Women Don't Ask Read online

  The task force set about fixing these problems by conducting a series

  of workshops—attended by more than five thousand people in groups

  of 24—to talk about gender issues in the workplace. As a way for them

  to identify common assumptions made about women in the workplace,

  the teams were given scenarios to discuss. For example, in one, a man

  and a woman both came late to a meeting. Although the team members

  ignored the man’s tardiness, they automatically assumed that the

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  W O M E N D O N ’ T A S K

  woman was having child-care problems. In discussing the impact of

  this discrepancy in their responses, the team members realized that as-

  sumptions like this can negatively influence how a woman is evaluated.

  This led them to look more closely at how men and women at the firm

  were evaluated, and they discovered that men were typically evaluated

  on their “potential” while women were more commonly evaluated on

  their performance. The net result was that men were being promoted

  much faster than women. Other common practices looked at by the

  teams included a firmwide tendency to give men and women different

  work assignments (which make a big difference in who advances) based

  on unexamined and often unfounded assumptions. These included as-

  suming that women wouldn’t be comfortable in manufacturing environ-

  ments or that women wouldn’t want to travel too much—the latter a

  particularly career-damaging assumption at a company that relies heav-

  ily on travel to serve its clients.

  Once people at Deloitte and Touche started looking at their assump-

  tions about men and women, they began to see the implications of their

  beliefs—and how they made the atmosphere at the firm inhospitable to

  women and limited their advancement. The next step was to make

  changes. Prompted by the task force, all the firm’s offices were required

  to produce annual reviews documenting how well women were pro-

  gressing through their portion of the organization. They were also re-

  quired to track the number of women recruited and retained by each

  office, and these numbers were widely circulated across offices. This

  basic accountability changed the way assignments were made and eval-

  uations determined. Individual offices also started networking events

  and career-planning programs especially for women. Firmwide, the re-

  quirements for travel were changed, lessening the time that everyone—

  both men and women—was expected to be away from the office. The

  company also advertised that taking advantage of flexible work arrange-

  ments wouldn’t hinder one’s professional advancement within the

  organization. This dramatically increased the use of these programs by

  men as well as women.

  By the year 2000, the number of female partners at Deloitte and

  Touche had almost tripled, from 5 to 14 percent—a huge gain in nine

  years. The firm had also eliminated the gender gap in turnover (now

  about 18 percent annually for both men and women), and saved close

  to $250 million in hiring and training costs. Particularly heartening

  about this story is the evidence that the changes at Deloitte and Touche

  benefited both men and women—women because they could stay at

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  I N T R O D U C T I O N

  the company, enjoy working there more, and advance at a better pace,

  and men because they too could take advantage of flexible work ar-

  rangements, reduced travel loads, and a more supportive work environ-

  ment without negative repercussions. And the bottom line is that rather

  than costing money, the company actually saved millions of dollars—

  and stopped hemorrhaging talented people.25 Building on this success,

  the company is pushing toward even more ambitious goals by 2005.

  The experience of this one far-sighted company provides a wonderful

  model for how the rest of us, with a little commitment and persistent

  focus, can change our world. Gender equality, with the benefits it can

  bring to all of us, our sons as well as our daughters, will not be attainable

  unless our society has the courage, the resolve, and—perhaps most im-

  portant—the information and the insight to make across-the-board

  changes. Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter ex-

  plains it this way:

  Individual trickle-up is not enough. . . . The whole social system

  must be changed if women in general, not just a hardy, pioneering

  few, are to gain economic power. The apparent openness of American

  society to the overachiever from an underprivileged minority group

  who can pull herself up by the pantyhose and succeed makes it too

  easy to assume that the problems and solutions are all individual

  ones. It makes it easy for those in power to point to the token over-

  achiever as an example.26

  In other words, just because a few women manage to succeed despite

  the impediments our society erects in their paths doesn’t mean that

  these impediments don’t exist or that there’s no problem. Kanter also

  says that “a vision of what is possible, a source of hope and inspiration,

  is the necessary ingredient for energizing change.”27 We hope that this

  book, by shining a spotlight on the barriers that prevent women from

  asking for what they want—and suggesting ways for those barriers to be

  removed—will play a part in providing that vision of what is possible.

  16

  1

  Opportunity Doesn’t Always Knock

  Heather, 34, was the pastor at a struggling urban church in the

  Boston area. Heather was also an officer of her denomination’s

  local association council—a group of pastors from around the region

  that ordains ministers, reviews clergy on disciplinary charges, and helps

  churches find pastors. At a meeting of the council, another pastor, a

  man, asked the council to extend the support it had been giving him

  for the past three years. Heather was unfamiliar with this man’s situation

  and sat up to listen. It turned out that this male pastor had worked for

  many years at a prosperous Back Bay parish, where he’d been paid a

  generous salary. Three years before the meeting Heather attended, he’d

  decided to move to a poor urban parish that was struggling to revive

  itself. He hadn’t wanted to give up the salary he’d made at the rich

  downtown church, so he’d asked the council to supplement his in-

  come—to make up the difference between what he’d been making in

  the wealthy parish and what he would be paid at his new church. The

  council controlled a small discretionary fund—a fund very few people

  knew about—and had agreed to supplement the male pastor’s income

  from this fund for three years. Now those three years were coming to

  an end, and he was asking the council to renew the subsidy.

  Once Heather understood what was happening, she also realized that

  the impoverished church this man served was comparable in most re-

  spects to her church—and the salary he wanted supplemented was sim-

  ilar to the one on which she’d been struggling to support her four chil-

  dren for seven
years.

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  C H A P T E R 1

  Heather’s response revealed a kind of fatalistic dismay:

  This fund—I never knew of its existence. I mean, I was on the Associ-

  ation Council! . . . It had never been publicized. . . . There had never

  been any discussion about it in any meeting, there had never been

  any sort of sense that his time with it was up now, so that it was time

  for other churches to apply. . . . There is no application procedure;

  it’s not like it’s a grant that you can apply to get or something. It was

  really a matter of this guy being able to somehow finagle this.

  Heather’s experience perfectly captures one of the major barriers pre-

  venting women from asking for what they need more of the time: Their

  perception that their circumstances are more fixed and absolute—less

  negotiable—than they really are. It also highlights the assumption made

  by many women that someone or something else is in control. This

  assumption—the result of powerful social influences that go to work

  the day a woman is born—has a broad impact on women’s behavior.

  Instead of looking for ways to improve a difficult situation, women

  often assume that they are “stuck” with their circumstances. Instead of

  publicizing their accomplishments, they hope that hard work alone will

  earn them the recognition and rewards they deserve. Instead of express-

  ing interest in new opportunities as they arise, they bide their time,

  assuming that they will be invited to participate if their participation is

  wanted. They think any allowable divergences from the status quo will

  be announced and offered to everyone. Women expect life to be fair,

  and despite often dramatic evidence to the contrary, many of them per-

  sist in believing that it will be.

  Stephanie, 32, an administrative assistant, illustrates how this belief

  can play out in a woman’s life. Stephanie told us that she tends to think

  that “things will just happen and if they don’t there’s a reason why they

  don’t.” Because of this attitude, she was unhappy with certain aspects

  of her job for some time but never approached her supervisor to see if

  changes could be made. Finally, Stephanie received another job offer.

  When she announced that she was leaving, her supervisor asked what

  it would take to keep her. After her supervisor made every change Ste-

  phanie wanted, Stephanie decided to stay. When we asked why she

  hadn’t told her supervisor sooner what was bothering her, Stephanie

  said, “I tend to think people are pretty fair, so maybe I’m too trusting

  and expect that I’m getting what I deserve in that I work really hard.”

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  O P P O R T U N I T Y D O E S N ’ T A L W A Y S K N O C K

  This chapter looks at this barrier and its origins—why it is that many

  women assume that they must wait to be given the things they want or

  need and don’t realize more of the time that opportunity doesn’t always

  knock.

  Turnip or Oyster?

  If people’s beliefs about the opportunities in life lie along a spectrum,

  at one end would be the view that “you can’t get blood from a turnip.”

  People holding this outlook believe that “what you see is what you get”

  and most situations cannot be changed. They may also assume, like

  Heather, that if a situation could be changed, this fact would be adver-

  tised to all. At the other end of the spectrum is the view that “the world

  is your oyster.” People with this outlook believe that life is full of oppor-

  tunities, most situations are flexible, rules are made to be broken, and

  much can be gained by asking for what you want.

  Linda and several colleagues decided to systematically investigate

  whether men and women differ in their positions along this “turnip to

  oyster” spectrum. To do so, they developed a scale that measures the

  degree to which a person recognizes opportunities to negotiate and sees

  negotiation as critical for realizing those opportunities.1 Scales are re-

  search tools that have been used for many years to measure behavioral

  and perceptual differences across people. Perhaps the most famous is

  the Myers-Briggs scale, which maps an individual’s personality profile

  according to where he or she scores on four related scales (extro-

  verted—introverted, sensing—intuitive, thinking—feeling, judging—

  perceiving). Other scales capture individual differences in beliefs, per-

  ceptions, and behavioral tendencies. Not all of these differences are in-

  nate or biological, of course. Psychologists believe that behavior is heav-

  ily influenced by the situations in which people find themselves—a

  person may drink more at a party where other people are drinking than

  he or she would drink if alone, for example. Nonetheless, some stable

  traits and attitudes do lead to differences in the ways people behave.

  Scales are used to try to identify those traits and attitudes. People who

  are rated high on a “shyness” scale, for example, have been shown to

  talk less and engage in less frequent eye contact than people who rate

  low on that scale.

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  C H A P T E R 1

  Unlike some of Linda’s earlier studies, which measured the frequency

  with which respondents took the lead in starting negotiations, this “rec-

  ognition of opportunity” or “turnip-to-oyster” scale measured peoples’

  propensity to see possibilities for change in their circumstances. This is

  how it worked: As part of the web survey described in the introduction,

  Linda and her colleagues presented respondents with a series of state-

  ments such as:

  • I think a person has to ask for what he or she wants rather than

  wait for someone to provide it.

  • There are many things available to people, if only people ask for

  them.

  • Many interactions I have during the day can be opportunities to

  improve my situation.

  The survey asked respondents to rate along a seven-point scale the

  extent to which they agreed or disagreed with each statement. Low

  scorers would be people who see little benefit to asking for what they

  want because they perceive their environment as unchangeable (these

  would be the “turnip” people). High scorers would be people who see

  most situations as adaptable to their needs and regularly look for ways

  to improve their circumstances (the “oyster” folks).

  Confirming our expectations, women were 45 percent more likely

  than men to score low on this scale, indicating that women are much

  less likely than men to see the benefits and importance of asking for

  what they want. Even more telling, we found that a difference of as little

  as 10 percent on this scale—that is, a score that was only 10 percent

  higher—translated into about 30 percent more attempts to negotiate

  (as demonstrated by another part of the survey). The strong correlation

  between high scores and a much greater tendency to try to negotiate

  confirmed our hunch that “oyster” people ask for what they want much

  more often than “turnip” folks—and that many more men than women
/>   are “oysters.” Since men are more likely than women to believe opportu-

  nities can be “had for the asking,” or at least that change may be possi-

  ble, is it any wonder that they’re more likely to speak up and let people

  know what they want?

  During our interviews, we found women recounting story after story

  of not realizing what could be changed by asking—a problem that can

  arise early and persist well into old age. Amanda, 23, a management

  consultant, seems to be a very self-possessed and confident young

  woman. Interested in math and science, she studied engineering in col-

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  O P P O R T U N I T Y D O E S N ’ T A L W A Y S K N O C K

  lege and was offered an excellent consulting job as soon as she gradu-

  ated. By her own description, she has always been less like her mother

  and more like her father, who taught her to be focused and direct, and

  to go after what she wants. She said of herself “I don’t like nonaction.”

  Nonetheless, as a child she assumed that her parents wouldn’t let her

  do all sorts of things—such as going away to camp, or taking trips with

  friends—that they permitted her younger brother to do. She isn’t sure

  why she made these assumptions, and when as an adult she asked her

  parents about the different things that they allowed her brother to do,

  they were surprised. “You never asked us,” they said, adding that it

  would have been fine with them for her to do the things she mentioned.

  Kay, 41, a jeweler in Colorado, had worked for many months on a

  project creating minutely accurate reproductions of ornate antique jew-

  eled boxes. For a year and a half, she and the other jewelers on the

  project had maintained a schedule that she describes as “insane, inhu-

  mane,” working nights and weekends without any kind of a break. The

  pressure was straining Kay’s relationship with her partner and her

  health was suffering. Finally, exhausted, she approached her boss and

  said she couldn’t work nights and weekends anymore. She expected

  “all kinds of groaning and grumbling,” but her boss agreed without a

  fuss. “I just came in one day and said that, and that was the way it was

  from then on,” she told us.

  Renata, 53, a vice president of a cosmetics company, collects art.

  Once, when she first began collecting, she fell in love with a piece by a