How men and women see gender equality differently

How do you solve a conflict between two parties if one of the
parties does not believe there is a problem, or only recognizes it
as a small issue, while the other party sees a large and
continuing problem?
This is no doubt the constant question posed by marriage
counsellors. And it applies to many other issues such as climate
change, citizen/police interactions, and for the purposes of this
blog post, to women’s progress.
We all have our own lenses through which we see the world. Our
window to the world is shaped by experience, hopefulness,
unconscious beliefs, personal filters. The challenge becomes
how to reconcile opposing and strongly held beliefs in the
interest of improving a situation.
Men and women: living in two different worlds?
I am constantly intrigued by statistics that show opposing
reactions toward women’s career progression and gender parity.
Catherine Fox, former Corporate Woman columnist for the
Australian Financial Review, found that 72% of male senior
executives agreed with the statement that much progress had
been made towards women’s empowerment and career
progression. Of the female executives surveyed, 71% disagreed
with that statement.
The Financial Times , in a study last year on Women in Asset
Management , found that 37% of female asset managers said the
situation for women in fund management had improved; 70% of
male asset managers believed the situation had improved. In the
same study, 51% of women in fund management said quotas
would improve matters; 77% of men in fund management said
quotas would not improve matters.
In a Fortune Magazine research report by Kieran Snyder on how
men and women were described in personnel reviews, 76% of
feedback on women included comments on personality such as
terms like abrasive, judgemental and strident. Just 2% of reviews
on men included those types of comments.
In a Harvard Business Review article about Harvard Business
School graduates, which looked at career expectations between
graduating husbands and wives, Robin Ely found that half of the
men thought their career would take priority. Almost all the
women thought their careers would take equal priority to their
husband’s. When asked about major caregiver roles, 75% of the
men believed their wife would take on most of the responsibility;
50% of the women thought they would take on most of this type
of work. (Ironically, in reality 86% of the women took on the
major caregiver roles, exceeding men’s expectations!)
A study by Chuck Shelton shows how men and women are living
in different worlds. When asked to rate diversity effectiveness
among white male leaders in their companies, 45% of white men
gave their diversity efforts positive ratings. Among women and
people of colour, only 21% agreed with that positive rating.
Understanding the different viewpoints
What causes this discrepancy of world view? And who is right?
I posed the latter question to Judith Resnik, Arthur Liman
Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Her answer was that both
men and women are right, at least based on what they are
observing and what facts or cues they give weight to for their
differing conclusions. Several explanations can be put forward
for these differences:
1. Potential versus performance
Men assume policy leads to positive impact. Women see that
these policies are not leading to positive outcomes. For example,
men saw that there was a programme to mentor women, which
they viewed as an affirmative programme to help women’s
progress. Women saw no results from the mentoring
programme. For men it was the potential and the effort that gave
them a sense of well-being. For women their conclusion of
dissatisfaction was based on performance.
Professor Cheryl Kaiser of the University of Washington refers to
the “illusion of inclusion” in which people believe that
discrimination and unfair practices can’t exist if there is a
diversity office or set of programmes in place directed at these
practices. There can be a distinct gap between the formal
programmes and the informal work culture, thereby setting up
the potential for the illusion.
2. Confirmation bias
We all do this. It is the phenomenon of sorting facts and
observations in a way that confirms what we already believe. So
if men think progress is being made for women, they will place
more weight on the facts they see and believe confirm the
advancement, and pay less attention to the impact of the
impediments. Women will similarly focus more on the facts that
confirm lack of progress and less on the advancements.
3. Cui bono?
Who most feels the impact of the unlevel playing field? When it
comes to gender issues, men generally don’t feel the impact (this
may not include men from historically powerless groups, who
certainly can feel the effects). For women, gender issues have
full impact, affecting their lives constantly. Our gender identities
shape what hurts and helps us, knowingly or unknowingly. We
are all right and we are all wrong in our different lenses.
4. We want the same things
Both men and women are looking for the same thing at work,
including compelling colleagues, mutual values and challenging
work. Based on their experiences, men might be more likely to
achieve those work goals; women, on the other hand, may have
experiences that create a diminished sense of satisfaction. Given
these feelings of dissatisfaction in the workplace, women may
have a lower threshold when it comes to deciding whether to
leave the world of work or not.
If you were a company executive and were informed that there
was a gap in perceptions such as those described in the
statistics above, at what level does that become a problem?
What should you do? If the gap exceeds 5-10% that is probably a
signal that the formal programmes and articulated visions of
leaders are not matching the realities of the workplace. In other
words, “talk is cheap” and more needs to be done. As Aaron A.
Dhir, Associate Professor of Law, York University, Toronto found
after studying Fortune 500 annual reports , there is no correlation
between a company’s annual report, which extols the value of
diversity and has lovely photos of their diverse workforce, and
the actual outcomes and progress a company makes in their
diversity efforts.
Leaders: look through another lens
Information rather than anecdotes always helps. For a leader it
means awareness and the need to probe more deeply into what
causes the gaps. Focus groups and internal workforce surveys
disaggregated by gender (or other salient identities) can help.
The leadership may believe, looking through their lens, that the
organization has strong programmes for hiring, evaluation and
feedback, career development and promotions, access to critical
assignments, mentoring and sponsoring, and other inclusive
practices. But leaders should be looking at how these actually
get implemented. And, importantly, how does any particular
group see and experience the outcomes of these programmes?
Is their lens different than that of the leaders?
We need a shared understanding of each of our experiences if
we are to ever close the gaps in our world views and make the
changes needed to improve everyone’s lives. Any marriage
counsellor will tell you that.
Author: Laura Liswood is Secretary-General of the Council of Women
World Leaders.