Will #MeToo shatter the glass ceiling?
As the wave of sexual harassment allegations reached seismic proportions, one solution touted repeatedly has been the need for more women in power.
But will the watershed moment lead to more women in top management roles — or could it actually hold them back? That’s a question getting more attention as the #MeToo movement takes root in workplace after workplace with acute, urgent risks like reputationcrushing headlines and expensive legal proceedings. Some experts worry any backlash to the moment — from overly cautious men to organizations with unfair expectations for the women who do get promoted — could hurt the numbers rather than help them.
Others are cautiously optimistic that the tremors could finally start to move the needle. The recent allegations have really helped to spotlight the lack of women in powerful roles, said Brande Stellings, who leads advisory services for Catalyst, a research and consulting organization focused on women in leadership.
Traditionally, she says, “one thing we will sometimes see that’s part of why women don’t get the top job is they’re seen as a risky bet because of the stereotypes people have.” But now, she said, “maybe men are a risky bet and people are asking about the risk of not having women in power.”
Though years of headlines about the lack of gender diversity at the top have made a business case for getting more women into management, there hasn’t been a lot of urgency for companies to take action. Now, ignoring diversity carries vastly more short-term risk.
“You would hope that companies [promote women] because diversity matters or because it’s the right thing to ensure fairness, but oftentimes companies are motivated from more of a compliance and risk management perspective,” said Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. “I think there is an immediacy surrounding this issue” of sexual harassment.
The other possibility is that an improved focus on toxic workplace cultures will prevent more women from leaving certain industries, such as technology, allowing them to naturally rise through the ranks, work in more inclusive cultures and aim for top-level jobs.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and founder and chief executive of the Center for Talent Innovation, said her firm’s data show that women in technology, in particular, often opt to leave to avoid such “frat boy cultures. If we were able to change that and make them more inclusive and not so predatory toward women, women would not just stick it out — they would be much more ambitious.”
But she and others warn about the potential “collateral damage,” in which senior executive men could cut women out of social events, one-on-one dinners and informal after-work mentoring out of fear that they could say or do the wrong thing. Before the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, Hewlett’s research found that 64% of men were already hesitant to meet oneon-one with female co-workers because they were fearful of the encounter being misconstrued. That figure could be even higher now.
Another risk is that organizations promote women because they have a cultural problem that needs fixing and then expect them to do all the work.
“In all jobs, women do more of these service roles,” said Stefanie Johnson, an associate professor of management at the University of Colorado, Boulder, such as working on diversity committees. “They call it organizational housekeeping.”
If that happens, playing the role of culture police puts women in a particular bind, setting them up for the risk of failure once they reach those leadership roles. As New York magazine writer Rebecca Traister put it in a recent piece, “as designated guardians, entrusted — whether as colleagues or wives — with policing men’s bad behaviors, [women] will get dinged for complicity if they don’t police it vigilantly enough and risk being cast as castrating villainesses if they issue sentence.”
To help ensure men continue acting as sponsors for more junior women, Hewlett suggests more communication and more accountability. Also crucial: Make sure that both men and women are expected to “sponsor” other employees.
Such steps could guard against what some see as possible — if not inevitable — backlash.
“I hate to say that, because I want to be more positive and optimistic, but this is about power, and men’s dominant place in society,” Johnson said. “And I think when people feel threatened, an obvious response is to push back.”