How to Retain Women in Your Organization, and Support Their Success
What group makes up half of our population, yet only 15.6% of corporate officers in Fortune 500 companies? What group holds half of all management and professional positions in the United States, but less than 3% of the CEO positions in the Fortune 500? Women!
Moreover, studies have shown that companies with the highest representation of women (top 10%) on their top management teams had better financial performance than did the group with the lowest women’s representation. Women purchase 83% of all products and services in the United States, so it makes sense that your employees reflect your customer base. In order to be successful, companies need to recognize what they are doing with respect to women, where they’re succeeding and where they need to improve.
What you can do. You can play a significant role in conveying the importance of the topic, assess what is being done well at your organization and what needs to be improved, and work toward implementing the necessary changes.
In my work helping women succeed in business, I’ve found that two kinds of barriers exist: one is external, male dominated organizations with a subconscious bias against women; the other is internal, how women themselves operate in the corporate world. Much of this is based on gender socialization in the United States. Obviously, there are exceptions to all of these situations. But there has been significant research done, and I’ve witnessed plenty of it in my fifteen-plus years in corporate America. Corporations need to pay attention to the barriers to minimize them, thereby maximizing their success, and women need to be aware of how they position themselves.
Bringing up gender biases in the workforce is a touchy subject. Some perceive it’s casting women as the victim. However, if we don’t admit it can exist, it can’t be addressed. In her book Necessary Dreams, Anne Fels cites a significant amount of research that shows women continue to receive less recognition for their accomplishments than men. This starts at pre-school and happens with both male and female evaluators. For example, in one study, two groups of people were asked to evaluate particular items, such as articles, paintings, and resumes. The names attached to the items were either clearly male or female, but reversed for the two groups. So, what one group believed was created by a man, the other believed was created by a woman. Regardless of the items, when they were credited to a man, they were rated higher than when credited to a woman. This discrepancy was consistent across male and female evaluators. What you can do. Create objective standards for success at your organization. Make success transparent, including performance measurements and competencies. When standards are objective, women succeed.
Another result of male-dominated organizations is that many are structured on the idea that the employee (a man) had someone at home (a wife) taking care of the children and house. This is rarely the case anymore. The fact that women still bear a disproportionate burden of childcare, house care and eldercare results in an additional stress on them in the workplace, and often results in what has been termed “opting out”. See “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps” by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce in the Harvard Business Review (March 2005). It offers a comprehensive overview of that phenomenon and what companies can do to reverse the brain drain of women leaving corporate America, and help women when they are ready to reenter it.
What you can do. Support flexible workplaces, put informal structures in place to stay in contact with strong people who have left your company, and make sure someone contacts them on a regular basis.
Talking about internal barriers that women create for themselves can bring up a different kind of resistance, as people perceive it as “blaming the victim.” Instead this approach empowers women to take control of their destinies by finding techniques that increase their success.
Finding a voice in corporate America is still a big issue for women. The range of issues includes not feeling comfortable speaking in public (especially when being the only woman in a group) to feeling very comfortable to speaking in public, but not having your ideas taken seriously because you are a woman. In a recent Catalyst report about women on Board of Directors, a woman director confirmed that “they’re predisposed against hearing you because you’ve got on a skirt.”
In a recent focus groups of professional corporate women, one woman stated it well when she said “If I’m 99% sure, I’ll talk like I’m 95% sure, as opposed to men who talk like they are 150% sure even when they are not. We need more confidence in our communication.”
There are ways of communicating that decrease the speaker’s credibility, which I call “power sappers.” They are more common in women and include the following:
• When stating an opinion, qualifying it too much ahead of time. For example, leading off with negating phrases, like “I am not the expert on this,” or “I could be wrong on this”.
• Saying “maybe” or “I think” even when making a definite statement.
• Using a lot of “ums” or other fillers in speech.
• Ending sentences with “… OK?”
• Saying “I’m sorry” when it’s not necessary.
• Talking too much when somebody does not want to hear all of the details.
• Phrasing statements as questions by pitching your voice up at the end of the sentence.
Women often fail to speak up if they don’t think they have the precise answer or have something significant to say. The result can be that they don’t say much and they lose credibility. I have seen examples of this even on company boards of directors and it results in the woman failing.
What you can do. Become aware of these phenomenons and point them out when they are occurring (both to women and men). Mentor the women in your organization who are not communicating effectively.
You can have a significant impact on how women succeed in organization by communicating the benefits, becoming aware of the obstacles, and putting action steps in place to address problems or take advantage of opportunities. This is not something to do simply because it is the right thing to do, but because it is good for business. It will pay off for your company in terms of increased retention, productivity and morale. And, on the bottom line.
Kerrie Halmi of Halmi Performance Consulting specializes in increasing women’s success in business through speaking, coaching and facilitation. Kerrie has over fifteen years of experience in the Human Resources field
with such clients as eBay, Bank of America and Kaiser. She received her MBA from the University of Michigan and is certified in coaching with Corporate Coach University International.
See
http://www.halmiperformance.com
Posted September 5, 2008 
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