Yahoo Finance ‘We need to stop fixing women’
Monday 8 March marks International Women’s Day. Follow Yahoo as we explore how 2020 impacted Australian women and how they're succeeding in their careers, finances and lives.
Women need to apologise less. Women need to be more assertive. Women need to deepen their voices to sound more authoritative. Women need to lean in.
International Women's Day: ‘Overwhelmed with orders’: Meet the Aussie woman redefining veganism
International Women's Day: Four opportunities for women in 2021
International Women's Day: Why the gender super gap is a bigger issue than we thought
These are all listed as the common characteristics women need to change to make it in the corporate world.
And while they’re generally well-meaning, according to CEO of leadership consultancy The Dream Collective, Sarah Liu, these types of advice completely miss the point.
Liu launched The Dream Collective in 2010 after seeing the lack of support and mentoring for mid-career women in Australia.
It aims to bring more women into leadership roles, create more diverse workplaces and support leaders to reach their full potential, with a focus on the technology sector.
“Throughout my career, I've always been quite ambitious [and was] very hungry for career progression and leadership development, but was confronted by the lack of development opportunities available for women, particularly that mid-career stage,” Liu told Yahoo Finance.
“And in that process, I realised that there were a lot of systemic barriers in place to actually hold women back.”
While the assumption is that women’s careers flag at that halfway stage due to childcare, there’s more to the story, Liu said.
When women negotiate, they’re usually met with more resistance, while they also come up against the “likeability bias”, in which women are judged more harshly on their warmth at work than men.
That’s backed up by research by LinkedIn and Bain Capital, which found that cultural norms and subconscious bias are acting as barriers to women’s progression.
Additionally, women’s success also often hinges on the support of their managers.
“I might be at a company whose CEO comes out and says, ‘We really want to champion women in the workplace.’ But if my direct manager doesn’t actually support me, and give me a pathway to development and growth…then that is why for women, often we see a drop off in terms of career duration," Liu said.
Nearly half of all Australian women said they feel they get fewer opportunities and smaller pay than men, according to new findings from LinkedIn.
And 45 per cent feel they've missed out on a promotion by dint of being female.
Liu said that all points to an important lesson: “In the word’s of Catherine Fox’s book - we need to stop fixing women. We really need to understand if we’re solving the right problem or not.”
Fox, who published Stop Fixing Women in 2019, said there is a huge focus on women’s “deficiencies”, rather than the structural inequalities that hamstring women at work straight out of the gate.
“We’ve then been using a cookie cutter approach to try to turn women into this idea of a ‘perfect’ employee, which is usually based on a stereotypical man,” Fox told Macquarie University.
“It reinforces the stereotypes that cause the problem in the first place. For example, by running ‘Women in Leadership’ workshops, you’re reminding your workforce that women need to be taught a particular set of different skills, which often reinforces existing bias.”
The problem is that the ideal leader is now seen as a white man, statistically named David or Peter, Liu said.
Or, as she described: “Pale, stale and male.”
And these biases extend out beyond the gender divide, with limited leadership ideals further denting progress for people of colour, people with disabilities, people with different sexualities and even different age groups.
While only 12 per cent of the world are Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic (WEIRD), that’s what 80 per cent of our leaders look like, Joseph Henrich wrote in his 2020 book The Weirdest People in the World.
As Liu said, it creates excuses for recruiters and managers to make decisions based on an outdated idea of what is “good” and what success looks like.
“You look at Government and you look at all of the recent disappointment that’s coming out [and that’s] because there isn’t diverse representation,” Liu said.
“Even if it’s not out of a malicious intent - the reality is they do not get it. Their reality and their exposure to the world is very limited. We need to realise that we are letting 12 per cent of the population lead 100 per cent of the world, which is where that fundamental flaw is.”
The solution lies in creating male allies, and in radical structural change.
Simply hiring more women into roles won’t work to address the problems if the workplace itself is still stuck with outdated ideas of “good” work and leadership.
“The key message is the importance of allyship. Every time we talk about women, I want to bring men into the picture,” Liu said.
“How can men be allies and how can we as women bring men on the journey with us, let it be at home with partners, brothers, family or with colleagues, managers, bosses, direct reports?
“[We need to] bring them on the journey, have them join in on the conversation and actually hold them accountable.”
Take control of your money and learn to maximise it with the Women’s Money Movement! Join the club on LinkedIn and follow Yahoo Finance Australia on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to the free Fully Briefed daily newsletter.
