Why men still win in the workplace

With more partners sharing the childcare and more companies implementing policies to support career growth for women, you’d think we were making great strides forward. But as International Women’s Day on 8th March focuses on forging a gender-equal world, we ask what’s still holding us back

I’m ashamed to say that for most of my 26 years at P&G, looking after brands including Olay and Pantene, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about gender inequality. I was aware it could be a problem, but it had never been a barrier for me personally. That’s until I moved from working in a 50:50 male to female environment to a 80:20 one in senior management. It was there I saw just how much a male-dominant corporate culture can hold women back. And when I saw it, I saw it everywhere.

What intrigued me was the fact it happens despite the policies and training put in place to prevent it, such as parental leave and unconscious bias training. Men don’t wake up every morning and think, ‘How can I build the patriarchy and destroy women’s careers?’ So why are men still winning at work? The simple answer is: because the people who promote men over women believe (wrongly) that they will perform better in the role.

That’s not to say we haven’t made any progress. Look at Kamala Harris, vice president of the USA, Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany and Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, who are all great role models. Yet these women are the exception, because over 90% of all leadership positions are still held by men. The ‘Fortune 500’ rankings include only 37 women (7%) and only 9% of UN member states have a female head of state or government, with just a quarter of parliamentary seats worldwide held by women*.

In many companies, 50% of the recruits at entry level are now female. So what happens to all those equally intelligent, equally competent and equally talented women?

The answer is a number of things, many of them invisible, unconscious and unintended, and it’s these we need to tackle if things are ever going to change. The #Metoo movement, so important and necessary, has in some ways taken the focus away from the more subtle barriers we face. While most men are not Weinsteins, they still do things subconsciously to create a work environment that holds us back. Here’s how…

The invisible power of culture

This is one of the most important hidden forces at play. When we feel a sense of belonging in a culture, we feel relaxed and perform at our best. In male dominant cultures, which still exist at senior levels in so many businesses and organisations, such as in legal, finance and tech companies as well as in politics, it’s not surprising that men are perceived to perform better. The reality is, they’re just more comfortable at the company. A dominant culture is always invisible to those who are part of it. If you ask the goldfish in the bowl, ‘How’s the water?’ the goldfish will say, ‘What water?’ So then women try to ‘fit in’ to this culture by copying the behaviours of the dominant group. By doing this, though, they will always be perceived negatively simply because they’re not being authentic or leveraging their own unique strengths.

Confidence vs competence

We all love confidence in a person, and if someone has confidence in themselves, we have confidence in them. The problem is that – for many reasons, which begin in childhood – women are, on the whole, less confident than men. One of these is the ‘perfectionist syndrome’ that many girls develop at school, where they learn to focus on being ‘good’ girls, while boys learn the importance of being confident among their peers.

If employers don’t look behind the ‘confidence curtain’ they will choose the more confident man and overlook the more competent woman. One of the most obvious places we see this is in the meeting room. Men generally still dominate discussions and are seen as stronger leaders and contributors, despite the reality that ‘giving good meeting’ has no correlation with a person’s quality of work.

‘WE PERFORM AT OUR BEST WHEN WE FEEL WE BELONG’

Umbrella theory

Over the course of my career, I have coached and mentored hundreds of women and virtually all of them have told me that they believe ‘my work should speak for itself’. Most women still believe in the myth of meritocracy, while most men know that it’s just that – a myth.

They know that, for the bosses above us, it’s as if we are all working under umbrellas – they don’t really know what we’re doing, or how well we’re doing it. So it isn’t enough just to do great work, it also needs to be visible and you need to be known, too. Men are, quite simply, better and more used to doing this than we are. They know the importance of networking and self-marketing. It doesn’t help either that the burden of ‘unpaid work’ in the home generally falls on women’s shoulders, which limits the time we have to promote ourselves.

‘Mini-me’ syndrome

This is when men support the younger versions of themselves, allowing the self-fulfilling prophecy

– that men are more likely to make it – to keep fulfilling itself. Unfortunately, the few women who do make it to the top don’t always do the same. We have all seen wonderful examples of the sisterhood, but many of us also come across senior women who don’t hold the ladder down for younger counterparts.

The bad news is that these forces in the workplace are acting against women every day, creating an ‘invisible ceiling’ (I always say it’s not glass because you can see and touch glass). The good news is that by becoming more aware of these forces, we can be prepared for them and respond in the right way. Ultimately, the answer is for there not to be a male dominant culture in place – what we want is a gender neutral one. Yet, sadly, we’re still a long way from that. Yes, things are better now than they were for the suffragettes over a 100 years ago, for example, but part of the problem is people thinking gender equality is now a ‘job done’. In reality, the issues we face have just got subtler and more invisibly undermining.

To make inequality a part of history, parents need to build up their daughters’ confidence from an early age. And at the same time, employers need to take responsibility for changing their male dominant cultures. Men need to be ‘femanists’ and champion women, and women need to focus more on championing themselves. The 2021 International Women’s Day theme is ‘Women In Leadership: Achieving an equal future in a Covid-19 world’ and I can’t think of a better one. So let’s make even bigger strides in gender equality this year and make way for the Kamalas, Angelas and Jacindas of the future.