Articles

March 2007 : Manage This …Focus on Women

It is National Women’s Month.   So how are we doing in Corporate America in terms of women?  A little over half (51%) of the nation’s managers and professionals are women.  In spite of this, there are only 10 women CEOs in Fortune 500 companies (or 2%).  Obviously, there is a discrepancy. Only 16.4% of the Fortune 500 corporate officers are women, while 90 of the Fortune 500 companies don’t have any women corporate officers.

If that’s the reality, why do corporations need to work to change it?  For me personally, I have 2 amazing daughters who I want to grow up knowing they can be anything they want to be.  However, that’s not going to convince a lot of top management teams to look at the issue.

There are other reasons besides doing the right thing. A basic Marketing 101 principle—reflect your customer base.  Women purchase 83% of all products and services in the US.

From an HR perspective, you’re overlooking a huge talent pool if you don’t advance women.  Also from an HR view, another reason is how gender diversity relates to performance.  One study showed that companies with the highest representation of women on their top management teams performed better financially than did groups with the lowest women’s representation.

So what can you do to influence change?  There are many strategies, but I’ll mention two.  The first is dealing with work-life balance in your workplace.  Lack of work-life balance disproportionately impacts women.  I’ve written an ezine on that—contact me if you’d like a copy. The other way is to be objective with performance standards.

Look at criteria for promotions and raises—make sure that they’re not subjective.

A sad fact remains that women receive less recognition for their accomplishments than men do.  There is significant research to back this up. 
This starts at pre-school and happens with both male and female evaluators.  For example, in one study, two groups of people were asked to evaluate particular items, such as articles, paintings, resumes, etc.  The names attached to the items were either clearly male such as Jim Davis, or female such as Sue Smith, but reversed for the two groups.  So, what one group believed was created by a man, the other believed was created by a woman.  Regardless of the items, when they were credited to a man, they were rated higher than when credited to a woman.  In all of the studies, women evaluators were as likely as men to downgrade those items ascribed to women.

If it's objective, women succeed; if it's subjective, women fall behind. Corporations need transparency and bottom-line measures.  I am confident that with more focus on the topic, women can be more equally represented in Corporate America, which will benefit companies and society as a whole.
 
To get one-on-one coaching or training to learn more specific ways to increase women’s success in your business, contact Kerrie Halmi at Halmi Performance Consulting: kerrie@halmiperformance.com or 510-336-0654.

Manage this …. The “Reaching out” aspect of leadership presence will be featured right here in April.

Please pass this to others who would benefit from it.

If you want specific references for any of the material, please let me know.

About the Author: Kerrie Halmi is a coach and facilitator specializing in people management skills. Her passion is increasing women’s success in business. See www.halmiperformance.com

Past articles are on www.halmiperformance.com

Terms of Reprint: You have permission to publish this article in your newsletter, e-zine or on your website as long as you print the entire article, unchanged and include the copyright and “About the Author” information (Resource Box) and all links. Please e-mail Kerrie@halmiperformance.com to let the author know where and when the article will appear.