Are Mars-Venus Stereotypes Barriers To Women’s Advancement?

“Men and women aren’t planets apart, but their stereotypes sure are!”

                                                                        —Nancy Clark

In the recent past you could attract a lot of attention by saying women are different, very different, from men. It was a quick jump to assume that women are nurturing, and that maybe men are not—or that women show empathy, and men do not. It has become a sad state of affairs. As with all trends, this one went too far and now it’s time to reconsider.

It’s a known fact that there’s a wide range of traits and talents in the female population, just as there is in the male population. And these gender ranges overlap—don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that.

In general, there are slight, not huge, differences between the genders. And, as I said in Nature vs. Nurture, many of these are from conditioning, not from nature.

The huge differences are not “real” differences but are the differences in stereotypes for each gender. I can’t bear to list them or even say them out loud for fear it’ll give them more weight than they have now. They do add up to what Catalyst research shows is the current viewpoint:  Women take care, and men take charge. What does that give us? It gives us: Men are the executives, and women assist them. It gives us the statistics that I pointed out in How Bad Is The Gender Gap At Work?. The stats show us 85 % male executives in the top 2 tiers of the Fortune 500 companies.

Catalyst research shows that by creating false perceptions that women and men are “planets apart,” gender stereotyping often creates an environment where women are overlooked for top positions—regardless of the strength of their credentials. The statistics bear this out.

Does this mean a woman should mimic a man? No, a woman should stick with the leadership style she’s comfortable with—acting doesn’t do it. My tip of the week gives you a strategy for awakening your company to the benefits of removing stereotypes and other gender biases. It’s much better if your company realizes it wants to capitalize on female talent (and stop losing money when frustrated women leave). This is an opportunity whose time has come!

Here’s my tip of the week.

Tip:

Let your company know about the money-saving lesson a Fortune 500 company, Deloitte and Touche, learned. Mike Cook was worried about the number of women who left his company at the mid-management level. He asked his senior managers why this was happening. All of them said it was for “family reasons.” Fortunately, he looked into it further by tracking down the women who had left. The women were still working—some with competitors—some in other fields. The ones with families had started them before leaving Deloitte.

The real reason for leaving was that they saw no advancement for them and no role models in upper management. They were frustrated with the gender bias. This gender bias had a price—it was costing the company millions of dollars a year. Recruitment, training, and loss of productivity add up in dollars. The company is making strides to pinpoint and remove those gender biases. The benefit to the company is in the bottom line—and the women like it too!

Refer your bosses to an article about this success story in the Harvard Business Review. A success for your company will be a success for women as well!

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