Interviews – How Can Women Get to the Top?

I love it when I come across a piece of research that supports what I have always believed, don’t you? (There is a word for this type of bias but in this case I didn’t do the research so am innocent of only seeing what I am looking for!)

Women and Job Interviews

In Women Ahead, one of my personal development courses for women I have a fairly light hearted exercise when I ask participants to think how the world of work would look if it were designed solely to benefit and suit women. The purpose of this exercise is to promote discussion and awareness of how we women are often working at a disadvantage compared to male colleagues.

Working practices we take as givens were designed and originated from one half of the population, men. Ergo, they suit them. It’s much more a matter of chance if it suits the other 50% of the population, women. Yet we are judged against those male yardsticks.

Doing Well at Interviews

One topic course participants often end up discussing is the interview process and most don’t like it at all; they find it unnecessarily adversarial and are not over comfortable with ‘bigging themselves’ up. (Have a look at my 3 Tips to Close the Gender Pay Gap for more on this). It’s also often one of the reasons women come to me for some coaching; they want an interview confidence boost beforehand (and I’m happy to say at time of writing 100% of women who have come to me for that type of coaching have gone onto get the job, but then they are a self selecting group who have made a conscious choice to invest in themselves and their career). I added that last point to buck the trend of women not being good at bigging themselves up!

Research into the Gender Competition Gap

Back to that research. It was carried out by a two academic economists, Jennifer Pate and Andrew Healy and published in the Economic Journal. They were looking at the gender competition gap, in brief, female reluctance to enter competitions (you only have to look at any serious type quiz show on TV -  always far fewer women entering).

They conducted an experiment in which the participants had to answer maths problems as quickly as possible. Participants in teams decided whether they wanted to be paid accordingly to the number of problems answered correctly or whether they wanted to enter a competition against three other teams. Individual participants decided whether they wanted to compete against three other individuals.

The results highlighted huge differences between the genders:

• Even though men and women performed equally well on the task, 81% of men chose to compete as individuals compared with 28% of women
• When participants competed in teams, the gender competition gap shrank by 31% to 22% with 67% of men choosing to enter the competition compared with 45% of women

Previous research has shown that a man is much more likely to choose to compete compared with a woman, even when the two are equally good at a given task.

Women Disadvantaged in Getting on the Board

As a consequence of this research the economists suggest that women are disadvantaged from getting to the top (only five women CEOs in the top 100 FTSE companies) and a different approach to recruitment needs to be taken (I know a lot of women cheering loudly at this).

They suggest a new way of encouraging qualified women to opt in, especially important as while eminently qualified women take themselves out of this competitive arena, much less qualified men opt in! That’s not good for the economy or society as a whole. And if we really did address this issue, how might the world of politics look? I’d venture to suggest, it would look significantly better!

Photo Credit: Daniela Corno

Women, Three Tips to Close the Gender Pay Gap!

Yet another report tells us what most of us know – men continue to earn significantly more money than women at senior levels.

The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) released a report recently estimating that at current rates of progress it will take women 98 years to reach pay equality with men.

Why Does Women’s Pay Lag Behind Men’s?

There are many reasons why women lag behind men. Here are a few of my thoughts:

• we’re still relative newcomers in terms of industrialised society to the world of business
• the systems in place reward male types of behaviour as the systems were set up by men for men
• there are still a lot of men in senior positions who have wives at home, or who grew up when women worked for pin money and they still have outdated attitudes (I worked in one London firm where 80% of the board had non working wives at home- well, they were working but not in a professional paid capacity!)
• the systems in place assume a constant working life; no allowances are made for the fact that women have children (and society needs us to have those children)
• studies show that generally speaking women undervalue their talents
• studies show that generally speaking men over value their talents
• pregnancy tends to occur at the most significant career point in working life, the 30s
• some studies show that when women are contemplating parenthood they begin to withdraw competitively a few years before the event- a ‘don’t rock the boat’ mentality ensues
• studies show women don’t ask for enough money initially

What Can Women Do to Close the Pay Gap?

Many moons ago I had a holiday job in a large department store. I discovered, quite by accident, that the boys the same age as me, were being paid more than me. Significantly more than me. I was incensed and went marching along to the personnel department to ask why.

I think the HR manager was rather amused to have this indignant 17 year old in front of her espousing the cause of equal pay (the Equal Pay Act didn’t exist then – told you it was many moons ago) and offered me parity with the boys. But she didn’t extend that offer to the other women in the department. I refused to take my increase unless she offered it to all the girls as it was blatantly unfair, unless she was saying all the girls were less able than the boys. She conceded that this was not the case and that the girls probably worked harder overall. We all got a rise, although she did include a longevity clause so those who had been there longest got more!

First tip -In this instance I think women need to stick together. Most of the equal pay actions brought in this country have been class actions, with whole groups of women challenging the notion that women’s work is worth less than the male equivalent.

That works well at one level where pay scales are published and a matter of record, but at senior level it’s much harder to find out what others earn. But don’t let that stop you trying! Get rid of that embarrassment and challenge the system, preferably collectively. (But don’t opt for a women’s group which excludes men – make it a policy issue and get supportive men on board too)

Second Tip – Plan your career and work out well in advance what you are going to do about the baby issue. Don’t automatically assume it will disadvantage you as you’ll subconsciously be giving this message out to your co workers and boss . Work out what you can do to mitigate it’s effect on your career and also realise that running a home and rearing a new child can have a massive skill base too. All transferable.

Having a baby can be overwhelming so you really do need to plan for this in advance! Keep your end goal in sight. You may have to zig zag a bit but you can still get there.

Third Tip – Make sure you get what you’re worth in the first place. Don’t undersell yourself. Check out what the industry norm is and ask for more. You’ll be putting down a marker for your future worth too. Get regular reviews of your pay, even if it’s not particularly important to you (and studies do seem to show that money is not the main criteria for women). You need to recognise that in the professional world worth and value are linked to pay.

If this is an issue close to your heart take a look at this, my course specifically looking at gender differences at work. It’s called Speak Up and is at a beautiful 5* hotel because you’re a valuable commodity who shouldn’t be selling herself short!

Photo Credit: Designawards4us.com

Mind The Gap!

The gender pay gap is still very much in evidence as this article shows. 16.4%.

It was ever thus.