How to think about women at work right now

I had the pleasure of being on an MSNBC segment last weekend on the complicated intersection of women and work.

This is an extremely complicated topic and it touches a lot of nerves for different people, so first I just want to present some of where we are right now around women and their empowerment at work.?

First: at Culture Partners, we did some of our own research. After we analyzed data from 5,000+ individuals at 26 organizations, we found that women scored consistently lower than men on:

• Engagement
• Clarity of organizational results
• Personal development
• Psychological ownership
• Culture strength

At the same time, though, when other women existed in leadership roles, the women within the organization scored higher on these bullet points above – and in some cases, they scored higher than men.?

That’s an important point because one narrative we hide behind around women and work empowerment is that women are still nasty to each other (that’s sometimes true), and putting women in leadership won’t necessarily be a rising tide that lifts all-female boats. OK. I understand that argument, but it’s an escape from the bigger picture. In some organizations, more women in leadership roles will mean less agency for other women. That’s true. In most cases? Empowering women will empower women across the board.

Now, at the same time, theSkimm did a “state of women” recently and, well, all you need to know is the headline: “This isn’t working.” There has obviously been a ton of this content and research since COVID began, and even for years before COVID. The Federal Reserve of Minneapolis wrote a paper during COVID called, literally, “Why is mommy so stressed?” And while the decline of boys/men (more in a second) gets more attention in the media in terms of middle-aged men leaving jobs, women have been exiting the workforce at a high clip for the last five years.

The bigger picture is what I had the chance to discuss on MSNBC. I think on the women's side, you have two narratives going on:

1. “You can have it all, but not right now:” I don’t know if maybe impatience scaled in the last decade, or if it’s always been this way – but I meet more and more women who want the cool job and the professional advancement but also the supportive partner/husband who earns and also the 2.5 kids. You can have all those things (although yes, not everyone gets there), but it’s very hard to have them all at once. Careers especially are an evolution.
2. “Lean In” became “Opt Out:” I think people were skittish about “Lean In” anyway because, while the narrative is good, Sheryl Sandberg is also very affluent and has a lot of people helping her that not all women can or do have. Increasingly I see the narrative becoming “opt out,” meaning focus on your kids, focus on your passions, focus on your aging parents, focus on whatever your true calling is – and don’t focus as much on a boss and organization that maybe (likely?) doesn’t understand everything that makes you tick and what your needs are.?

OK, so is there a “solution” to empowering women in the workplace?

There are micro-level solutions, at a minimum:

• Self-aware, supportive executives: I have a daughter. When I was negotiating with CULTURE PARTNERS Partners, the CEO Joe Terry mentioned my role would involve travel, and sometimes international travel. I told him that I would occasionally need my daughter and a childcare provider to travel with me. He accepted, saying “That’s how it should be.” I could not and would not have taken this role without that negotiation move by him. Out of my recent five or so bosses, he’s one of maybe two that would have done that. So we need to scale that type of executive thinking.?
• At-scale flexibility: This is where we go beyond conventional gender. Everyone should have flexibility. Men, women. Black, white, green, red, blue, yellow. Whoever. If you are productive and get work done, it should not matter where and when that work gets done – what matters is the work getting done in a proactive, productive way.

That second bullet introduces the other key point here: this whole “we are struggling” situation is not just women. Men and boys are very much struggling too, and if you read or see any interview with Richard Reeves lately (he just wrote a book on the topic), you will see why: change in the labor market, change in masculine family roles, change in education (women earn more bachelor’s degrees now), etc. Masculinity is shifting and that brings challenges. So men are also struggling in different ways. I’m not here to say who is struggling more, and frankly that’s a pointless argument.?

What matters is that the majority of your workforce is struggling in some, albeit different, ways. And you solve that through more of a focus around culture and flexibility and personalization and meeting people where they’re at and conversations and active listening. You do that for women even if you’re a male executive. You do that for other women who are your friends and colleagues. And you design a culture around a shared set of beliefs and expectations and experiences of why the work matters, not when and where the work needs to get done.

Again, this is a complicated topic and it brings up a lot of biases and defense mechanisms and human needs and wants – and I will cover it more this year and beyond. This is just a start: women struggle in specific ways, and men in others. Cultures should support everyone and understand what the people who make up those cultures are experiencing.