wtf are work thinking?

[LadyRainicorn]

I work for a financial services firm. It's usually run by a group of old white men but the current CEO elect (or whatever the title for the incoming leader the UK leadership board is) is a woman.

They produce a lot of reports. Coinciding with international woman's day, they did a report on women in business globally.

At the end of the report they made 12 recommendations on how to get more women into business. All well and good. Except 3 were for women. They were basically, act like men. Why? After a report saying that changing the old structures would be beneficial you just want people to mold themselves to perputuate it?!

And the final recommendation was to 'challenge discrimination in your workplace'.

Yes of course. Silly me. All these men discriminating against me because I forgot to ask them not to!

No fucking recognition of the work women put in to get any where in businessin the first place then. Or in some parts of the world, educated.

In what ways were they telling women to act more like men? What were they specifically advising women to do?

What exactly does it suggest?

Well, I'm annoyed, so it didn't say act like men outright.

There was something along the lines of 'step out of comfort zone and push for more challenging work' which sounds really innocuous but when you pair it with a page in the report that talks about men and women's behaviour at promotion - the CEO said 'in my experience women will only apply if they think they are 100% qualified whereas men will go for it if they are 60% qualified' but this then ignores another piece of research on the same page saying women were leaving business because if they did bother to apply they got rebuffed and rebuffed again.

It just seemed to ignore why women felt the need to wait until they could prove they were the absolute best for the role instead of winging it.

Possibly it was the report and the recommendations that have wound me .

Although I may have pointed out instances where challenging gender discrimination have gotten women fired on our work intranet.

Where is their logic anyway? If women only apply if they think they are 100% qualified, and men 60%, and they know this, why aren't they leaping at the women and employing/promoting them?

Well yes. Quite.

"It just seemed to ignore why women felt the need to wait until they could prove they were the absolute best for the role instead of winging it." I think this is part of the issue. The report isn't getting to the root of the issue but also that they are expecting women to change their behaviours. As if it is their fault. There is nothing wrong with applying for positions when you are 100% qualified. The question should be why are they promoting men who are only 60% qualified for the positions?

It is also fairly well known that men are thought to have more potential because you know they're men.

'How to get more women into business'
'Employ more women'

There, job done. No need for a report on women in business globally.

Fuckwits.

Alternative, I think you need to run for government. That kind of straight talking is exactly what's needed.

A 'recognise your worth' would have been nice. Instead of you need to, yet again, do more.

If only! It should be that simple.

LadyRainicorn, was there anything about the barriers women faced and what the company was going to do about those?

Sorry that grin was to Alternative.

There were recommendations to businesses and society. Weren't that bad actually. But solely business focused - no recognition that making life difficult for a female chairman is part and parcel of making life hard for women in general. But it was a short report.

Or that this started early in life etc etc

In my mind this is related to the "men who parade how feminist they are" thing. And in some ways I think it's more damaging than outright misogyny. It's men patting themselves on the back thinking they're so enlightened by producing these endless reports and recommendations without ever once looking at their own attitudes and their own behaviours. My own DH started spouting off about a guy at work (who is a misogynist dickhead and very obviously so) but shut up PDQ when I pointed out some of his own attitudes and behaviours that weren't a million miles away from that guy's.

I am entirely and utterly sick of men doing the head tilt and the helping hand as if women are pitiable creatures who just need a bit of mollycoddling.

Let me guess - enhanced paternity pay wasn't on that list ? Or anything in fact that puts men in the position of being equal carers thus facilitating more women to put the hours in and have the flexibility to take on senior leadership roles....

Shared parental leave and ending stigmatisation of men who do childcare were recommendations.

I just didn't see the need for the recommendations for women.

The whole thing just felt a bit shallow.

"ending stigmatisation of men who do childcare" Really? What about the stigma, assumptions and barriers attached to women who do childcare? Are women just meant to suck that up?

There really doesn't appear to be any analysis of root causes or as cailin pointed out, changes to the attitudes and behaviours of the men in the workplace.

The 60% statistic is from Sheryl Sandberg's book "Lean in". An interesting read, except she writes from such a position of privilege it is hard to equate it to real life. i read it on holiday and it almost went in the sea several times i was so cross with it.

Our CEO elect comes from a rather privileged background as well. I do not relate.

At the end of the report they made 12 recommendations on how to get more women into business.... 3 were for women. They were basically, act like men.

Well, I'm annoyed, so it didn't say act like men outright.

But you knew you could come on here with your annoyance and get roundly supported, without actually stating what the 12 recommendations were. Why do that? If you listed them, there might be some good stuff in there that other people here could use in their own places of work, for example. This could benefit other women in other workplaces in the long run.

Yes Yops because surprise surprise we actually listen to women and support them here. And you know what we don't need "recommendations." I've fucking had it with "recommendations."

I'm sorry yops. I'm not society or a business or government. I was annoyed with the 3 recommendations aimed at me.

Other people didn't immediately rush to support me either but made me stop and think through what it was that annoyed me.

The reason I haven't linked the report is because, paranioa. I work for this firm. If you find it for yourself, fine, link away. Bloomsburg reported on it and it has been published publically.

The other reason we are supporting you is because we understand where you are coming from. We've experienced that exasperation or the sense of not being quite able to articulate why something annoys you so much. We can imagine what the report says because we've seen these "recommendations" before in one guise or another and basically they all centre round the men with privilege telling the little ladies how they need to behave in order to get on in the world that they created for themselves specifically to exclude women in the first place.

LR, I don't want you to reveal anything that risks your job. Apologies if it read that way. And I am not going to start speculating.

Your later comment (which wasn't there before I posted) about your CEO-elect's privileged upbringing is very important, I think. I work for a multi-national in another industry, and we have a woman CEO. Rich, white, no kids. Other companies in the same industry have similar on their boards. There is a pattern here.