HR directors say employers need to scrap stereotypes

Diversity / 15 March 2011

Negative perceptions associated with women need to be addressed to tackle gender diversity, say senior management figures

Senior representatives in human resources came together to discuss ILM’s Ambition and Gender at Work research on Friday (11 March) as part of a campaign to address a lack of gender diversity in senior management positions in the UK. The ILM breakfast briefing and discussion at Shoreditch House drew HR directors from several prominent companies, including FTSE 100 organisations. 

ILM’s Ambition and Gender at Work report which was published in February, explored the reasons behind the lack of senior women in management roles. Currently, just 12.5% of FTSE 100 board members are female, and women hold just 22% of senior management positions.

The report revealed significant differences in the confidence and ambition levels of men and women. While 70% of male managers rated themselves as having high or quite high levels of confidence, just 50% of women said the same.

If you don’t take risks with people, you’ll never develop any talent at all.

HR director, Gender and Ambition at Work roundtable event

Presenting the findings, David Pardey, research and policy director at ILM, said that the women surveyed by the report seemed to have “less clarity” about their career path than their male peers when starting out in business. Just over half (52%) of men had a fair or clear idea of the direction they wanted their career to take, compared with 45% of female managers.

Pardey also said that the women clearly believed in the existence of barriers to promotion, with three quarters (73%) saying there was a glass ceiling. Whether they had started a family or not didn’t seem to be a factor. “In our survey, 40% of the women who took part didn’t have children, but they still saw the glass ceiling,” he said.

Breadwinner model

ILM’s CEO Penny de Valk said that the male breadwinner model prevalent in society and business today could be causing some of the problems we’re facing over gender. “What we are seeing is women throttling back their expectations and ambitions if they are starting a family, in contrast to men, who throttle up their ambition when they have children,” she said.

Table discussion among the HR directors centered around whether they saw women in their own organisations adjusting their expectations of work and career, and why that might be.

“Stereotypes can kick in. Because of some of the stereotypes that exist, other people make assumptions as to where a women wants to go in her career, and doors may be closing because of that,” said one HR director.

Talented women

“We bring in lots of incredibly talented women with very strong ambition,” said another. “They’re really pushing themselves, putting themselves out there and holding their own, but we lack a nurturing environment for them working in a tough, man’s world. If they’re pushing a project and it gets cut or they see someone promoted before them or getting credit for their work, it affects them. They may be small things, but because we lack nurturing capabilities and sense-making for them, they’re throttling back.”

While childcare remains a problematic issue for many new mothers in their careers, de Valk suggested that employers should embrace more flexible methods of working in order to retain talented staff members.

“We need to start viewing flexible working not as an entitlement culture, but actually as a management tool that meets the needs of both the organisation and the employee,” she said.

Another HR director suggested that having senior role models working flexibly, whatever their gender, would help change the perception of working with a family. “In terms of law firms and consultancy where you need to be on call 24 hours, is the support and back up of your partner all of it?” questioned one person. “Or is it more the emotional response, where we feel guilty about being away from our kids.”

Taking risks

Female senior managers looking to be promoted had to fight to change perceptions, as participants suggested that women are seen as ‘higher risk’ hires because of assumptions about time off in the future.

“Everybody going into a new role has never done it before, but the risk is perceived as higher for women,” said one participant. “If you don’t take risks with people, you’ll never develop any talent at all, and yet the perception of risk is always higher with women. There has to be real robust challenge to that perception.”

Concluding the panel, de Valk suggested that a number of factors needed to be addressed in order to encourage gender diversity in management, including perceptions of female career paths, redefining what good looks like, and becoming aware of our own unconscious biases.

Women also need to address the unwritten rules of management, she said.

“One of the unwritten rules that women don’t grasp is the notion of visibility – instead, anticipating or expecting that their boss will notice they are doing a good job. Their male peers will be working on their visibility and promotability.”

Greater transparency on gender diversity levels, as suggested in the Davies report should go some way to helping the problem, but more needs to be done, said de Valk. Increased acceptance and use of flexible working, HR management and targeted recruitment, and the use of mentoring and coaching in the workplace could help address the underlying causes of the problem, she said.
 
Whatever changes organisations make, the directive needs to come from the top, she said. “What is absolutely pivotal is the personal commitment of the CEO.”

Click here for more on ILM’s Ambition and Gender at Work research