Don’t Just Choose to Challenge, Choose to Change

Now that Women's History Month is behind us, for some, gender equality goes onto the back burner. The wave of media attention on women and equality that annually marks the third month of the year begins to wan as the month winds down. But now’s not the time to return to the same-old status quo. 

This year's International Women’s Day theme was Choose to Challenge. Unlike a fad diet, however, this is not just a 30-day challenge. March was simply the starting block in this marathon to challenge the business world to get the right policies and practices in place so that we continue to move forward and offset the devastating impact of Covid on progress towards gender equality.

According to a new report by the World Economic Forum, 2020 was so devastating for gender equality globally that it will likely take another 151 years — 36 more than estimated just 12 months ago — to close the global gender gap. 

Don’t Just Clear The Hurdles – Get Rid Of Them

To me, choosing to challenge implies two things: an active choice, but also a decision as to what, or whom, you're going to challenge. To counteract trends such as the ones we’ve seen this year, it’s going to require a very active challenge at a far more foundational level than ever before.

This year I’m teaching an undergraduate class at Princeton University on gender in the startup world. As I undertook the research for my class, reflected on the readings, and prepared my lectures, I started to get dismayed by the severity of the macro (societal), meso (organizational) and micro (personal) gender-based barriers that are so comprehensively and consistently found in the literature. Surely it couldn't be this bad? Surely things have gotten better. Or have they just gotten worse?

I started to think about my own journey and experiences, and was equally disheartened at the number of instances during my career when I saw these barriers in action. The countless times I observed unconscious bias, the battles to ensure that women got adequate sponsorship and recognition, the constant double standards and double binds. 

The obstacles have been – and are – strong and plentiful. Archaic cultural norms on the roles of women, deeply-established gender stereotypes, and circumstances where women's voices are actively silenced are systemic macro barriers that should be long gone and yet continue to impede the progress towards equality in so many ways.

Meso barriers such as less mentorship, fewer role models, and a lack of access to networks and/or developmental experiences for women are firmly rooted inside the culture and practices of many corporations.

Layer on top of those the micro barriers, such as imposter syndrome, and you have a paralyzing combination to stunt the growth of women in leadership roles.

With so many obstacles in the way, it’s hard to understand how women have even gotten out of the gate! But, we have. In many parts of the world, women have succeeded in all aspects of social, political, and corporate life. We have increasing numbers of terrific role models to point to, and many success stories to share. The sentiment expressed by newly-elected U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in her victory speech captured this momentum perfectly: “While I may be the first woman in this office, I won’t be the last.” 

The Gap That Creates The Gap

Women's issues in the workplace are business issues, and business issues are everyone's issues. Gender fatigue is real, but our work is far from over. Sustainable progress is going to require us all choosing to challenge things at a fundamental level. It’s not enough to acknowledge the gap that exists between genders, we also have to examine the “gap that creates the gap.” A question I challenge my students to think about each week. 

Doing that requires a return to first principles and choosing to challenge some basic incongruences that create gaps of all other kinds. First amongst them, the incongruity between the qualities and attributes we’ve historically associated with women and the qualities and attributes we’ve historically ascribed to leaders. 

In the context of a post-Covid world, we know that the leaders of tomorrow will have to be different than the leaders of yesterday. Empathy, communication, community-building, collaboration, humility, curiosity – these are all skills our future leaders will need if we are going to successfully deal with a world of increasing uncertainty and change.

In the past, limiting, gender-biased descriptions of women as nurturing or emotional somehow implied they were less ‘natural’ leaders. Thank God women are, in fact, nurturing, because the world needs it, even more so going forward. But we also know that women are resilient, inspirational, adventurous, and brave. The perspective we bring to whatever role we undertake is shaped, always, by so much more than our gender. 

On the flip side, we must also say goodbye to the limiting attributes that have traditionally been assigned to men. Our accepted ‘norms’ for their contribution need to be expanded to encompass the various nurturing, caring and supportive roles many men play in the lives of women, not to mention their capacity for great empathy, compassion and, yes, nurturing, as leaders too. 

I’ve always subscribed to the well known adage on career success: Before you start climbing the ladder, make sure it’s leaning against the right wall. Well, before continuing to bang our heads against the same old gender equality walls let’s choose to challenge things at a far more foundational level - one that topples the wall for good.