SteffanieFeuer.com - Steffanie Feuer's Blog

Entries in Gender (2)

Monday

08Feb2010

Inequality - Women & The Baby Issue

Monday, February 8, 2010 at 7:54PM

In my current research, I keep discovering how great the inequality is for women within my sector. In my current organization, women make-up a majority of the membership. Yet, when looking at the number of those women who are in executive positions the number is miniscule. It drives me nuts! As a woman, I plan to help fix this. The plan on how we will help women in my sector is still in the blueprint stages and is forthcoming.

Bellow is an article about Silicon Valley. As many can guess, the tech sector, is lacking in women. Here is Stacey Higginbotham's article Silicon Valley Has a Women Problem, But Women Still Have a Baby Problem.

A post yesterday on TechCrunch did a wonderful job of illustrating how many more men than women there are in the U.S. venture capital industry — and how that imbalance extends to tech entrepreneurs. It also extrapolated a rationalization for this gap that, while reasonable, was incorrect. Silicon Valley’s gender problem isn’t that complicated — it boils down to babies. As in, those who have them can’t be a startup CEO, too.

Vivek Wadhwa, the author of the TechCrunch post, included a nice list of reasons why women entrepreneurs and women-led venture-backed companies are scarce:

Sharon Vosmek, CEO of venture accelerator Astia doesn’t think that VCs have an overt bias against women. Instead, it’s the way the venture-capital industry operates. Vosmek says that these “systematic or hidden biases” include: 1. that VCs hold clear stereotypes of successful CEOs (they call it pattern recognition, but in other industries they call it profiling or stereotyping.) John Doerr publicly stated that his most successful investments – and the no-brainer pattern for future investments – were in founders who were white, male, under 30, nerds, with no social life who dropped out of Harvard or Stanford (2009 NVCA conference). 2. VCs invest in people they know. If women aren’t in their natural networks, they won’t get through the door. We know that still today, men and women network in separate business networks. 3. VCs want to invest in serial entrepreneurs. (This further reduces the chance for woman entrepreneurs.) 4. The VC community is obviously male dominated, and it just got worse…after the cold freeze VCs experienced over the past 24 months, many women partners exited the industry. As the Diana Project research shows, a firm with women General Partners is more likely to invest in women entrepreneurs.

However, it was a comment from TechCrunch reader Chem that actually laid bare the issue of why women aren’t better represented in tech — essentially, it’s because women have babies, and the perception is that when we do, we leave the workforce to take care of them. And while Chem’s stereotype isn’t correct ( I was back at work and even took on a more demanding job soon after my daughter was born), the fact that women are “supposed” to bear the brunt of raising children is a huge reason why women aren’t more visible at the helm of venture-backed startups. It’s the babies, stupid.

Or rather, it’s the idea that women should shoulder the burden of raising children, an idea that dominates our society to such a degree that many women and men buy into it without question. Society at large explicitly perpetuates motherhood and not parenthood (check out the New York Times, from stories that demand mothers learn how to speak nanny, to the spate of “wow-men-are-now-staying-at-home” stories, and implicitly enforces the status quo through its policies around access to childcare for babies, school calendars and thousands of other complicating factors that any family, be they dual-income or single-parent, must navigate.

And when that navigation does require a trade-off, it’s generally still the mother that makes it. Which means that yes, once women have babies there are forces that can keep them from taking on a 90-hour-a-week startup gig. We can bemoan a scarcity of female role models in tech, entice women into the math and science professions or even blame women who leave the work force to take care of kids for the lack of gender diversity, but to fix the problem, we’re going to have to discuss the lack of parity between men and women when it comes to raising children.

Because Wadhwa is right: Gender diversity is important, and women shouldn’t have to choose between raising a family and building a startup any more than men should.

Steffanie Feuer |

Are Your Best Female Employees a Flight Risk?

Monday, October 5, 2009 at 8:34PM

Another great post over at the HBR Blogs. This post was written by Sylvia Ann Hewlett.

I highly encourage everyone to think about this. There is a similar correlation to young professionals leaving the office and the nonprofit industry. The lack of perceived value, promotion potential, adaption to new technologies and work styles creates motivation for younger employees to leave.

One of your company's most powerful competitive weapons may at this very moment be cleaning out her desk — or contemplating doing so. Can you afford to let her go?

In researching my forthcoming book, Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down, we found that in the wake of last year's financial crash, high-powered women were more than twice as likely as men — 84 percent compared with 40 percent — to be seriously thinking jumping ship. And when the head and heart are out the door, the rest of the body is sure to follow.

Women are falling victim to two types of attrition: they're being disproportionately let go and they're disproportionately quitting. Yet whether they're jumping or being pushed, figures show that a female exodus is bad for business.

Research conducted by both Catalyst and McKinsey & Company demonstrates that companies with significant numbers of women in management have a much higher return on investment. In addition, a recent study from London Business School shows that when work teams are split 50-50 between men and women, productivity goes up. Gender balance, the research posits, counters groupthink — the tendency of homogenous groups to staunchly defend wrong-headed ideas because everyone in the group thinks the same way.

My favorite study, published last October by CERAM Business School, showed that firms in the CAC 40 (the French equivalent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average) with a high ratio of women in top management showed better resistance to the financial crisis. The fewer female managers a company has, the greater drop in its share price since January 2008.

The facts couldn't be clearer: smart women equal stronger companies.

As we begin to emerge from the global recession, far-seeing firms are building bench strength through programs that provide traction for both their high-performing and high-potential women.

Intel created career development workshops aimed squarely at retaining one of its most at-risk populations: mid-level female engineers. Data collected from exit interviews had revealed that many of these talented technologists were leaving not to spend time with their family but because they no longer felt challenged by or passionate about their work.

In the 21st century, talented people of both sexes often feel stymied by a traditional vertical career path that follows a straight line up a narrow ladder. Rather, they're interested in and open to lateral moves and a variety of "work style" options, such as flex schedules and telecommuting, as long as these options are intellectually and professionally challenging and/or satisfy personal obligations. Unfortunately, if they don't know how to articulate those desires or think they won't be satisfied by their current employer, they'll look elsewhere.

Intel's one-day career workshops encourage participants to identify what work they're truly excited by, as well as the type and quality of work they'd like to do in five, ten and fifteen years. They then practice how to effectively discuss their aspirations with their direct managers, who are also being taught to address the unique needs of mid-level female technologies. "For us, brain share is critical in up and down economies," says Rosalind L. Hudnell, corporate director of diversity. "We're just focused on retaining key talent in these tough times."

An increasing number of companies are teaching their high-potential women to think strategically about their careers — and encouraging their managers to support them.

Johnson & Johnson's program, called "Crossing the Finish Line," aims to provide multicultural director-level women with knowledge, skills and strategies to strengthen their abilities and further their careers, while enhancing their supervisors' ability to create and manage an environment that leverages diversity.

"This is not a remedial program," emphasizes JoAnn Heffernan Heisen, former chief diversity officer. "It's a career acceleration program because they are already recognized as high-potential talent." The four-day seminar has been so successful that a spin-off version now targets multicultural men.

Even firms in the troubled financial sector recognize the need to nurture this neglected resource. UBS recently launched two new programs aimed at supporting female officers. "Connecting with Clients in Turbulent Times" is tailored to the bank's client-facing women who want to take their revenue-generation skills to the next level. "Charting Your Future" is a career-counseling workshop customized for high-powered women in Asia.

"The message from management is that the bank cares," explains Mona Lau, global head of diversity and campus recruiting. "We want you to stay."

Download this success story to learn more about Intel's career development workshop.