Help me explain why having women in senior roles matters

[badbadhusky]

I have a new boss. He's reshuffled his senior team and there are now fewer women in key roles and decision-making groups. It's a source of long-stanging ill feeling with many of my female colleagues. We discussed it and he says it doesn't matter as much as I think it does, that he's a really fair person. I managed to land a couple of points about the importance of role models - younger women being able to see "people like me" in senior roles - and how its not good enough to do the right thing, you have to be seen to do the right thing & balanced committes etc show that. He's the kind of person who responds really well to evidence. Can anyone point to resources and research evidence which demonstrste the importance of this?

Sounds like your boss has put in place the people he thinks are best for the various roles. It's his job to do that. He may or may not have got it right, but you are asking him to put in place other people who are not the people whom he thinks would be best.

Please can you explain to me why it would be right to turf out the people who are best for these roles and put in place other people who are not the best for these roles?

If you jus t think he got it wrong about someone that's different - but that's not what you are saying.

Believeitornot
Yes it would be, if the reshuffle is based on merit: ability and skills. It should not matter at all what race the individuals are, it should only matter that the best are in the roles
and you would be very naive to think that it really works this way.

Where did I say that I think it really works that way?

The problem with 'merit' based approaches - and I say this as someone who works hard to live them in my own work - is that measuring merit is an inherently subjective affair.

In the context of gender, one of the more obvious complications is that women, as a general rule, will often understate achievements and credit team effort when compared with men. And that, given that men are generally considered the default case, we as managers tend to therefore miss female high performance because it may not correspond to what we would expect to see in a star employee. This can be addressed in highly effective ways but will normally depend on managers being trained to spot the symptoms of 'female overachiever syndrome'.

And, on a side note, can I just say how much I hate this stupid notion of the 'best person for the job'? All that's required is a 'good enough' person for any given job. The additional benefits of them being the best have to be weighed up against all other relevant considerations. That's just basic management skills (and a regular rant trigger for me).

Yes it would be, if the reshuffle is based on merit: ability and skills. It should not matter at all what race the individuals are, it should only matter that the best are in the roles

The reality is that it is difficult to do this without actively thinking about possible discrimination. We all fall into the trap of unconscious bias - and this basically means that subconsciously we make decisions about merit based on factors other than whether someone’s really the best person for the job.

If you challenged someone on this, they might say “I’m not sexist or racist”, but then if you listed the actual factual attributes of an individuals performance you may find little between them. That’s why names and DOBs are removed from job applications - to stop that sort of thing.

We’ve done a lot on this in my workplace and it’s interesting.

My work does ‘blind’ shortlisting. So when people apply for jobs HR blacks out their name age sex and disability status, to avoid discrimination. I think it’s a good idea and I’d be very interested to know if people would interview individuals if they knew all this criteria

I read about an orchestra that did "blind"auditions- candidates playing behind a screen. It made no difference to the number of women getting selected. Until they tried it with the candidates all approaching the audition space in stocking feet. Suddenly a lot more women got through........

this article probably?
www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias

And numerous other similar studes, where something is rated higher when it's assumed the performer of the task is a man.
Or my favourite one was the transgender scientist who was told that he was "much better than his sister"..
Best for the job my arse.

"All that's required is a 'good enough' person for any given job. "

Indeed!

You are making excuses for him and pandering to him IMO. His comment to you was patronising to say the least.

Were his decisions, including knock on consequences, good for the business? Best people given more say etc?

When you don't have a mix or you don't have much then things are ot looked at from that angle.

Eg my local hospital started charging for parking in disabled bays and for staff. They converted some bays to staff and some staff to disabled - same number of disabled bays.

I wrote a letter of complaint, and actually got invited to meet some senior staff. My complaint? The disabled bays they converted were outside rhumatology. The place where most patients have mobility issues.

Different scenario but things that are obvious for someone with one experience are not even clear to someone with a different experience.

There is the Hampton Alexander Review (www.gov.uk/government/publications/ftse-women-leaders-hampton-alexander-review) which was initially only looking at women on Boards but now it is also focusing on other levels too. There is also this paper which you might find of help (www.crcpress.com/rsc/downloads/WP-TL2-2016_Transpersonal_Leadership_WP2_FINAL.pdf )

Thank you Thrubwell.

You might also want to refer to this recent article in the Economist if he is looking at business success.

www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21729801-daughters-have-effect-hiring-policies-which-leads-greater-success-venture

There is some talk on here on appointing based upon merit. It used to be phrased as the 'best man for the job'. What many appointing bosses overlook is that the whole frame of reference for what 'best' looks like has shifted, and now the 'best' are those who can access more feminine thinking (and that includes men).

“Blind” applications don’t work for internal promotions IMO: people are often easily identifiable from their experience.

IME it’s also easy to guess applicants’ gender from application forms / CVs.

IME it’s also easy to guess applicants’ gender from application forms / CVs.

Particularly if you went to e.g. Shady Pines School for Girls

Great post, bossybitch.

I've been doing some stuff on this type of thing at work recently (large, staid, City financial institution) about the bottom line economic impact that diverse leadership teams have over their stale, pale and male counterparts. The evidence is very compelling - I'll see if I've got any of it here.

We're finding that we get a lot more traction with using the economic argument than with the arguments about visibility and doing the right thing. Sadly, human nature being what it is, doing the right thing can often only be encouraged by WIIFM (What's In It For Me), which in this case is "Would you like your team to make more money?". It's slow work though. My firm have also gone for the option of having a lot of white, straight men doing presentations explaining it, which is fucking maddening, because it does result in more engagement, but really seems like it's self defeating in some way...

My firm have also gone for the option of having a lot of white, straight men doing presentations explaining it

If you hadn't said you were in finance, which I'm not, I would have been wondering if you were a colleague.

I feel very ambivalent about it, actually. On the one hand, it's quite obviously ridiculous and violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the whole idea. OTOH, my industry being what it is, they will regrettably be believed; if it were me giving that presentation, some of the more obstinate models might simply frame it as 'our token woman manager justifying her own existence in pseudo-rational terminology'.

Ironically, of course, this is just the sort of attitude that we're trying to tackle!

I'm ambivalent too, bossy, for those same reasons. It's a bitter pill to swallow, that men will only believe that women aren't taken as seriously at work if other men will explain it to them, which demonstrates that they're exactly the same population who aren't taking women seriously at work!

I do wonder how much some of them mean it, too. One presentation was kicked off by a video of the board & execs of the bank talking - a group comprised of about twenty five middle aged blokes and two women - about just how terribly, terribly seriously they were taking the issue of how women at my level and above vanish from the bank. Man after man after man pontificating about the virtues of diversity and how much progress we're making, how it's not just talk but action etc etc.

Just get some fucking women on the board already! It really is that easy.

School and university details can be blanked out, but you can still tell.

This thread is depressing. Some posters really need to have a word with themselves

Sadly, the majority of people in work, men and women, are simply in it for themselves. They might nod along to all the diversity stuff but they really couldn't give a stuff. They just want their package/salary/promotion and couldn't give a flying toss about anyone else. It's the exception who truly care about building ladders and making tables longer, rather than higher walls.

It's the exception who truly care about building ladders and making tables longer, rather than higher walls.

I don't disagree per se, but that's a ridiculously short sighted perspective and can actually be a career killer in the long run.

While I have worked my arse off for my career and continue to do so, I'll freely admit that every step up the ladder I've taken has been a community effort to some degree: I was pulled from above from leaders who recognised my potential and still am. I have also got the privilege (and I mean it!!!) of being pushed from below by extraordinary men and women who work for me - just as I push my own sponsors.

I'm lucky in this respect in that my line of work is, at its core, a people business - whatever it says on the tin. As such, our careers are never made in a vacuum; getting that promotion without support from your managers and peers but also, crucially, the people you lead, is nigh impossible.

Which is all a roundabout way of saying: I'm optimistic that Darwinian style economic selection will eventually breed out the reactionary types quite naturally. Not that it's going to happen any time soon, but it inevitably will.

I had the same experience Bossy (so I'm far from bitter about my own career) but I maintain that the vast majority of people fundamentally don't give this stuff any real thought - they just pull up the drawbridge.

My best mate is Head of Sourcing EMEA for a large tech organisation and has been told to favour the woman if he has two equal candidates. He said this is highly illegal and is in a somewhat difficult situation as he knows his seniors won’t budge and he doesn’t want to stick his neck out, but one of his team has now challenged this by email (i.e. created an audit trail).

a large tech organisation and has been told to favour the woman if he has two equal candidates. He said this is highly illegal
If the candidates are equal in every other way it is NOT illegal to favour the woman.
www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/discrimination-at-work/what-doesn-t-count-as-discrimination-at-work/discrimination-at-work-positive-action/

Your mate is not very well informed for a head of sourcing