Parity in the Workplace: Why we are not there yet

I was browsing through my mail box when an email attracted my attention. It was a plea from a colleague addressed to the entire department: "We are organizing monthly focus sessions for our senior engineers and architects. While we are pleased that the participation has been high so far, we noticed that we had no female participants, and we would love to change that. Please encourage your female senior engineers to join." I couldn't help but smile because the low attendance from female engineers had of course nothing to do with the lack of advertisement: there simply weren't any female senior engineers in the department.

This pattern seems more and more common these days: failed attempts to make women feel like they 'belong', ostentatious events promoting the role of women in Tech that fall flat, cohorts of exclusively male executives congratulating themselves for their great job on promoting diversity in the workplace. With so many well-meaning souls trying to challenge the status quo, why do women still remain such a small minority in most Tech companies? And why do pay gaps still exist at all?

What are we doing wrong?

Like all difficult questions, there is no straight-forward answer. One thing is certain, though: society has evolved and reached a point where not supporting the cause of female workers is viewed as an embarrassment. After allegations of sexual harassment among their employees, even the coolest start-ups suffer tremendous damage to their brand. The public is shocked and angered when companies that don't treat their female employees well, and no one really wants to be seen as indifferent to the problem of parity in the workplace.

If a certain level of realization is undeniable, the way it is being perceived and addressed is still nowhere near where it should be.

Admitting the problem is only the first step towards a solution

While society is aware of the gender gaps at work, the actions taken still pale in comparison to what is needed to trigger meaningful change. Countless events are organized every year to promote the role of women in Tech, but in the meantime lawmakers are taking no action to ensure equality of pay for minorities. Companies do not want to be considered as unfair to women, but appear not to be motivated enough to take serious measures; promoting a few women to VP roles or organizing a posh Women in Tech gala surely will make them come across as Women's Rights pioneers. Most actions taken by our leaders are half-hearted, at best. Most want to take the minimal action not to be accused of passivity, but are not willing or ready to invest the required efforts into establishing the new order.

We are always seeing the mote in our neighbor's eye

We know that life as a woman in Tech can be incredibly difficult, and we blame the employers that allow women to be treated poorly. It seems that the problem never hits home. Each company somehow believes that they are immune to the issue. This state of denial is evidently extremely dangerous, as it doesn't allow authoritative voices within the company to try and fix a problem they don't acknowledge exists. In reality, gender discrimination takes many different forms, and the small ones (like those patronizing little remarks from colleagues or those missed opportunities to work on an interesting project) are usually the most harmful because they are oftentimes not even recognized (even by the victim) as discrimination.

We focus too much on hiring women

If you work for one of the few companies that both acknowledge their gender discrimination problem and have decided to do something about it, you have most likely observed that the first action taken was to encourage the hiring of more women. Now, don't get me wrong: this is a very important step, and a noble initiative. However, even well-meaning employers tend to forget about their existing female workforce, and fail to provide their female talent with the right growth opportunities. They may even neglect or ignore them. This strategy will typically fail because under those circumstances, while the overall fraction of women employees might increase, senior management will remain almost exclusively male, and the cultural change needed to close the gender gap will not happen.

Promoting parity doesn't mean changing the standards

In an effort to increase the ratio of women employees, many companies give in to the temptation to lower the bar. Submitting women to lower standards unfortunately won't bring a long lasting solution to parity in the workplace, as just like in the case of hiring, those women won't be prepared appropriately to climb the social ladder and be promoted to more strategic roles. Finally, telling a woman that she is performing well "for a woman" is not only the most insulting thing that she could hear, it is also a remark that could have a damaging impact on her career, should she decide not to question it.

Let women be women and act like women

One of the biggest challenges a women can face while raising in rank is to be inappropriately managed. Because women are rare at the executive level, the more senior a female employee is, the more likely she is to report to a male manager. While research supports the fact that the male and female brains function differently, most managers are not trained properly to acknowledge the differences between men and women. One of my biggest challenge as a young manager has been to process the advice from my (male) managers and determine which ones were sound, and which ones where in fact a direct attack to my belief system or management style. The If-I-Were-You's given to me over the course of my career have certainly been more detrimental to my growth than most people would think possible. Managers have to learn how to support their female employees while respecting the traits that makes them different from their male peers.

There is too much pressure on the women in Tech

Early in my career, as I was interviewing female candidates, I was always nervous when leaving feedback. Had she performed badly, I felt disappointed that I could not prove my male colleagues wrong. Strangely enough, had she performed well, I felt embarrassed to leave good feedback as I didn't want to be accused of positive discrimination. I realized quickly that my standards for women were actually much stricter than those I had for male candidates. I couldn't stand the idea that someone would accuse me of being biased, and would only support the hire if the female candidate was so exceptional that no one could disagree. I later learned that I was actually subject to something called Stereotype Bias. So why did this happen? This is actually a direct product of the challenges that women have to overcome to "make it" at work. The fear to disappoint causes female employees to apply extremely harsh standards on themselves, making them feel like they have no room for error, and discouraging them to take risks and stepping out of their comfort zones.

Conclusion

There is still a long way to go until women are treated fairly at work, and while the media has done a good job at raising awareness on sexual harassment, the gender discrimination that most women face at work every day comes in much less dramatic forms. The problem is that most company consider that if they don't have a sexual harassment problem then they are "off-the-hook" for any gender discrimination issue.

Discrimination is a complex problem because it happens in small, sneaky ways that seem innocent at first, but often cause irreversible damage. I can't count the number of times I have been called bossy for standing up for my beliefs where a male counterpart would have been praised for their assertivity. Or the number of times where my opinion on one of my topics of expertise has been dismissed in favor of an inexperienced male colleague. Today, succeeding professionally as a woman is still something that happens against the odds, and every single act of discrimination, no matter how small, might make or brake a career.

Turning the tide starts by small acts like acknowledging the problem, avoiding patronizing comments, deciding not to pass hasting judgment and bringing to the attention of managers that women have a different way of functioning, and that their challenges are different.