Making Workplaces Work for Women
Two of the greatest barriers to women’s corporate success are too few mentors and too little flexibility. This is the product of workplaces that were designed by men for other men, with men still largely at the helm. But common workplace structures don’t work for many women (nor an increasing number of men). These workplace structures also don’t help a company’s bottom line.
In today’s competitive environment, Wharton business school researchers are finding that mentors are more important than ever for both employees and organizations. Yet women still have a harder time securing senior mentors than men. KPMG surveyed over 3,000 professional and college-aged women, and a large majority said they didn’t feel confident finding a mentor or approaching senior managers. As a result, women are twenty-four percent less likely than men to get advice from senior leaders. The barriers are often greater for women of color, with sixty-two percent reporting that the lack of an influential mentor holds them back. This concern is well-supported by research finding that people with mentors are indeed more likely to get promoted.
Leadership experts W. Brad Johnson and David Smith have researched why male mentors are in short supply for women in business. They’ve found that many men are uncomfortable mentoring women because it’s an unfamiliar role. Some men are worried that they may make a mistake or say something that’s perceived as sexist. Some are concerned that others may read something inappropriate into the relationship. Some are anxious that mentoring women will reduce their status in the workplace or trigger disapproval from other men. Add up all these concerns, and it’s no wonder that when Catalyst surveyed men about their biggest barrier to supporting gender equality, seventy-four percent said “fear.”
Unfortunately, at the same that #MeToo has exposed a pervasive culture of sexual harassment, the reckoning has also increased men’s fears about mentoring female colleagues. The percentage of male managers who report feeling uncomfortable mentoring women has more than tripled from five to sixteen percent in the wake of #MeToo. That means that one out of every six male managers is hesitant to mentor a woman. The number of male managers who are hesitant to work alone with a woman has more than doubled. A stunning sixty-four percent of men in vice president positions and above are reluctant to meet alone with a junior woman.
Given these anxieties, it’s not surprising that women are having a harder time than men securing influential mentors. Women also get less value out of the mentoring relationships that they have. To allay their anxieties when mentoring women, men sometimes fall into gender stereotype traps. Men are often overprotective instead of giving honest feedback and pushing their female mentees to take risks. This makes it harder for women to get growth opportunities and reach leadership positions.
No matter how hard it may be for men to mentor women, it’s even harder for women leaders when the responsibility falls on them, particularly when performing the critical role of internal promotion. When a senior woman publicly sponsors junior women colleagues at her company, her performance evaluations take a hit. In contrast, when a senior man publicly promotes a female colleague, his performance evaluations go up. That’s because women who mentor women are often seen as playing favorites, while men who mentor women are viewed as diversity champions. As frustrating as this double standard is, it should give men an added responsibility to sponsor women in their firms. Men who mentor women benefit personally as well. Male mentors build their interpersonal skills, expand their knowledge, and create more diverse networks, which makes them better leaders.
As important as mentoring is for achieving workplace equality, flexibility is even more critical. When women are asked whether they’d rather have a raise, a promotion, an extra week’s vacation, or more flexibility in their day, the top response is more flexibility. In a study of over 1,500 white collar professionals, ninety-five percent of women said they needed some form of flexibility, but only thirty-four percent said they had access to the flexible work options that they needed.
Lack of flexibility isn’t just one of the top reasons that women leave jobs, it’s also a top reason why women leave the workforce altogether. In one survey, seventy percent of women who had left the workforce said they would still be working if they had more flexible work schedules. Another survey of career-oriented stay-at-home moms revealed that fifty-five percent would prefer to be working, but they needed more family-friendly workplace policies. That’s an enormous loss of talent, innovation, and human capital. On the other hand, when employers commit to flexibility—including flexible schedules, reduced-hour or part-time options, telecommuting, or job-sharing arrangements—women are far more likely to stay and advance.
An increasing number of men are also seeking workplace flexibility, which provides even more incentive for employers to innovate. Employees who lack flexible work options are twice as likely to be dissatisfied with their jobs and move to other companies. The number of professional employees who quit their jobs because they lacked flexibility nearly doubled from 2014 to 2017, at which point nearly a third of those who quit their jobs cited lack of flexibility as the reason. This means that employers are paying enormous sums to hire and train new employees, not to mention the indirect costs from loss of continuity, reduced productivity, and decreased morale.
In addition to day-to-day flexibility, many women also leave the workforce because of inadequate maternity and family leave policies. Almost one in four working women in the US return to work within two weeks after giving birth. That’s because out of 193 countries in the world, the US is one of only a handful that doesn’t have a national law requiring maternity or paternity leave—an accolade that we share with Papua New Guinea, Suriname, and a few other South Pacific island nations. Over half of nations worldwide require at least fourteen weeks of paid maternity leave, and over forty percent require eighteen weeks or more. Over forty percent of countries also mandate some amount of paid leave for fathers. But because the US has no national paid family leave law, it’s up to company leaders to take charge.
Currently, only thirty-five percent of US companies offer paid maternity leave, and only twenty-nine percent offer paid paternity leave. At the same time, half of employees report that if they had the choice, they’d pick more parental leave time over a pay raise. When women do have access to paid maternity leave, however, they’re often afraid to use it. This is particularly the case in the male-dominated tech industry, where fifty-two percent of women said they returned early from maternity leave out of fear that spending time with their newborns was hurting their careers.
Men undoubtedly can relate to these concerns. Like women, most men don’t have access to paid family leave. For men who do, most report even greater pressure than women not to use their time off because they’ll be viewed as uncommitted to their jobs. When men do take family leave, they’re often treated more harshly than women. In a large poll of employees who had access to parental leave benefits, fifty-four percent said that men are judged more negatively than women for taking the same amount of parental leave. One in three men reported that their jobs would be in jeopardy if they took their family leave time. As a result, men who have access to paternity leave typically use only a third of the time that’s available. While sixty-six percent of women take all of their available parental leave, only thirty-six percent of men do the same.
Expanding paternity leave isn’t just something that more men are seeking, it’s also vital for advancing women’s equality. When men take paternity leave, it reduces the stigma on all employees for being involved parents. Research also suggests that having dads involved with newborns reduces stress, depression, and illness for new moms. Men who take paternity leave also tend to share childcare more equally, which allows women more capacity to take Sheryl Sandberg’s advice and “lean in” to their careers. In Iceland, where the majority of fathers take parental leave when they have children, companies have the smallest gender pay gap in the world.
So men have a critical role in making workplaces work for women. As in other areas, dads of daughters are leading the way. Large companies with male CEOs who have daughters tend to invest more in work/life employee benefits than companies lead