The Gender Agenda

Mad Men - Why Gen Y Women Need to Tune In

PwC — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:04:30 +0100

Bonjour,

I bet that many of you are fans of the award winning American television series Mad Men. I'm compelled and disturbed as I tune in each week to the 1960s-era workplace drama. The show now airs in seventy-one countries outside of the United States, which speaks to its broad appeal and enduring relevance across culture.

As the fifth and final season is currently airing, I want to share this great piece written by my colleague, Jennifer Allyn - a Managing Director in PwC's New York office. The piece (originally printed as an op-ed in Forbes) explores the show's diversity themes and suggests some surprisingly optimistic lessons for today's working women.

Mad Men, AMC's drama about the "Golden Age" of advertising, begins its fifth season this Sunday. While I love the show's outstanding acting and glamorous fashions, I also believe watching its portrayal of the "old boy's club" has a lot to teach young women today.

Senior businesswomen often complain that younger women don't appreciate how much trailblazing was accomplished by the pioneers before them. This generational tension is not easily resolved, but watching history unfold even through a television drama can help spark a richer dialogue.

The Mad Men series begins in 1960 when the major milestones of the sexual revolution, Women's Liberation and the Civil Rights movements are still years away. Our heroine, Peggy Olson, enters a glamorous new world when she's hired as a secretary by the advertising agency Sterling Cooper. It's a culture of clearly defined gender roles, where secretaries are expected to be "something in between a mother and a waitress." Creative Director Don Draper and his male copywriters spend the majority of their time smoking, drinking, having affairs and, in between those priorities, creating advertising.

A major pleasure of watching the show comes from our knowledge that the characters' lives will soon be transformed by history. We empathize with Salvatore Romano, the closeted gay art director, and want to tell him that change is around the corner. The same is true watching Peggy cautiously climb the corporate ladder. She yearns to escape the limited gender expectations of her religion and her family. And despite the limitations of the secretarial job, the world of work offers Peggy a chance at freedom, opening up the possibility of self-invention.

Although Peggy faces blatant sexism in the office, she is much more fulfilled than the wives and mistresses around her. Moreover, she is a direct contrast to office manager Joan Holloway, who's reached the top of the administrative ladder by sleeping with the boss and lying about her age. Breaking down barriers-- by standing up for her ideas, pitching to a client or even asking for an office-- is depicted as exhilarating. Peggy's struggle to find her voice and be treated as a professional is inspirational.

But too often millennial women view female pioneers from Peggy's generation as a cautionary tale, remarking, "I don't think of her as a role model." They consider Peggy's sacrifices too great--she doesn't have a family, she works too many hours, she's too intense about her career.

One might argue this is a perfectly legitimate response from women facing a very different set of workplace challenges, but I believe it's a missed opportunity for cross-generational connection. Because the workplace needs pioneers today who will advocate for more expansive definitions of flexibility, dismantle any remaining stereotypes and embrace the next level of business leadership.

Instead of just treading the long-proven paths, Gen X and Gen Y women need to break new ground, only this time around instead of leaping from the steno pool to junior copywriter as Peggy did; they need to ascend from middle management to the executive suite. Despite the success of women like Shelly Lazarus, former CEO and current chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, just 15 out of the 500 largest companies in the U.S. have a woman CEO at the helm.

Mad Men reminds us that profound cultural change is possible. Corporate America still has flaws, but in hindsight the progress made over the past five decades is indisputable. This season begins prior to the iconic 1968 advertising campaign whose slogan capitalized on the theme of women's liberation. While some may argue it was just a cynical ploy by Virginia Slims to sell more cigarettes, the spirit of "You've come a long way baby" still rings true.

Now the urgent question becomes: Will Generation Y women grab the baton from their mothers and grandmothers and lead us all the way to the top?

Those girls from Ipanema!

PwC — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 12:26:15 +0000

Boa tarde from Brazil and happy International Women's Day!

This week I'm attending the Boston College Global Workforce Roundtable meeting in São Paulo.

The city is not at all what I expected. It rivals Manhattan for the sheer density of skyscrapers. Unmitigated traffic congestion and pervasive construction sites contrast with the vibrant building murals, the graffiti, and the abrupt foliage which appears as one turns many street corners (including a swathe of original rainforest that's been preserved in the beautiful Trianon Park).

In the opening session of the meeting we learned the following facts about Brazil:

São Paulo is the sixth most populous city in the world

Brazil contains 20% of the entire world's biodiversity.

The country will host the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016

Brazil is the only country to have held the world championship title for soccer five times

Did you notice that "world" occurred in all of those statements?

As one of the boom global economies, Brazil has enjoyed wide media coverage in recent years. Girls and women have been an integral part of that dialogue and not only because Brazil's 36th (and first female) President, Dilma Rousseff, assumed office last January and became the first woman ever to open a session of the UN General Assembly.

Notably, girls represent a majority at every level of education in Brazil's schools. In the last decade, females have also consistently accounted for a majority of both university enrollees and graduates.

A 2011 study by DiversityInc of multinational companies, found that in Brazil, women made up 41% of the workforce, 32% of management, and 22% of senior executives. Although these are encouraging figures when compared with global averages of women in management, the country struggles with equal pay (Brazilian women earn on average 30 percent less than their male counterparts.

During lunch, my colleagues from PwC Brazil - Mariza Souza and Patricia Loyola (there is a photo of the three of us below, in front of the Octávio Frias de Oliveira Bridge) updated me on all of their great diversity efforts.

Apart from taking action to facilitate better hiring and retention of ethnic minorities and people with disabilities, PwC Brazil recently piloted two female talent initiatives.

One - their program for part-time work aimed at new mothers - was featured recently in this Brazilian newspaper article.

The second female talent initiative is quite unique. Recognizing that new mothers were missing key "milestone" training that could potentially decelerate their development (for example mandatory line of service training for new managers), the firm implemented a policy whereby these mothers could bring their newborns and a caretaker of their choosing (i.e., a nanny, the baby's father) to the training to care for the infant. The schedule is prepared so that new mothers have requisite time to attend to nursing needs and the firm pays for the accommodation of the caretaker during the training.

Initial reactions to this program have been very positive and I look forward to hearing more from my colleagues in Brazil as they roll out these programs on a wider basis in the future.

I hope you all celebrate International Women's Day by thanking a woman who has contributed to your own development or done an exceptional job on one of your teams.

à bientôt,

Dale

Does Facebook hold the answer?

PwC — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:34:58 +0000

I've spent most of my working life in Washington, D.C., Brussels, and London - cities dominated by the public sector and financial services industries. As a recent transplant to the San Francisco Peninsula I've experienced a huge shift in working culture. The number of technology and social networking companies here is remarkable to someone like me - almost as remarkable as the manner in which West Coast lifers casually, calmly, and professionally deal with a 3.8 earthquake. Apple, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Twitter are just a few of the highly innovative companies headquartered near my new digs.

I've always extrapolated that such relatively young companies, founded on the backbone of continuous innovation, should be more naturally diverse. First of all, many of these newer entities should theoretically lack the institutional barriers that government and financial services institutions have been working to overcome for decades as a result of their long life spans - for example the rigid career paths and much-discussed "old boy's network."

Second, a company whose product is born of research and development arguably stands to gain the most from the innovative ideas and products which diverse teams yield. Third, the younger average age of executives and employees in these companies could potentially mean they hold fewer biases about gender roles and more open approaches to work life balance than previous generations. And that's all in addition to the time Google allows its employees to set aside solely for innovation and the non-traditional, brain-twisting, glee-inspiring titles Facebook employees have - a friend of mine employed there has the following title/job description: "Product Marketing, Monetization and Secret Sauce."

And yet despite the raw potential to jettison monolithic corporate models and the opportunity to inculcate new ones, the numbers demonstrate that these companies don't yet fare much better when it comes to the representation of women in leadership positions. This morning two paradoxical news stories came across my desk that sparked this whole line of thinking. The first lauded Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) for being an outspoken advocate of women's empowerment as well as the executive instrumental in the company's recent IPO. The second, a Bloomberg Businessweek story, reported that while most (fifty-eight percent) Facebook users are women, there are none on its board of directors.

This ambivalence suggests that leadership diversification doesn't just happen organically. An argument I hear from sceptics of business gender programs is that with the influx of new generations in the workplace, the imbalance (of women being hired in greater numbers than men yet underrepresented at leadership levels) will auto-correct.

However this has not yet been the case. First of all, because incumbents (still vastly male) are inclined to appoint "mini me" successors who may look (but more importantly think) much like themselves; and second of all because if tech companies - which are flooded with the best and brightest young executives and talent - don't already model this "natural" balance then even newer businesses haven't created that level playing field that could fuel a more vibrant economy.

The good news is that concerted action is under way to progress talent of all kinds to leadership levels. I've been picking the brains of my new neighbours and classmates (most are employed by these companies) to find out what might differ in their corporate DNA (other than delightfully whimsical job titles) that I could bring to bear in my own work in the professional and financial services industries.

One very positive step I see here is the robust connection between these young businesses and local academics to foster diversity of thought in corporations through the business school and more interestingly, through the humanities. Recently Dr. Martha Nussbaum gave a lecture here at Stanford in which she said that a declining emphasis on study of the humanities could lead to a world of "useful profit makers with no imaginations."

This creative stagnation is precisely what diversity professionals are working against. My personal mission is to harness the brain power of different types of thinkers - both men and women - with myriad experiences who will create and implement remarkable, distinctive ideas and products.

I also believe Sheryl Sandberg's exemplary role at Facebook (her media coverage almost eclipses that of the company's founder, Mark Zuckerberg) will have a positive impact on business, since visible role models play such a vital part in the rise of diverse talent.

It's probably too soon to tell how these young companies will evolve from a gender perspective, but it will be exciting to watch for something yet undiscovered that we can learn from them in the diversity space.

If you're fascinated by Facebook's Sandberg (and it's difficult not to be), check out her uber fly TED talk on why we have too few women leaders as well as this previous Gender Agenda article on a CNBC and World Economic Forum panel discussion featuring Sandberg and our own PwC International Chairman, Dennis Nally.

à bientôt,

Dale

Gloria Steinem on power in the workplace

PwC — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:18:01 +0000

Hello and happy new year to all,

I'm writing today from the PwC San Francisco office, which looks out over the bay. A thick layer of fog burns off the waves while ships and ferries bisect the aqua water with Coit Toiwer and Alcatraz rising out of the mist in the distance. Conference calls and emails flow seamlessly with such a pretty panoramic view to anchor me. Here's a shot I snapped from my desk:

You'll now be hearing from me via my new home base in California, where I continue in my role on the PwC Global Diversity & Inclusion Council and am pursuing a master's degree.

I was warned that I'd suffer from reverse culture shock returning to the States after living in Europe for six years, but on the contrary, San Francisco has been a smooth transition so far. On the commute to work in Brussels I used to hear the train announcements in French, Dutch, and German; now I hear them in English, Spanish, and Chinese. I'm just discovering the many delights of Northern California of which natural beauty and diversity are just two.

Through my studies I recently met with Dr. Shelley Correll, Director of The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, which focuses on women's advancement and gender equality. Dr. Correll has written extensively on how stereotypes about mathematics affect women's decisions to enter technical fields and how stereotypes about working mothers affect their experiences in the workplace (click here to read more about Correll and her research on the "motherhood penalty").

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Gloria Steinem speak at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Here is some of what Gloria shared about how to promote equality and advancement in the workplace:

People are generous when they're treated generously.

Listen and people will listen to you.

Give credit where credit is due.

Be kind - kindness is powerful.

Whatever is important to you, do it every day because power is in the "daily-ness" of your actions.

May your 2012 be full of power and kindness in the workplace and beyond.

à bientôt,

Dale

P.S. - If you haven't seen them yet, do check out our PwC/CNBC videos from the 2011 Women's Forum

Have your say

PwC — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:09:59 +0100

Bonjour from Deauville, France.

Did you know that research shows more gender equity leads to happier populations? That if a group includes more women, its collective intelligence rises? That fathers now experience more work life conflict than mothers?

Over the next few days, PwC and CNBC are asking attendees of the annual Women's Forum for the Economy and Society - and you:

What will women's empowerment mean for men?

On Saturday morning, our Chairman, Dennis Nally, Dr. Sylvia Ann Hewlett (Center For Work Life Policy) and Jeremy Adam Smith (journalist and author of The Daddy Shift) will discuss the social and economic impact of women's empowerment on men here in Deauville in front of a live audience, including input that's come in from you today and Friday.

We would love to hear from you! Visit pwc.com/women or womeninbusiness.cnbc.com for live updates from The Forum, further information - and to have your say and see what others are saying.

à bientôt,

Dale

P.S. - I'll be sharing a video with you after The Forum, which captures the highlights of this debate, including clips from the on-site panel discussion with Dennis, Sylvia, and Jeremy.