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VEST Her Podcast
A podcast exploring the invisible barriers holding women back in the workplace and sharing stories of women navigating careers and building power collectively.
VEST Her Podcast
Why are Men often Reluctant to Mentoring and Advocating for Women at Work?
In this episode VEST Members talk to gender-inclusive culture expert Brad Johnson, Professor of Psychology at the United States Naval Academy and Faculty Associate at John Hopkins University, about the skills and benefits men earn when they engage in advocating for women at work. The misconceptions and challenges that often get in the way of men engaging in gender-equity advocacy and the economics of inclusive workspaces. Special thanks to VEST Member, Jessica Dietrich, Director of Government Relations and Policy for Hunger Free Oklahoma for moderating this session.
Join us as we delve into the multifaceted roles men can play as allies, mentors, and advocates. We also uncover the economic benefits of inclusive workspaces and how intersectionality further complicates women's professional journeys, especially for women of color. Our discussion reveals how evaluations often differ for men and women. We also dissect the evolving dynamics of remote and hybrid work, generational shifts in expectations for work-life balance and how men's engagement in domestic duties is crucial for supporting women's career growth.
Show Notes
- Stanford Study on Language Bias in Performance Reviews
- Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang
- Fair Play by Eve Rodsky
Guest Bios
Jessica Dietrich is a VEST Member and the Director of Government Relations and Policy for Hunger Free Oklahoma. In her free time you can find Jessica spending time with her Little through Big Brothers Big Sisters, serving as a violinist and board president for Oklahoma Chamber Symphony, and enjoying time at her home in OKC with her spouse and small fleet of pets including dogs, cats, and chickens.
Brad Johnson, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law at the United States Naval Academy, and a Faculty Associate in the Graduate School of Education at Johns Hopkins University. A clinical psychologist, Dr. Johnson is a mentoring expert specializing in developing gender-inclusive mentoring cultures for organizations around the globe. Dr. Johnson is the author of numerous publications including 14 books, including: Good Guys: How Men Can Become Better Allies for Women in the Workplace, Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women (both with David Smith), and The Elements of Mentoring 3rd Ed. (with Charles Ridley).
If you enjoyed the episode share it with a friend and don't forget to leave us a review. If you are ready to take your career to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Check out our VEST Membership and apply today! www.VESTHer.co
Hey everyone, this is Erica Lucas, your host and founding member of Vest, an organization connecting women across industries, regions and career levels so that together we can expedite the pipeline of more women in positions of power and influence. Welcome to another episode of the Vestor Podcast, where we explore the invisible barriers holding women back in the workplace and share stories of women building power collectively.
Speaker 2:Thinking more on some of the common pitfalls or mistakes that men may make when they're attempting to mentor or advocate for women. What are those and how can they avoid them?
Speaker 3:Number one men failing to listen and also avoiding assumptions about women. You know, what do women want? Well, women are not a monolith. So I need to do the generous listening and actually ask you know, what would it look like if I was showing up in a way that is helpful? I think men also get it wrong by expecting women to educate them about gender in the workplace versus going out and doing their own self-education. There's so much written, there's so many podcasts, there's so many great articles about gender bias and gender difference in the workplace. If men would do a bit of self-educating before they show up in spaces like this, I think that would be incredibly helpful.
Speaker 3:I think sometimes we see men showing up with an attitude about what allyship is. That gets it wrong from the start. Men get together in kind of a siloed way and think to themselves what are we going to do for women versus this attitude of partnership and collaboration? How are we going to go there together? And then one other one, jessica, that comes up a lot is men's self-labeling as allies. It drives me crazy. Dave and I do a lot of training for men on better allyship and inclusive leadership, and men will sometimes say, hey, when do I get my certificate on, you know, being an ally and we're always saying, I'm sorry, there's not a destination here. We're always trying to get better and there's not a finish line better and there's not a finish line.
Speaker 4:In this episode, best Members talk to gender-inclusive culture expert Brad Johnson, professor of psychology at the United States Naval Academy and faculty associate at Johns Hopkins University, about the skills and benefits men earn when they engage in advocating for women at work. Brad also talks about the misconceptions and challenges that often get in the way of men engaging in gender equity advocacy. We also talk about the economics of inclusive workspaces, intersectionality and more. Special thanks to BEST member Jessica Dietrich, director of Government Relations and Policy for Hunger-Free Oklahoma, for moderating this session. Hunger Free Oklahoma for moderating this session. For Brad and Jessica's full bio and show notes, go to wwwbestherco. Forward slash podcast.
Speaker 4:This episode is brought to you by VEST, a coaching platform, peer network and investment fund for women. To learn more about how VEST supports and invests in women professionals and solutions enabling women's labor participation and economic mobility, go to wwwbestherco. This conversation was part of a more private coaching session with best members and has been repurposed to accommodate this episode. If you enjoyed the episode, share it with a friend and don't forget to leave us a review.
Speaker 2:I want to start off with somewhat of a broad question. What inspired you to focus on this topic of men mentoring and advocating for women in the workplace?
Speaker 3:Yes, this may not surprise you, we get that question a lot, my co-author, dave Smith, and I. So let me just kind of give you my Um. So let me just kind of give you my and I think of this as my why. You know, and part of our advice to men often who need to be better in this space and need to be showing up as inclusive leaders, is you better get comfortable with your why, because people are going to want to know why you're doing this. And so for me, uh, it's a combination of several things. It's 30 years of researching, mentoring, sponsoring relationships in the workplace and noticing the data that consistently shows that women simply don't get access to those developmental relationships the way that men do. Men do, and even when they are mentored, they often don't get the same quality of mentoring and they often don't get sponsored as part of that relationship and men do. So I've noticed those disparities. I've been curious about why that is so.
Speaker 3:The academic piece, I think, factors in there's a personal element for me. I've got one sister, one sibling. We both, shannon and I both became naval officers right after we got our PhDs in clinical psych. I don't know if she followed in my footsteps or we were both just kind of oriented to psychology. But I stayed active duty for four years as an officer. My sister has stayed her entire career. She's now at 30 years. She's a very senior Navy captain. She's had combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. She's been on aircraft carriers. She is a warrior.
Speaker 3:And over those 30 years I have had almost weekly conversations with my sister about headwinds that she encounters, that I never have, right, just gender differences. We had the same job. Shannon is told, you know, probably at least once a month. Hey, you know, you should smile more. No one's ever said that to me. Or, you know, when you give feedback to men you're emasculating, right, you're a little too aggressive. Nobody's ever said that to me.
Speaker 3:She was even shamed once for running so fast on a physical fitness test. She beat all the guys and was told hey, maybe you should tone that down a little bit because the guys feel bad, down a little bit, because the guys feel bad. It's just mind-boggling to me what my sister based on nothing more than gender encounters. So I think that's part of it. And then, you know, I've spent my career at the Naval Academy and I really think that if more men were exposed to the women at the Naval Academy who are about to go out and lead Marines and sailors in combat, they would have an easier time getting over some of their gender bias. They would very quickly be exposed to these women who are ready to lead from day one and I think in terms of mitigating some bias about women in leadership and women in competence I've had some privilege just being around these young women so I think you put all of those things together that kind of, I think is a bit about why I started down this road.
Speaker 2:I love and Monica put this in the chat too that you had those conversations with your sister. I know a lot of us have siblings and I know I personally haven't had that conversation with my brother, so it's a fascinating lens to kind of bring to this through that family dynamic. So have you encountered any resistance from men or women in this process?
Speaker 3:Yes, both, and it's interesting and there are different reasons for the resistance and I think you know they both make sense in different ways. But let me start with women. You know organizations like this, you know let's just talk about Vestur, or women's conferences, or women's ERGs, in most companies, women's networks. These have traditionally been safe spaces, you know, for women to be together to talk about what they're experiencing, to talk about bias and headwinds, and you know that daily death by a thousand cuts all the microaggressions and exclusions they encounter, and I think they've served a really important purpose. These have been places for women to gather and you know. So when you start saying, hey, we should invite men into these conversations or into these spaces, understandably I think a lot of women, or some at at least, will say what we don't need men here, we don't want men here, this is kind of our space. Want to have great empathy for that. I think it makes terrific sense. I think the problem, of course, if men are not part of the conversation, it's going to be an echo chamber and this is why the World Bank estimates we have I think the most recent estimate is 135 years to actually get to equity and things like pay because the progress is glacial. Men tend to look at this and see this as a women's issue. They think it's a gender thing, so it doesn't involve me and they just don't engage. So we need to bring men in. But I think the way men show up is important and we can certainly talk more about that.
Speaker 3:I think women, too, are sometimes concerned about. You know, I mentioned my why. What's his thing? Why is he doing this? Is it performative, right? Is he doing it to look good in front of the boss? Is he trying to woo women? Is he trying to get higher performance evaluation? So he's just showing up performatively in these spaces but he's not really acting it out. He's just throwing on his ally cape when he thinks people are watching. So I understand that concern as well. I think people want to just kind of get a sense of is this authentic or not? For men.
Speaker 3:We have gotten different kinds of resistance and pushback. We hear men say things like why are we talking about gender? We solved this in the 60s, right? It's a level playing field now, and I see women down the hall. So what's the problem?
Speaker 3:We have women here, and what we're, of course, not getting to is do we really have women involved in leadership? What are those women experiencing in the workplace? Those men we have some work to do in just helping them understand what women experience in ways that perhaps men don't. Men also can suffer zero-sum thinking, right? Hey, if we're promoting women, if we're spending all of these resources on DE&I, then I, as a majority male, I'm going to lose in some way, and I think obviously that's a fallacy. We find that when we get to real gender balance in leadership, meaningfully, the pie just grows for everybody. Right, we have more opportunity, more advancement, and I think we have work to do helping those men with zero-sum thinking.
Speaker 3:And then, finally, you know, dave and I hold men's feet to the fire, often about making yourself accountable, to hold other men accountable in the workplace. So when you hear biased comments or sexist jokes, you have an obligation to say something and disrupt, and I know men sometimes feel anxiety about this. You know I don't want to suffer the wimp penalty. I don't want to lose my man card. This makes me anxious, so I just stay on the sidelines. I don't want to suffer the wimp penalty. I don't want to lose my man card. This makes me anxious, so I just stay on the sidelines. I don't engage, so those are just a few of the things that I think we encounter.
Speaker 2:You mentioned some of the challenges that men may face in advocating for women, and you've already named a few, but thinking more on some of the common pitfalls or mistakes that men may make when they're attempting to mentor, advocate for women, what are those and how can they avoid them?
Speaker 3:There are so many. How long is this show today? There are a lot and I'm guessing I'm going to name a few, but I'm guessing that women on the call today could come up with a bunch of others too. I'll just go through some that kind of I think occur over and over again. Number one men failing to listen, men just showing up and talking. Men maybe showing up at an event, you know, like a women's conference or a women's ERG event, and then trying to take over and speak for women, or it lands the wrong way every time. So simply not showing up, with generous listening and also avoiding assumptions about women. What do women want? Well, women are not a monolith. So I need to do the generous listening and actually ask you know, what would it look like if I was showing up in a way that is helpful? I think men also get it wrong by expecting women to educate them about gender in the workplace versus going out and doing their own self-education. There's so much written, there's so many podcasts, there's so many great articles about gender bias and gender difference in the workplace. If men would do a bit of self-educating before they show up in spaces like this, I think that would be incredibly helpful in spaces like this. I think that would be incredibly helpful.
Speaker 3:I think sometimes we see men showing up with an attitude about what allyship is. That gets it wrong from the start. So men get together in kind of a siloed way and think to themselves what are we going to do for women versus this attitude of partnership and collaboration? How are we going to go there together? We have to solve this gender inequity, but we have to do it together. So no white knighting, no rescuing, no doing things for women. This has got to be about collaboration.
Speaker 3:And so, boy, I need to show up with some real curiosity. What role can I play in collaborating so we can get there faster? But I won't assume what that looks like. And then one other one, jessica, that comes up a lot is men's self-labeling as allies. It drives me crazy. Dave and I do a lot of training for men on better allyship and inclusive leadership, and men will sometimes say, hey, when do I get my certificate on being an ally? And we're always saying, I'm sorry, there's not a destination here. We're always trying to get better and there's not a finish line. So let's not call ourselves allies. Let's let minoritized folks decide if you're an ally to them.
Speaker 2:I really, I really love that you said there's, there's, not a destination. I think in such a goal oriented society we can be very set on what is the end point, what is the end goal, and I can be helpful in some things. But, as you mentioned, this is a, this is a process and maybe more of a spectrum than trying to get to an individual destination, and the principles are very similar to working in the racial equity space and the socioeconomic space. Nothing about us without us is a common organizing term, and this is right up that alley. Us is a common organizing term, and this is right up that alley. So lots of great points and it's a good reminder for us. Those same principles that we know in other spaces can apply here. So how can men navigate potential challenges or perceptions, such as the fear of being misunderstood or facing backlash when actively supporting women's advancement, or facing backlash when actively supporting women's advancement?
Speaker 3:Yeah, great question. And I just want to revisit something I've mentioned before, dave and I see too many men show up when invited to women's spaces or gendered conversations or maybe it's your company's International Women's Day celebration or something like that. I see either men not showing up at all, so they miss out entirely on the opportunity to get better in this space, or the way they show up lands incorrectly. So you know, I see men show up and talk too much. I see men essentially mansplaining to women how they should do, how they should get to gender equity or how they can pretzel themselves to kind of fit into a male-centric workplace, and I wish that more men could learn to just show up and realize you don't have to talk, just show up and learn. Just show up and listen, improve your gender intelligence, your GQ and, while you're at it, improve your cultural intelligence. Let's not forget about the intersections. So listen and learn.
Speaker 3:At some point, as you have begun to collaborate with the Women's Network or Women's Conference, now ask those curious, humble questions what role can I play? How can I really do some work to help this organization move forward? I'm not sure what that looks like, but I'm really open to learning about that. I think that's the way you do that. A second thing I'll mention is what Dave and I refer to as reluctant male syndrome, meaning why don't men engage in close friendships, in mentoring, in any other developmental connection with women in the workplace? And we've found so many reasons. If you ask men in private what this is about, why they stay on the sidelines, why they're afraid to engage, you hear so many things Anxiety, right, I don't want to say or do the wrong thing, so it's not worth it for me. Maybe I'm afraid of gossip. I start mentoring a junior woman. Will people begin talking? That sounds scary. I don't want to risk that. There's implicit bias, right. There's this interesting research in psychology called the women are wonderful effect. So ask men, what do you think of women? And you get positive language. Well, women are great. I love women. They're kind, they're gentle, they're caring. But in all of the language that you get, you're not hearing language about competence and about leadership and about readiness to step up into the next thing, whatever it is. So if that is going on for me and I'm not even aware of it, maybe I'm not offering mentoring and sponsoring, and then we can't ignore Me Too. Right, me Too comes along and we're looking at research from Bloomberg, for example Post Me Too. Showing about 60% of men in America are saying Post Me Too. Sorry, I'm not mentoring women, it's too dangerous, too scary, too risky.
Speaker 3:A lot of false narratives about Me Too. You know, me Too is pretty straightforward Women would love to come to work and not be assaulted or harassed. Super low bar for men to get over. But instead of that you may hear the false narratives that it's just, it's too dangerous. So solution for that, I mean really there's only one. I'm a psychologist and I just am always recommending to men to self-treat for that anxiety using exposure therapy Boy, more mentoring, more coffee, more lunches, more conversations. That's the only way you overcome that. But don't make your anxiety her problem. You'd need to just engage a bit more. So those are just some of the things. I'm sure others on the call would have other thoughts about that.
Speaker 5:This is a little bit of a different angle on that and maybe you'll cover this later, but I wonder what can women do to put men at ease and make them feel more comfortable? Sometimes I feel like we need to take a leadership role so that, you know, we can allay some of those, those fears and concerns.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I. I think that's a brilliant question, joanne. I my only reluctance is I don't want to give women one more thing they have to do to get to more equity and fairness and parity in the workplace. You know you have enough office housework on your plate, you know, compared to men you know I don't know, others may have great ideas about this I often tell men, you know, look, if you've got a lot of anxiety, for example, about a closed door meeting with women and I hear this from a lot of men I'm sorry I won.
Speaker 3:But number two please don't have closed door meetings with men. It's not fair. If you've got some policy like that, at least make it equal so that everybody has the same kind of access to you, because otherwise you're sending messages to everyone in the workplace that women are somehow risky or dangerous or, who knows, maybe you don't trust yourself alone in a meeting. One other thought I have about that, joanne, is just to suggest, you know, group mentoring. How about if it's a senior male executive? Would he be comfortable hosting, you know, a conversation or coffee with three women who are interested in moving up? Maybe that will help. I'm open to anything. I just don't want to make it her problem that he has anxiety about that.
Speaker 2:Thanks for the question, Joanne. Thank you.
Speaker 6:This is Monica and I'm watching Hannah add about something that I was sort of thinking about, which is you know how, as a woman, one could be as sort of specific as possible about what is helpful or what is desired. But I'm also sort of not quite sure about that because number one probably, women have been doing that for a long time and does it get taken seriously or acknowledged? You know, just saying it again doesn't necessarily make it different. And also, the other thing is, you know, if so much of the different treatment is just sort of in the culture, women may not know, like what they're missing, what we're missing out on. So how to even say I will.
Speaker 6:You know, I am really looking for a mentorship that does X, y and Z. Well, you know, we may not have the kind of exposure to know what the most effective things are, and men may or may not realize if they're doing something you know what they're doing because it could be potentially so natural in that kind of environment. So I definitely hear it's not exactly another job for us to take on, to solve, but in a way it sort of is. But we might not even know what we don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know it's interesting. You say that, monica, cheryl. In terms of initiating a mentorship, you know, I think both ways we could kind of talk about that. I often hear from men. I do see these talented junior women around me at work and I know I should offer a mentoring conversation. I'm just not sure what that sounds like and I don't want to get it wrong. I don't want it to land the wrong way. So I avoid and we're constantly, I think, just having to coach men on how this is not a heavy lift. But don't say something to her like I'd like to mentor you, right? That sounds creepy and she doesn't know what it means. But how about? Hey, I saw you do blank last week and I thought that was terrific. I was thinking to myself wow, the hiring committee sure got it right, bringing you on board. I hope we can keep you If you ever want to drop by and just chat about next steps and how I can contribute. That's not really a challenge.
Speaker 3:And then I think that women are often curious about how do I initiate, maybe initiating up, how do I initiate that conversation? Sheryl Sandberg has said in her book I always get junior women coming up to me after a talk and they'll just do this cold ask hey, will you be my mentor? And she says that's such a mood killer, right, it just comes out of the blue. I don't know you, you're asking for a relationship. That feels like a heavy lift. So how about something more concrete and specific like hey, could I get on your calendar for 30 minutes just to ask you about this experience you've had, or something I'm curious about in my career? Most people will say yes to that if they have any bandwidth, and one fun conversation often leads to another, and that's really how I think a lot of organic mentorships begin. So I always am a big fan of making the very specific ask, kind of like you suggested, monica.
Speaker 7:I really love that advice and also it could happen in the reverse and so, like I've had, people before have like a similar like asked to be mentored and to me that feels like okay, we're meeting monthly, we're meeting weekly, like well, I don't think I have the time commitment for this, but maybe a better transition would be to say I'd love to you know, I'm not sure that I can commit to a long-term mentorship, but tell me what you have going on. If it's something that's in my wheelhouse, maybe we can grab coffee and talk about it for 30 minutes, which might be more manageable and really what they're looking for anyway.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 7:This has been so good. Brad, I'm so glad, and Jessica and the whole of us team.
Speaker 2:So we've got some great questions in the chat, but before I jump to those, Dr Johnson, a minute ago you mentioned intersectionality and I think that was a really interesting point and I wanted to dig into that a little further. So we know it plays a significant role in mentoring. How does that intersectionality affect the context of allyship and mentorship?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, great question. I think it affects it in lots of ways. You know I've mentioned the headwinds and the inequity women broadly encounter around access to developmental relationships. Well, it gets worse for women of color, for black women. There's lots of research from McKinsey and other groups looking at women of color specifically and we find that, compared to white women, they get far fewer developmental conversations with key people in leadership in their organizations. We know women of color, black women especially, face double jeopardy, the sense that I've got the headwinds of both race and gender coming my way and I feel like, as a consequence, I'm working twice as hard to get half as far, or I feel invisible. I just don't even feel that people notice me in a meeting or wouldn't reach out to me for any kind of developmental conversation. I also think that there's an opportunity for leaders and I'm talking about leaders of any organization now to get beyond these monolithic comments about women in their companies, right? Well, hey, on our annual survey, we found that 70% of women feel a sense of belonging here, so we're doing pretty well.
Speaker 3:Are you disaggregating the data? You can't speak of women that way. How are black women experiencing the workplace? Or Latina women? Or LGBTQ colleagues and oftentimes you're going to see very different data once you begin to disaggregate. So I think here's a moment to actually pay attention to those intersections and ask questions.
Speaker 3:We know that across the board, women of color have very different experiences and feel less belonging, less inclusion than their white female colleagues. This is also an opportunity, frankly, for majority women white women to show up, I think, with allyship for those women of color who are more marginalized. The other thing is that you know Dave Smith and I write about allyship for women. We talk about all of these allyship skills interpersonally, publicly, systemically for women. But when you really look at those skills, those micro behaviors that we call allyship, they map very nicely to other marginalized groups, to other marginalized groups. They map to people of marginalized races and sexual identities, and I think that's important to recognize. If you can get good being an ally to half the population women, you can probably map these to other groups as well. So those are just a few thoughts.
Speaker 2:You really spoke to me when you mentioned disaggregating data. That's something in my work I'm very, very heavily in. For example, the USDA classifies, lumps Native folks together in Alaska, native and Native American, and that's those are vastly different people across tribes, across land and so but we aren't asking the questions to even be able to disaggregate that data yet. So that's a I feel like that's a relatively easy step that we can each take to say are we asking the questions to even be able to disaggregate the data? So thank you for that. So I want to hop to a couple of the questions in the chat. Erica mentioned that on our LinkedIn poll, people said that more than mentoring women, women want men to help advocate for better policies. What are your thoughts on that poll and your thoughts on how we can engage men in a way that is effective?
Speaker 3:Yeah, what a great, great question. Well, a few things. And, by the way, back to my friend Sheryl Sandberg. She often says something very similar that you know, women get enough of the nice mentoring meaning just people showing up and being nice to them and supportive that way. But what they're not getting often is the loud sponsorship you know, and one of our big messages is hey, if you're mentoring a woman and you're not, her loud, vocal advocate, what a huge missed opportunity to get more talented women advanced into leadership.
Speaker 3:So I think a difficult question we pose to a lot of men is are you talking about her when she's not even in the room? Are you her raving fan? Men can feel uncomfortable about that for different reasons. Some of it goes back to the anxiety we talked about. If I'm raving about her when she's not even in the room, will people get the wrong idea or will there be rumors, et cetera again. But men have got to get over that. If men make this part of their brand, this is just part of your brand. It's who you are. You loudly sponsor both men and women and everybody knows that. There's no story there, there's no gossip. People just know that's who you are. You're kind of equal opportunity in access to you as a sponsor or mentor.
Speaker 3:There was a guy at Goldman Sachs, a senior executive, who recognized at some point, doing a self-audit, that he was mentoring almost all men at Goldman Sachs. And when he did some soul searching he realized I do all my mentoring over drinks and dinner after work and for a lot of reasons women probably don't feel comfortable with that or that's not a convenient time for a lot of women. So he changed his behavior and had his assistant starting to book mentoring. He called it his breakfast, lunch only policy, breakfast or lunch meetings only, and he said within five years it was about 50-50 mentoring, sponsoring both men and women, and he would do it at a very transparent glass cafe. Everyone walked by and saw him having meetings with men and women. There's just no story there. When you do that, everyone expects that.
Speaker 3:And then I think the other part of your great question is getting to systems, and I'm 100%. Dave and I are working on our third book on allyship right now and it's all on systemic allyship, and I think this is something we have not addressed. How do we change workplace policies and procedures and systems so that we get to better equity and this. We could talk all day about this, but gosh, it includes everything from how do we normalize caregiving? How do we think about parental leave? Do we have adequate paid parental leave? Do we encourage men to take it versus just women, which, of course, is stigmatizing for women alone?
Speaker 3:How do we audit for pay equity? Do people at different levels get, or at the same level get, paid differently? And who's monitoring that? And if it's embedded in the system, which it probably is you know the way we did negotiate for salaries, the way we hire, the way we have gender bias built into those interviews, the way we have bias built into our promotion strategies it's everywhere. And if we're not willing to dive in and take a hard look at those things, including all of that desegregated data about who feels really included in the company, then I think we're just going to see the bias and inequity perpetuate itself over and over. Perpetuate itself over and over.
Speaker 2:Really great point Switching gears a little bit. Kendra asked in the chat if you can speak more to what you've learned about why men are often primarily measured on hard skills and performance metrics and why women in similar roles are often measured on primarily personality and softer skills.
Speaker 3:There's so much here and it's such a great question. My colleague, dave, has done a ton of research on subjective evaluations, performance evaluations, and it's almost shocking how the language varies for men and women. So these are men and women doing the same jobs and if we're talking about the lower levels of employees, so people doing technical work in organizations often you don't see a big difference in the language that's used to evaluate performance. But the minute you start getting into leadership levels, you start seeing the bias. Women and men who are directors or vice presidents get very different language on their leadership. So women are called things much more likely. It's going to be something like compassionate. That's often the number one thing women get called Men get technically proficient or analytical. They get different language and you may not think that that amounts to much, but it does so. There's a big study out of Stanford recently looking at that subjective language and the words that get applied to men are often the words that lead to promotion and pay increases versus the language that gets applied to women. So you know it's funny.
Speaker 3:You mentioned the hard skills and soft skills. I hate to differentiate it that way. I think that for me this all falls under the umbrella of emotional intelligence. And here's the irony there's research recently looking at men who are getting promoted to the C-suite and the change that's happened in the last 10 years is remarkable. The men who are getting promoted today in a lot of companies have attitudes and behaviors related to humility, authenticity, empathy. These are how these inclusive men are leading, and it's leading to them getting promoted. Ironically, women have been doing this much more than men for forever. Those are some of the traits that are associated with women. If you just disaggregate leadership data, women tend to show up with more inclusion, more democracy in their decision-making all of the things that most of us value in a leader. Men are slowly catching up and they're getting rewarded for it, but we're not rewarding women in the same way.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. I did make a note that Stanford study sounds fascinating. Do you know? You said it's from the past several years.
Speaker 3:It's actually recent, I would say in the last year or so. So I can get the reference from Dave. He often mentions that study, so it's from. There's a big lab at Stanford that looks I think it's in sociology that looks at gender equity in the workplace Wonderful. Yeah, there it is, I think, kendra found it Boom.
Speaker 2:Thank you, kendra. Just some light reading for later. So what differences, if any, are you finding across generations?
Speaker 3:Yes, you know that's a really interesting question. I think part of the bias that I have just to own that is that it's easy for me to look at a room full of men who look like me and assume that that's going to be the problem group group. That's going to be the group that has more of the zero-sum thinking, more of the unwillingness to change, more of the lack of awareness, lack of gender intelligence. And I think to some extent we do see that those can be some of the tougher customers men who have been in the company forever and may resist efforts to improve equity, but I think we're seeing just as much difficulty at times among junior men. So there is a book called Brotopia. I don't know if any of you have seen it. It is written by, I think it's a woman, I think it's Chang is her last name. Brotopia. It is all about the tech bro culture in Silicon Valley and I have to tell you it is one of the most cringeworthy reads you will ever encounter, looking at what women experience around overt misogyny, sexist harassment, daily in the tech industry, because it's very much a bro culture. These are all young men, these are men coming right into tech companies, programmers, and so I don't think we can always assume it's just age. I think some of it has to do with the culture these men are functioning in. So if those men show up in that tech company and older male engineers are socializing them into this very sexist culture, we're going to just see it perpetuated. So again, we've got to get to cultural solutions here.
Speaker 3:But here's one positive, I think younger men millennial men and younger are showing up expecting a workplace and a life personally that is more equitable around caregiving. They want to be more engaged fathers. You can see this in all the surveys. They want to be more equitable partners, especially heterosexual men. You'll see that because more and more we just have dual career couples and men are understanding there's a lot in this for me. If I get to be more engaged with my kids and my partner gets to be more engaged at work and have more possibility for promotion, this is good for us. So those men, I think, want to see a different workplace. But then again they show up into these calcified companies and there's not bandwidth for them to be different. There's not permission for them to take parental leave, there's not permission for them to share, and so again, it's an opportunity to really take a hard look at how we do work.
Speaker 2:I think On a similar subject, a question that's kind of been rattling around in my mind and I don't have the words for it, so bear with me for a minute. But I'm thinking about this greater shift to hybrid and remote work that the pandemic brought and how it. I think in some ways it could be an equalizer and in other ways it could increase disparities, and so I think part of my question is have you seen any research around how that interacts with our conversation topic today? And if you haven't, do you have any kind of initial thoughts or observations that you've had on your own?
Speaker 3:There is a lot actually written on this and I think it's a really important topic. I mean, I think what we learned during the pandemic very clearly is that flex, remote work works and people are happier with a lot of those arrangements. You know, ironically flex work has been available for a long time, even before the pandemic, but it was mostly available for men. Ironically, women had less access to that. During the pandemic that was sort of equaled out and I think both men and women benefited from more equitable sharing at home. Although the research shows men didn't share as much at home as they think they did, at least they were home more and got a front row seat to what caregiving actually looks like day to day.
Speaker 3:I think there are two big problems that we need to address. Number one women we find post-pandemic are taking advantage of more of the flex or remote work opportunities and are expecting that. If we don't address how bias is going to creep in there, so people who aren't getting the FaceTime are less likely to get promoted. How do we mitigate that? How do we make sure those women who are remote and aren't around the office are getting sponsored or getting mentored or getting noticed, having their performance valued. If we don't have a way to address that, those women are going to slip through the cracks and they're simply not going to advance, and I think companies are really struggling with that.
Speaker 3:The second thing I will say and maybe others have other ideas here to really make flex, remote work work, men have got to take it. It can't just be a women's program and I'm afraid that too often that's what's happening. It can't just be a women's program and I'm afraid that too often that's what's happening. Still, men either feel like they're going to be punished or they're going to suffer. If they want to be flex workers or want to be caregivers or want to share, somehow do more remote work, for whatever reason, men don't do it. They don't take advantage of those programs as much as women do. So I think until we get men using that as much as women and really sharing in an egalitarian way, then it's going to still be stigmatized as primarily a women's thing.
Speaker 2:Shifting a little bit. So we are seeing so much real time polarization and politicization of DEIAB efforts. How do you see this affecting inclusion efforts in the workplace right now and how do you see it evolving, and what role do you believe men will play in driving change?
Speaker 3:Yeah, what a great question. I am seeing it. I think anyone who you know tunes into the news for 10 minutes is going to see this All the kind of pushback on you know gosh for lack of a better word woke programs in companies and in universities. I hate that term woke. I think it's often used by people who don't understand what diversity, equity, belonging actually is about and feel anxious or have the zero-sum thinking.
Speaker 3:I think this is a moment, frankly, for leadership, courage. I think that there is pushback. We can't deny that. My question is who is going to stay the course? Who is going to say very clearly let's look at the research, let's make this evidence-based. The evidence is clear when we get more genuine inclusion and representation at all levels of leadership whether we're talking about gender, race or any other group of leadership, whether we're talking about gender race or any other group we do better. Companies perform more effectively, they're better places to work, Retention is higher, the company bottom line is improved. This is an evidence-based issue. It's not political. This is all about performance and so many of the folks who push back on this are people who are big into capitalism and business and I think they're very incongruent on this because they're ignoring the data that this is actually good for all of us.
Speaker 3:I think you know I have empathy for this. Dave and I were at a big medical school recently doing some work and they've recently been sued because they have this world-class women's leadership program. It's actually won awards, it's been written up in academic journals, it has led to a huge increase in advancing women in the medical schools, which is a huge problem. We have real lack of representation and leadership in academic medicine and they've been sued on the basis of Title IX right. So it's not fair for you to have a program for women that men don't have access to. I find that a bit enraging, of course, because again it ignores the data that you have a very uneven playing field here and we're not giving special privilege. We're actually trying to get to balance, we're trying to get to equity, but I see organizations like that folding the minute a lawsuit shows up and I think lawyers drive too much of that and I worry that unless people show up with some real courage and are willing to fight back, we may take a few steps back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're seeing situations like that here in Oklahoma as well. Just the other day, I believe it was, ou announced that they were closing a women's leadership program because they felt it violated new rules against DEIB training and we've had a number of female legislators go through that program and we have a drastic underrepresentation of women in the legislature and that's disappointing to see a program like that feel like they need to close. That's disappointing to see a program like that feel like they need to close. So I want to put out a call to those on the call. If you have any last minute questions, this is a good time to be thinking about those dropping them in. I do have one kind of wrap up question for you, dr Johnson, and that is what are three main takeaways for VEST members and anyone listening to this podcast episode that you'd like to share?
Speaker 3:Sure, yeah, boy, I have to narrow it down to three. Okay, all right. Well, here are three that I think are kind of top of mind for me. Number one there was a great study by a group called Integrating Women Leaders last year, and actually they've been doing an annual survey related to male allyship and one of the questions that they ask men is hey, if you haven't engaged in allyship programming, gender equity programming, if you just haven't been part of that, why haven't you? The number one thing men consistently say to that is I wasn't invited.
Speaker 3:And it may seem silly that we have to invite men to things related to equity, but my takeaway is invite men, be deliberate about it. If you're running a women's business group or ERG in your company and you want to get more allies at the table, give them a personal invite next time you're having an event and say hey, I'd love to have you come to this. I see you as somebody who's really showing up this way, and this is really for you too. When men get an invite personally, they often are much more likely to show up and engage, and I think that's half. The battle sometimes is getting men in the room. And one corollary to that is, if you're trying to do programming for men and make them better allies is if you're trying to do programming for men and make them better allies, don't call it gender blank, because men again see that and think, oh, that's not for me. Call it something like inclusive leadership and you know what. A lot of men see that and go okay, that makes sense, it's part of my leadership brand. Sometimes it's just the branding of things like this, the branding of things like this.
Speaker 3:A second thing, maybe number two, is we don't do a good job showing men what's in it for them. Too often, when we have programs around equity and belonging and gender, men think, oh, this is just for women, and why do I want to expend all this energy being a better ally for women? This is not just for women. There's lots of research showing that when men are more inclusive leaders and better allies, have more relationships, richer networks with women in their organizations, they do better, they're more likely to get promoted, they're more likely to be seen as inclusive leaders, they develop better EQ, they develop better communication skills, and these are not just things I get to employ and enjoy in the workplace. I get to take these home to be a better partner, better parent. This is just good for men when they show up in these spaces. So we have to do a better job, I think, helping men understand why gender equity is good for them, not just women.
Speaker 3:And then, finally, let's talk about caregiving, maybe as my last bullet here, I want to recommend to everybody on the call today if you haven't read it, make sure you get your hands on Eve Rodsky's book Fair Play. Sure you get your hands on Eve Rodsky's book Fair Play. I don't know if anybody has read Fair Play. I'm a big fan of Eve's.
Speaker 3:Eve has written a terrific book on how partners can share caregiving, domestic work, homeschooling, whatever it is. We know that in the year 2024, it is. We know that in the year 2024, heterosexual, dual career couples chances are really good. She's doing double the amount of caregiving and housework than he's doing, and one thing ought to be crystal clear to us we are never going to level the playing field when it comes to pay and advancement unless men start showing up at home. And this is not just doing the dishes and spending time with your own children. This is also all the hidden cognitive, emotional labor, all of that stuff like keeping lists and planning events and knowing your children's clothing sizes. If you, as a man, are not showing up in this space and doing better here, we have a long way to go, so caregiving. So if any of you on the call are partnered with men, maybe get fair play and read it together. What a fun couple activity.
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