The X&Y of D&I - Sustaining Equilibrium for Men’s Diversity
We all know that, on average, men continue to dominate in the workplace, with many organisations continuing to be male, pale and stale and typically increasingly so as we look further up most hierarchies. However, for more than decade the focus of corporate diversity efforts have been almost exclusively on supporting the identification and acceleration of female talent for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, with International Men’s Day on the 19th?November and with “Movember” being nominated as Men’s Health Month, it is timely to “flip it to test it” and take a fresh look at diversity from a man’s perspective.
Firstly, for clarity, The Talent Enterprise is proud of our great track record of delivering meaningful diversity assessment and development programmes, mostly in the field of accelerating the growth of women in leadership. I am also a proud feminist. My wife, my relatives and many of my colleagues are all shining inspirational examples of the strength of women in all aspects of life. My grandmother worked 12-hour shifts, six days a week for almost 5 years during the second world war to produce the munitions which defeated fascism. My mother was part of the generation that fought for legislation to ensure equal pay for women. My mother-in-law was an immigrant to the UK in the 1960s and has contributed immeasurably to British society by working as a nurse for decades and subsequently founding 3 successful businesses, all of which are still going strong.
All this is deeply admirable as women leaders in all fields are leading the way forward from 20,000 years of patriarchy in recent human history. And yet, there seems to be a growing pressure to focus on the needs of men at the same time as promoting the position of women.?
We also need to focus on both the X&Y, not just the XX in our diversity efforts.?
Whilst it is bound to be disconcerting to be a man during this period of history as millennia of male domination of most aspects of society is increasingly challenged by previously under-represented female talent. At the same time, traditional male physical jobs are declining, and so more men are underemployed and marginalised than ever before. Many authors have declared a “penile surplus” in society in general, with Roy Baumeister asking, “What Are Men For?” and Hanna Rosin declaring “The End of Men”.
As most men often prefer to do, let’s consider some key facts and not only opinions and feelings in these matters.
The plain truth is that most men on average around the world live significantly shorter, less healthy and more miserable and violent lives than women. This is a growing problem and needs to be addressed with priority. The Financial Times (June 15th?2022) recently ran an article on declining male health outcomes, with the headline “Less Than 10% of Men Will Reach Their Pension in Good Health”.
In my hometown of Exeter in the UK, the regional hospital recently unveiled a multi-million pound dedicated female health centre. The large facility, exclusively orientated to promoting and protecting women’s health is impressive and the intention is obviously a good one. The absence of something similar for men is, by comparison, a shocking lacuna. This is despite the fact that average male health outcomes are consistently worse than those that women can expect in the UK and the majority of other countries across the world. For instance, today, the prevalence and death rates from breast cancer (the most common for women) is roughly equivalent to that for prostate cancer (the most common for men), and yet the medical resources and public health campaigns dedicated to screening and subsequent treatment are anything but equivalent. It is almost impossible for men, who are already less likely to have the mindset to do so than women, to access preventative medicine services in most parts of the world.
Men are also far more likely to suffer from mental health problems, such as addiction, depression and are also far more likely than women to “successfully” commit suicide. Men are clearly discriminated against in the criminal justice system. Not only are they far more likely to be prosecuted than women, when they are found guilty for the same crimes as women, they repeatedly receive longer and harsher sentences, typically involving much longer custodial sentences focusing more on “punishment” rather than “rehabilitation”.
In diversity research and development, we often recommend “flipping it to test it”. It is hard to imagine that any other social group would simply be expected to put up with what is clearly a structural bias and a systematic travesty of basic human rights for just under half of the human population. There is a palpable sense of demonising men today for the choices that their grandfathers and grandmothers made in history. The old social contract for men was to accept greater responsibility, stoicism and sacrifice, typically on behalf of “protecting” the women and other “dependents” in their lives, in return for traditional patriarchal dominance. Quite rightly the patriarchal dominance is coming to an end, at least in some fields; so must the social sacrifice of men’s physical and emotional well-being and associated stereotypes of macho role models and male forms of “HEroism” in general.?
Unfortunately, social mores, our education systems, the way we socialise our children and the unwritten behavioural expectations, including many corporate cultures are failing to adapt fast enough to the new gender landscape we confront today.
The workplace in general and the talent landscape in particular offers interesting insights into the twenty – first century re-negotiation of gender relationships. Our research at The Talent Enterprise and the data gained from more than a million talent assessments conducted in the last decade is also insightful. We see that women, on average, are statistically significantly higher than men in several Thriving Index strengths factors, such as Dutiful, Compliance, Resourcefulness, Compassion, Discipline, Efficacy, Optimism, Achievement, Mastery, Grit and Empathy. At the same time, men, on average, are significantly higher than women on Ambition, Energy, Contribution, Perspective, Teamwork, Ambiguity, Agility and Resilience. All statistical significance indicators were measured at the 95% confidence interval using the Bonferroni coefficient.?
In addition, and in line with similar research, we are also seeing that women, on average, have a small, but significant (given the N-size) better performance than their male counterparts in all cognitive assessments. This is also reflected in educational performance, where female students are outperforming men in most subjects and across most nations, including STEM subjects. This again can be viewed from a diverse perspective in terms of priorities for promoting greater equality of opportunity for both men and women, boys and girls.?
Not only do we need to ask why do women continue to be under-represented in STEM professions, entire professions and senior organisational roles in particular, when their average intellectual horsepower exceeds that of men? We equally need to also ask, why is formal education increasingly failing men and boys and why is addressing this not a higher policy or budgetary priority?
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In summary, we can see that whilst men continue to clearly benefit from positive discrimination in the workplace, they suffer negative discrimination in many other aspects of society. In short, they live briefer lives, filled with more illness and suffer greater physical and mental health risks than the average woman. They continue to suffer from significant negative gender stereotypes at the hands of law enforcement, health and education professionals throughout their significantly shorter lives.
Men also suffer from relative social isolation in general. They typically report fewer friends than women, with male social connections increasingly characterised as “Billy No Mates”. From our own research statistics at The Talent Enterprise, our male respondents to Well-being and Employee Engagement surveys report, far more commonly than their female colleagues, that they have fewer “friends” in general at work, fewer social connections more broadly and less frequent and arguably less “meaningful” interactions with them. They have fewer opportunities to confide in others and generally report experiencing less trusting relationships at work in general.
This is critical for well-being and engagement and productivity and positivity in general, as it means that many more men than women lack a trusted friend to confide in during difficult times, whether at work or in life more broadly. This phenomenon typically gets worse the older that men get. Male friendships are different to female friendships, being more structured, activity and project based. Whilst this may lead many men to report feelings of loneliness and isolation and be dependent on female partners to navigate the social aspects of their lives in general, ironically such an approach to relationships can be ideally suited to many workplace cultures which may be a partial contributory answer as to why men often thrive in their formal careers compared to the average professional woman and why many organisations continue to be more male, pale and stale the higher up the hierarchy you look.
So where does this leave us and what can we practically hope to learn and apply from this situation? Firstly, beyond basic standards of mutually acceptable behaviour, it is important not to demonise individual men or women for the relative advantages and disadvantages that each gender stereotype affords in the workplace and society in general. Whilst we have been comparing and contrasting average differences between men and women, individuals are unique and even the concept of “gender” is no longer simply black or white but literally a vivid rainbow spectrum of many much more nuanced hues. The last thing we need is to increase a simplistic sense of gender confrontation.?
Promoting greater diversity is not a zero – sum game, there is an opportunity to recognise the complementary strengths of individual men and women. Hanna Rosin argues that a woman may need a man like a fish need a bicycle, but it turns out that the bicycle needs a fish and I hope the reverse can also be true. Just as we need male champions of change to accelerate female development, men need women to be forceful advocates if men are to achieve their full potential and contribute to their maximum.
To some extent, it is natural to experience cultural dissonance as a modern man at the end of a historical era characterised essentially by universal patriarchy in pretty much all aspects of our collective social experience. This includes our interactions in the workplace. We can’t allow fear, anger, confusion and mutual misunderstanding to encourage resistance to positive change and development in our global gender relations.
Now we need to add a “masculinist”, X&Y agenda to our diversity priorities, not to fight feminism, but to help men better adapt and contribute to the workplace of today and tomorrow.?
The truth in many organisations and societies today is there are now increasingly 2 types of men, those at the top who remain dominant and those with fewer economic resources, who are struggling with dealing with existing expectations of male achievement and status.?
From data collected earlier this year, 426 of Fortune 500 companies still have male CEOs and yet, at the same time, many of the same organisations also have the majority of their lower ranks of less skilled, less secure and less recognised roles filled by men.
Focusing on gender alone is not sufficient to promote diversity – it at least has 3 concurrent dimensions of gender, race and class. In the US, black females now outperform white males in all subjects. This means the global future talent pool of “high potentials” is largely female. It also means that if employers find new ways to stop penalising motherhood and social expectations shift, women could feasibly come to dominate the workplace of the future due to their educational advantage.
At the moment, workplaces favour men and schools favour women, the latter arguably due to the earlier intellectual development of girls compared to boys. I certainly remember that the girls in my classes at school preferred to hang out (and “go-out) with older boys and my peers tended to spend more time with girls in the year below us. There are some interesting proposals currently under consideration in some parts of the world to send boys to school a year later than girls of the same age to account for this different rate of intellectual development amongst the genders and in recognition of the differential impact this can have in later relative educational performance and life in general.
More broadly, traditionally many men have defined their identity from their career or general financial success, making potential perceptions of “failure” terrifying. Many men could benefit from spreading their identity across different domains of their social identity and cultural expectations and the socialisation of children will need to adapt to achieve this.
Finally, we should celebrate and elevate “male champions of change”, whilst at the same time avoiding the potential to demonise traditionally “male” behavioural characteristics such as risk – taking, courage, teamwork or resilience. Such characteristics can be driven by testosterone, outdated modes of socialisation or traditionally male mindsets orientated towards an objectification of task management focused on just getting things done. I know I am often guilty of prioritising the short – term execution of tasks above the longer – term benefits of preserving and extending positive and productive relationships at work, as surely many of my colleagues would attest!
Right now, at the time of writing, both men and women are fighting and dying together in the streets of Iran to protect and respect basic female rights. Male and female volunteers are fighting and dying together in Ukraine, protecting their homes and families from the invading Russian military. Men and women working together in organisations every day to achieve common goals. We have a unique opportunity to support a broader – based and sustainable diversity in our workplaces, respecting, our complementary differences and our mutual strengths, offers a sustainable, positive and productive vision of the future. In the UK we have an aphorism – “what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” – reflecting that many of the solutions and policies to promote greater workplace diversity can work equally well for both men and women together.