Recently, I was talking to a friend who was building a senior IT leadership team to report into a female IT director and I asked how many of the nine roles had gone to women. The reply was “none” followed up by “there were absolutely no female applicants”. We both rolled our eyes out of exasperation, it’s a situation we had both found ourselves in before. Whilst I wouldn’t hire a woman over a man just for the numbers, I’m well aware from my limited studies in social psychology that mixed gender groups (whether that be in an activity or at board level of an international company) will out-perform single gender groups. So it always bothers me to see all-male groups/boards in my company (although I do feel like I’m personally 100% responsible for the higher performance of those groups when I’m introduced 😉 )
Current thinking points at a few possible reasons for no female applicants to a well-renumerated senior role.
One obvious one is the language in the job listings. Research has shown that gendered language in how the role is described may discourage women from applying – the presence of “masculine” words such as “competitive, dominate, leader” can be off-putting, not least because they suggest, to the subconscious of the reader, a male-heavy organisation where role where power inequalities are important. In reading an article from Wired, it mentioned that the language did not impact women’s perception of their ability to perform the job, only how attractive the job (and the associated organisation) was to the potential applicant.
Another reason for lack of applicants can be the approach that many potential employers have of listing every possible activity in the job description. The mindset of the employer is to signify the seniority of the role (and the practice often links to corporate processes relating to job-level setting). However, no employer realistically thinks they’ll get that skill list. They may WANT someone who has the diverse skills of 3 people (because their hiring policies are keeping them from growing the team) or an optimistic HR person has told them to shoot for the stars. In reality, they’re looking for someone who can do the first 2 or 3 bullet points and are a good fit with their existing team – almost everything else can be mentored in later.
So what’s the problem with that? Well, an oft-quoted HP internal report discusses the confidence gap – that men feel confident about going for a role when they simply meet the majority of the criteria, whereas women don’t feel the same confidence until they have met 100% of the requests. This will lead to a more male-heavy applicant list, even assuming a completely mixed and similarly skilled pool of potential applicants.
Interestingly, further studies shed new light on the findings, There’s evidence that women are directed to and rewarded for rule-adherance far more than men. Therefore, women may assume the workplace to be more meritocratic than it actually is – that a lack of solid experience or qualifications would not be overlooked, or that operating in a senior role may be more based on effective use of a network or simply on giving firm direction based on a gut feel.
Even typing this, I feel the obstacles towering above us – female applicants can sense (and are put off) by companies who run on power-inequality (where actually, they can do the most good), women are put off by impossible Job Descriptions that they can’t meet, partly because they expect the “most experienced/qualified” candidate to get the role. And we haven’t even started to discuss thorny issues like flexible working requirements and the gap in many women’s CVs due to the baby years, the basic innate gender discrimination in the old boys club etc…
But all is not lost. We are now women in senior roles, and we have the power to influence the situations around us through straightforward action
- Be careful with the JDs, job adverts and mission statements we write
- Offer to help any colleague who is recruiting by reviewing their adverts and give them some tips on language and on avoiding a “shopping list” of requirements.
…Even better, talk to your HR team to see whether they are actively helping managers (and if not, consider asking the most senior woman in the company to sponsor a simple initiative to help spot and reduce gendered language/behaviour in hiring). It could be as simple as using this “gender decoder”
Speak the truth to everyone (men and women) about what managers are really looking for – usually someone with the right fit for the team and with the right skills (in that order!) (unless you’re talking about surgeons – they’re pretty keen on skills).
And finally, work within all the groups we are part of to understand what the ethos of that group is to be – is it to dominate or to collaborate, is it to win or to be successful, to make a hard fast impact or to be sustained – express that in your adverts/invitations and you’ll get what you’re asking for
By Bairbre Philips – https://uk.linkedin.com/pub/bairbre-philips/4/794/856
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