The Fix

Michelle P. King

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781471193064
• eBook ISBN: 9781471193057
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Careers
• Index: Business

'A passionate, practical roadmap for addressing inequality and finally making our workplaces work for women'– Arianna Huffington Foreword by Gillian Anderson and Jennifer Nadel For years, we've been telling women that in order to succeed at work, they need to change themselves first – lean in, negotiate like a man, don't be too polite or you'll never succeed (like a man). But after sixteen years working with major Fortune 500 companies as a leading gender-equality expert, Michelle P. King has realised one simple truth: the tired advice of fixing women doesn't fix anything. The reality is that workplaces are gendered; they were designed by men for men. Based on King's research and exclusive interviews with major companies and thought leaders, The Fix reveals the hidden sexism and invisible barriers holding women back at work every day. Women are passed over for promotions, paid less and pushed out of the workforce – not because they aren't good enough, but because they don't fit the masculine ideal. In this fascinating and empowering book, King reveals the barriers that inhibit women – and men – at all stages of their careers and provides readers with a clear set of takeaways to help them thrive as they fight for change from within.

Part I AWARENESS

“We can’t tackle inequality if we are in denial it even exists.”

1.

Who Broke the Workplace?

A Brief History

Growing up, I was severely nearsighted, but no one knew it. I didn’t even know it because when vision deteriorates it happens slowly and over many years. For me, this continued until I was twelve, at which point my vision was so poor that I couldn’t see my own reflection in the mirror. I literally couldn’t see myself. It probably comes as no surprise that because I couldn’t see, I struggled in school. I couldn’t spell or do math. I was disruptive in class and talked too much. I also had braces, freckles, pale skin, and one of those 1970s bowl haircuts, which didn’t help. Over time, I began to feel as though I was the student teachers didn’t want in their class—I also began to believe that I wasn’t good enough.

Then one day my favorite teacher, Ms. Anderson, realized the problem was that I couldn’t see, so I was talking a lot in class to try and understand what was being written on the board. I had managed to get by for so long relying on memory alone. The day I finally got glasses, I didn’t care that my classmates teased me for wearing them, because now I could see. The downside was now I could see that ’70s bowl haircut, which came as a bit of a shock. But I will never forget those first few days. I just stared at all the details around me. The leaves on the trees. The handwriting on the board. I could see everything. I could even see myself.

This experience is a perfect metaphor for gender inequality at work. We don’t see things for what they are, which makes it impossible to truly understand why there are so few women in leadership positions. We have been looking at women for so long because we believed that they are the problem that we have not seen all the ways workplaces do not value or serve them. This has made us blind to the inequality both women and men experience in workplaces today.

It has also made us blind to how capable women are. In 2003, researchers Alice Eagly from Northwestern University and Linda Carli from Wellesley College conducted a review of more than 162 studies on leadership and found that women’s leadership style more closely aligns with contemporary views of good leadership, as they are collaborative, democratic, and communicative.¹ The name for this leadership style is transformational, and it is associated with greater organizational success compared to traditional command-and-control leadership styles. When it comes to managing employees, women tend to be empathetic, supportive, and good at building relationships—all of which are important skills for leading.² As managers, on average, women tend to foster inclusion, collaborative problem solving, and team cohesiveness. Ultimately, women lead in a way that puts the team’s and organization’s interests ahead of their own, which is good for business.

It is not just an issue of leadership or interpersonal stylistic differences. Often women are more qualified. As of 2016, women held more advanced degrees than men. The number of young women enrolled in tertiary education currently surpasses that of young men globally.³ We raise young women to believe that if they work hard they can do anything, and clearly based on this research they have the capabilities to do just that. So, the question then remains: What’s holding women back?

Gender inequality exists because organizations are set up to enable one type of worker to succeed, and this tends to be a white, middle-class, heterosexual, able-bodied male. Importantly though, this male prototype is also known for making work the number-one priority and engaging in behaviors that are dominant, assertive, aggressive, competitive, and even exclusionary, to get ahead. The more closely employees align to this ideal, the more likely they are to succeed, which is why workplaces work better for some men. But how did this happen? Who broke the workplace, making it systematically challenging for women?

To answer these questions and give context to our unequal and outdated organizational cultures, we need to understand where this all started. Once we understand how we got here, it becomes easier to see that workplaces are not only “gendered”—that is, dominated and favoring one gender and set of behaviors over the other—but how and why workplaces became gendered in the first place. It’s like putting on a pair of glasses that will finally reveal the missing details. We need 20/20 vision to truly see why typical corporate diversity programs fall short, and finally fix the workplace once and for all—instead of placing the onus on women to fix themselves.

How Patriarchy Handcuffs Men and Women

Remember Sarah from this book’s introduction? She was the incredibly competent, intelligent, creative leader I incessantly tried to have promoted to manager status. She was continually passed over by the senior executive team, led by the COO. All the managers in the room agreed with the arguments put forward to promote her. After three years of self-improvement, working longer and harder hours, and evolving her leadership capabilities with compelling results, Sarah had earned a seat at the leadership table. Yet even with a large consensus, Sarah needed the COO’s endorsement—he was the unofficial patriarch of the company. He was expected to have the last word—no matter how ludicrous or unfounded—and every leader in the room would accept his decision without argument or pushback.

Patriarchy—the belief that women are less valuable than men—is everywhere, and this is the foundational belief underpinning most of our workplaces today. It isn’t something most of us intentionally do or are even aware of. It is, however, ingrained; it is insidious, and until we can peel back the layers of its traditional underpinnings, we won’t fully understand how gender inequality works or what we need to do to solve it.

Where did the patriarchal belief originate? In his book Sapiens, author Yuval Noah Harari outlines a brief history of human life. He describes how through collective myths and stories, humans learned to cooperate with one another and advance. Shared beliefs enabled humankind to collaborate because they were all working with the same value system. While there isn’t an exact date for when patriarchy took hold, it is clear that at least since the Agricultural Revolution (which occurred at different times in different regions of the world) most societies have held the pervasive belief that men and masculinity are more valuable and important than women and femininity.⁴

When humans moved away from their hunter-gatherer lifestyles and began adopting agriculture as an additional way to obtain food, this created a hierarchical division of labor. Women took care of the children and the home and men worked in the fields to farm and produce food. You might be thinking that men and women assumed these different roles because of biological sex differences—men had the strength to work the fields and women were natural nurturers on the home front. But research actually reveals that boys and girls are socialized to perform gender roles linked to their sex.⁵ Gender is an integral part of our identities. As young girls and boys spend more time with their same-sex peers, they learn what behaviors are acceptable and expected. This determines not only how we interact but also the interests we pursue. For example, boys might be encouraged not to play with dolls or girls might be encouraged not to be superheroes. Adhering to these gender-appropriate behaviors is how children come to understand what it means to be a girl or a boy—and eventually women and men. It is important to note this creates tremendous challenges for any person who does not identify with the binary gender roles. Gender roles are set early in life and determine the expectations we hold for women and men. For example, even today women are assumed to be involved in housework and childcare. Men are encouraged to provide for their families.

These gender roles took hold as agricultural work became monetized and valued. Society placed a premium on men because the work they did was given a monetary value. In contrast, managing home life was never monetized and so “women’s work” wasn’t exactly prized. Patriarchy emerged from a division of labor and the value we associate with it. Men were able to undertake tasks associated with status and power, which further reinforced their higher social standing. Not only were men given the opportunity to do work that was deemed valuable, but without childcare and domestic responsibilities, they were free to establish themselves as leaders in nearly every aspect of society.

Over time, men and traditional masculinity became synonymous with power and leadership. Workplaces and systems were built by men to reinforce men’s power. At best, these work environments are blind to the needs of women, and at worst, they function to uphold the belief that men are supreme and women are simply not as valuable. This is patriarchy. It is a system that works to maintain men’s privilege, which leads to power, and reinforces the message that women are not as worthy as men.

The patriarchy may be taken for granted as the way things are, but not all societies function in this way; gender-egalitarian societies have existed before. While men and women in these societies differ in terms of their influence and power, there is no gender hierarchy. For example, in the book Fruit of the Motherland, Maria Lepowsky shares how the Vanatinai, a society in New Guinea, value men and women equally when it comes to making decisions, marriage, childcare, and sexual freedom.⁶

In today’s modern world, when women are clearly as capable of doing the same work as men, it’s time to leave the patriarchy where it belongs: in the past. Given that cooperation has been the key to survival for most of human history, it seems like an egalitarian society—one in which men and women are equally valued and can contribute to work in a meaningful way—might be in everyone’s best interests.

Patriarchy persists in most modern-day societies because men have maintained their dominance at work through established systems of inequality made up of policies, programs, practices, and personal beliefs. This keeps the status quo intact. Men are better able to preserve their political and economic power because organizations were designed to support them to advance, lead, and maintain power. This creates a cycle of male privilege, which is evident in the expectations we hold for how women and men should behave, known as “gender stereotyping.” In society, it is generally expected that men will conform to the masculine ideal of being a provider—someone who is powerful, strong, assertive, competitive, and dominant. Women need to adopt the feminine ideal of being a good homemaker—someone who is beautiful, submissive, meek, caring, and self-sacrificing. Evidence of gender stereotyping is everywhere, and it affects the design of the modern-day workplace.

I know it’s hard to believe with all of the supposed advances we’ve made in diversity and inclusion, but gender stereotyping is alive and well. In 2018, the Pew Research Center surveyed more than forty-five hundred Americans to understand what traits society values for men and women. The findings reveal that respondents are much more likely to use the word powerful in a positive way to describe men. The word provider is exclusively used to refer to men and traits such as strength, leadership, and ambition are valued more highly for men than for women. For women, respondents valued qualities that included beauty, compassion, kindness, and responsibility.⁷ The standards we hold for the ideal man and woman form our expectations for how people should behave. We want men and women to align their behavior to meet this standard at home and at work.

This is a lot to live up to—for both men and women. And it also comes at a cost. Women who are not compassionate are likely to be perceived negatively because they are violating the shared expectations and beliefs society holds for women. If women take on self-promoting “masculine” behaviors—like telling people what they are good at, asking for a promotion, owning their ambition, and highlighting their achievements at work—they tend to be viewed as less likable, less socially attractive, and subsequently less hirable than men who self-promote in this same way.⁸

It’s not just women who are penalized for going against gender expectations. If men behave in a way that is seen as “feminine”—by showing their emotions, demonstrating compassion to colleagues, or being modest about their achievements—they are likely to be seen as less leader-like, because this isn’t the type of behavior we associate with masculinity and power.⁹

Gender stereotypes are more than just biases, they are handcuffs. They limit how men and women can behave. When it comes to gender stereotypes in workplaces today, we all face the same challenge: fit in or forget it.

Meet Don Draper: The Ideal Standard for Men and Women at Work

During my time in HR, I used to manage the performance-appraisal process for a large multinational company, which was very similar to the promotion process undertaken for Sarah. Every year I would meet with the senior leadership team—all of whom were white males—and we would debate which employees had performed the best. Those that did well would get a high-performance rating and hefty bonus. The process was often painful and lacked substance. Leaders would rely on weak arguments or clichés to make their case, saying things like “He di...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Introduction: It’s Not a Woman Problem, It’s a Work Problem
• Part I: Awareness
• Part II: Understanding
• Part III: Action
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright