How To Handle A Gender Stereotype In Business

Starting out in rocket science and computer technology, I was often the only woman in the room.

That’s another way of saying, the stereotype others had of me didn’t fit with the group. I was well aware of these assumptions.

I’ll bet you’ve had the feeling—at one time or another—that people have stuck a stereotype or label on you that made you out to be less than you are.

You may have felt like an outsider to their groups.

In their minds they could be thinking:

• She’s not important,
• She’s not educated,
• She’s not capable,
• She’s not assertive,
• it could even be, “Oh, she’s a mother.” and further questions might end right there.

You can see how this limits the opportunities a person is willing to offer you.

It’s not a good feeling when it’s directed at you, is it? Why do these stereotypes keep popping up? Unfortunately, each of us has a little bucket in our brain that acts like an autopilot to help us survive. This would have been a good idea a long time ago, when you were being chased by a fast 4-legged creature with big teeth out on the Pleistocene Plain.

But today, this bucket is full of quite a few wrong assumptions.

Well the next question we need to ask is:  How do stereotypes die?

Let’s take a look at how scientists say a stereotype disappears in your brain.

1.  A stereotype disappears when it’s popped up enough times and you’ve been proven wrong

—or—

2.  A stereotype disappears when you’ve been terribly, terribly wrong—as in embarrassingly wrong.

What can you do to counter a negative (incorrect) stereotype about yourself that might pop up when you meet someone new? You know, when someone assumes you are less than you really are.

Here’s my Women in Business Tip, which deals with this.

Women in Business Tip of the Week:

This is unpleasant to think about, but you need to do this exercise once. You must think of how others might be stereotyping you. What negative or incorrect assumptions do you think they may be making? Yucky mental game, isn’t it? Well, this is all for your benefit.

After you pinpoint the stereotypes and labels, work up a few sub-comments to add when you introduce yourself to someone new. These sub-comments should be designed to directly contradict what the other person might be thinking. Trust your intuition as to which one would be most beneficial in each situation.

You can also do this with a stereotype-breaking action—you can go out of your way to be

more reasonable, more helpful, more intelligent than the other person might expect.

Don’t be naïve—be prepared! Now, get out there and cancel those stereotypes, one by one!

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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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