Gender & Leadership

Browsing through my laptop, I found this essay I'd written as the final report for the Gender & Leadership elective during my Post Graduate Program in Management. The course instructors were Profs. Lynda Moore and Stacy Blake-Beard from Simmons Graduate School of Management.

Thought it might be an interesting read for some out here.

The most memorable learning came right in the first class. Through the readings and the experiences share by classmates, I realized that although the modern workplace has come a long way in trying to ensure equality of opportunity for men and women, there is still a long way to go to obtain genuine equality. Women continue to face covert discrimination in terms of appraisal parameters and pay as well. A woman’s simultaneous role as a wife/mother is seen as being competitive to her career interest whereas the same is not the case with a man’s role as a husband/father. Although the attitude is slowly changing, many companies still believe that women are less committed to their careers and will sooner or later sacrifice their career for the sake of a family.

The class discussions revealed that many successful career women have had to make a forced “choice” in choosing their careers over families and inwardly miss the comfort of a family. In the Indian context again, many successful career women are either single or have very strong family support systems. (As per the reading Top 25 most powerful business women in India). Even so, having such supportive husbands who are willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the wife’s career is a very rare occurrence.

The readings also emphasised the benefits of having a mentor at the workplace and the implications of mentorship for a successful career. Not so obvious was the research that revealed that women do better if they have men for mentors, because having a man mentor helps them “break into” the “old boy’s network” and gain acceptance for their competence as it is vouched for by the man who takes her under his guidance. However, the implications of such a strategy are quite profound. First, not all women may find it comfortable to request for a male mentor. Second, even if they do request, they risk alienating other women who may have agreed/wanted to mentor them. Thirdly, there is a fine balance that must be maintained in a man-woman mentor-mentee relationship. There is the risk of office gossip, and any contact outside of office may be misconstrued to have sexual overtones. One possible way of averting this is to have a small group of 2-3 senior colleagues take responsibility for a group of junior colleagues. That way all activity, designed to promote mentor-mentee relationship, outside of work will have to be as a group and the chances for malicious gossip is minimised. Another memorable framework for analyzing networks was the matrix based on agreement and trust to classify contacts, and using this to understand when and how to leverage each type of contact. For example, when the need is to get a contrary but honest opinion, it is best to go to an opponent.

Despite being capable and having adequate qualifications, on the ground realities also sometimes affect women adversely, such as the restriction placed on women’s work roles in conservative cultures, not being taken as a serious professional, or that traditionally, women are expected to make career moves keeping in mind their partner’s career choices, whereas reciprocity remains rare. In this matter, I see that the policy followed by some of the Indian IT firms, which firstly encourage people to refer and have their significant other join the same company, and secondly, help such couples to be geographically close (catering to the familial need) while working on separate projects (to prevent overt in-office competition), as a good policy.

Highlighting the simultaneity that women face, Dr. Uma spoke of her career journey and how she has achieved significant success as a businessperson, mother, and wife. The most striking insight I obtained from her talk was the fact that successful women have to typically endure office gossip as they climb the ladder of success. While she advised budding women managers to take such things in their stride, I’ve determined that as a male manager, in the future, I will not only refrain from indulging in some gossip but also actively try to reduce such gossip if I see it occurring within my team/organization. Publicly congratulating women for their professional accomplishments – as and when they are achieved – will reduce such gossip during promotion times. Also, a possible best practice that can be initiated would recommend that if a male and female colleague have to meet outside of office, it would help to meet in a public place (such as a coffee-shop) as against either one going to the residence of the other, which could lead to unnecessary gossip.
Modern women are every bit as focussed on and committed to their careers as men are and expect to get the same opportunities for career advancement. This can present some practical challenges as was illustrated by Ellen Moore’s case where she desired to take up an opportunity available in Saudi Arabia, but her male manager expressed reservations because of the country’s male dominated culture that would not make enable her to be taken seriously. It is easy to understand the woman’s disappointment and feeling of being marginalized in the corporate world in such a situation, but the lesson for managers is to handle such situations with tact. Managers can research and present precedents where the company genuinely tried to experiment by sending a woman into such situations but failed due to extraneous circumstances. Further, the managers must explain the nuances of the situation and then leave the final choice to the woman. If she wants to go ahead, the manager must let her. If she succeeds, it is good for the company and if she doesn’t (due to external circumstances beyond her control), she would admit it and then can be recalled into the previous assignment. It is important to note that during such recall, a manager must not consider the woman to have “failed” and it must not negatively affect her appraisal or career path. After all, the company was well aware that the chance of success was very slim, anyhow.

While the case of Ellen Moore may appear to be demonstrating the boundaries presented to geographical cross-boundary movement for women, it also has a subtle theme that becoming culturally sensitive and learning to working within the boundaries of the host country is paramount, irrespective of gender. A male manager may not face constraints in entering the country, but once there it is his cultural intelligence that will help him motivate local employees and achieve the organizational objectives.

As organizations become aware of the importance of giving women equal opportunity and to retain talent, there is a concerted effort on the part of companies to recruit, train, promote, and retain women employees. An example of this was in the Montreal Bank case. Such initiatives must be encouraged and driven by the CEO office, but the caveat is that programs designed for this purpose must be careful not to reverse discriminate against men or to be construed as promoting women based on gender rather than for capabilities. If such perceptions pervade the organization, there is likely to be intense discontentment among the men who will only resent the success of their women colleagues even more. Carried to an extreme, the remedy may actually turn out to be worse than the disease.

Stereotypes continue to pervade the workplace. Men leaders are expected to be aggressive, independent, competent, and dominant whereas women are expected to be emotional, submissive, gentle, and tactful. If a woman’s behaviour exhibits traits associated with male leaders, she isn’t perceived to be a leader, but as someone who someone who is “pushy”. Similarly, if men exhibit traits associated with women, they are perceived to be “soft” and not leadership material. Such stereotyping may force people to try and fit into the expected mould and thereby diminish their effectiveness as leaders because they are trying to be someone different from their natural selves. Possibly, such stereotyping is the result of childhood experiences where children are taught to behave in ways expected of their gender. Research has proven that children who play with toys marketed for their gender are joined by their peers, whereas children who play with toys meant for the opposite gender are left alone (Maccoby, 1998). As parents, it is important to be aware of the long term implications of such behaviour on the psyche of the child.

These stereotypes also affect work-life balance. While many (typically male) managers expect and understand women’s dual commitment to work and home, the same benefit is not accorded to male employees. Implicitly, the assumption made is that all men are driven, aggressive, and career-oriented and will happily put their personal family life on the backburner for corporate advancement. (An example of this can be seen in the company policies many companies in India follow. While women are given the legally stipulated paid maternity leave of 3 months, men get at the most 5 days of paternity leave, but in many cases even this is not given. In other cases, the policy exists purely on paper as men are reluctant to avail of leave for fear of being perceived as not committed to work.) This is a gross generalization, because many men want to accord a high priority to the family as well. If men are seen to be openly giving their personal life a high priority, they run the risk of being typecast as not being committed to work and it could have implications for career promotions. It is important to understand that both men and women need to have a healthy work life balance and that this is in the company’s best interest. Recent media reports are rife with stories of rising lifestyle diseases in urban India due to long excessive work hours and excessive stress. Losing valuable talented employees due to lifestyle diseases is far worse for a company than to retain the employees but keeping them happy by giving sufficient avenues to achieve a work-life balance.

For me, as an aspiring manager and corporate leader, another significant revelation lay in the experiences shared by my classmates. A vast majority of them who had had male managers typically attributed transactional leadership qualities to them but those who had had female managers attributed transformational leadership to the women. And these opinions are not without basis. My first manager when I was a fresh engineering graduate was a woman who I would describe as calm, understanding, and supportive. A few years later, I was working under a man who was aggressive, blunt, and task oriented. Both of them demanded performance but it was how they demanded it that differed. As a rookie in the industry, I found it comforting to have a manager who was relationship oriented, but prompting me to raise the bar higher and propelling me beyond it required someone who was more demanding. In addition, in a previous elective course (Managing Teams), we learnt that neither transactional nor transformational management techniques are always appropriate. Hence, men and women managers have a lot to learn from each other. This was proven by the research of Cann and Siegfred (1990) who say that “effective leaders, those who can respond successfully to the variety of demands and situations encountered by leaders, must be behaviourally androgynous.”

The underlying current to all the classes was that while the realization for the need for change was growing, there was little consensus on how such change must be effected. Making radical, full blown changes (such as replacing half of top management with women) are fraught with the dangers of being viewed as unmeritocratic and rousing resentment against the women so chosen. Besides, corporations being risk averse will simply not make radical changes, no matter how desirable. Simple verbal/written commitment to empowerment of women at the workplace can appear to be paying lip sympathy. A fine balance must be achieved, and the idea of tempered radicalism that was introduced seems perfect to achieve change while ensuring that everybody understands the reasons behind the policies, gets buy-in so that future efforts are not sabotaged, and then implements it effectively.

I took this course in order to sensitise myself to gender related issues at the workplace. In the class where we discussed voice, I noticed that many of the women students came up with personal anecdotes where they had to stand up for themselves – often against convention and family – to do what they believed was in their best interest. That really hit home, because I’ve rarely felt the conventional pressures to conform and I realized that we men get away relatively easy with being rebels. That class has been imprinted in my mind and it has implications on my decision making skills at the workplace.

Prior to ISB and this course, I would rarely have considered approaching work-situation related problems using the lens of Gender. But now, I realize that there is a practical reason to look at situations and decisions from the perspective of how both genders would perceive it. I’m now able to appreciate that rationalizing a business situation or decision from a Gender perspective is not an exercise in bashing either men or women, but simply being cognizant of the role interplay each gender is expected to play at work and in the society and to harmonize those expectations for mutual benefit of the company as well as the employee.