught her everything and who invested in her to make her become the woman of influence that she is today.
For this movement to produce convincing results, it has to be shared at all levels of the corporation, and men have to be actively involved.
Valérie Bernis, executive vice president at ENGIE, summarizes the benefits of mentoring as a tool for developing the company through the development of its workers:
Many of the speakers in this book demonstrate to what extent this vision meets reality, and the effectiveness of gender equality actions when they are implemented with intelligence and generosity.