Imran Hashim is HE. He hopes and years for equality of gender and race across the board. He knows that this is always going to be a challenging and difficult process, but one that is necessary for long term global competitiveness. Imran can be reached at imran.hashim@leaderonomics.com
“Research by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman that comprised a study they did of 7,280 leaders in 2011 looked at leaders that were employed in a variety of positions – from very senior management to individual contributors. In the study, they asked others to rate the leaders in 16 leadership competencies. According to the data, they found that women out-scored men in all but one of the 16 competencies. In fact, in 12 of the 16 areas women were better by a significant margin. They build better teams; they’re more liked and respected as managers; they tend to be able to combine intuitive and logical thinking more seamlessly; they’re more aware of the implications of the their own and others’ actions; and they think more accurately about the resources needed to accomplish a given outcome.”
“If all this is true - why are there only 33 of the Fortune 1,000 companies’ worldwide headed by women? What’s the deal? Why are women still so poorly represented, especially at the most senior levels?”
“Women don’t promote themselves. Of the 16 leadership competencies Zenger and Folkman assessed, the only one where men out-ranked women was developing a strategic perspective.”
“Men tend to focus on where they want to take their careers. They dedicate time to developing relationships that will support their success. They broaden the scope of their jobs to include work outside of their job descriptions. They clearly show their superiors that they have the capacity and capability to do more. A 2010 Kauffman Foundation study of women and men entrepreneurs found that women put far more emphasis on previous experience as a component of success than men. Women often feel they must be over-qualified to succeed. I think this is a key part of the why men see their careers take off.”
“Women, on the other hand, tend to put all their energy into simply doing the best possible job in their current position. Women seem much more inclined to believe that recognition and hard work go hand in hand. They think that if you simply work hard and get great results, you’ll get noticed and promoted.”
“Admirable, but not very accurate. A career is a journey and not a moment in time. Furthermore, I think men take more risk. Recently, when I gave a task to a man and a woman in our team, I immediately saw the man jump right in and start shooting. The women took her time to think it through and finally got going after a lot of prep. The man initially failed as he was firing everywhere but soon figured out an optimum solution. Both got fairly decent results in the end but the man did better with his end results in spite of his initial failures.”
“I believe that there may be light at the end of the tunnel, though. Young women in their 20s and 30s are starting to promote themselves more and tend to be as confident and ambitious as men.”
“The bigger question we need to ask is why are men generally commanding higher wages and salaries than women in the marketplace? According to an article on Bloomberg Business week in August of this year, women are only earning 77% of what men earned in 2010.”
“If men and women studying business pursue different career paths, it will affect their pay and ultimately the wage gap. The numbers show that male business graduates are more likely to pursue careers in finance and consulting, while women tend to follow careers in HR and marketing. Men seem to end up with jobs in the highest-paying industries.”
“So this pay gap is then not entirely a function of discrimination against women, although I’m sure there’s probably some of that too. It’s largely a function of the choices men and women make. There may be perfectly good tactical reasons for those choices – the need to repay student loans or the desire to start a family, for example.”
“Yes but the labour market argues that full-time working American women earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. However, these numbers don’t take into account the actual number of hours worked. And it turns out that women work fewer hours than men do. The main reason that women spend less time at work is obvious – children. Today, childless 20-something women do earn more than their male peers. But most are likely to cut back their hours after they havechildren, giving men the hours, and income advantage.”
“Are you suggesting that the wage and hours gap would shrink if employers offered more family-friendly policies such as flexible hours and child care facilities at the office? We don’t know if there is a way to design workplaces so that women would work more or men would work less or both. What we do know is that no one, anywhere, has yet figured out how to do it. Which means that for the foreseeable future, at least when it comes to income, women will remain behind. Yes, men do earn more than women on average, but not that much more when they work the same job and they have similar experience and abilities.”
“Yes, but we are still better managers than you guys!”
“But we still earn more!”
By DEBBIE POZZOBON and IMRAN HASHIM
mystarjob@leaderonomics.com
Post by Mr. Mohammad Haizuan Rozali
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