What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know

15. Conclusion: Jump-Starting the Stalled Gender Revolution

299 15 Conclusion: Jump-Starting the Stalled Gender Revolution At the current rate of change, equal numbers of men and women won’t be Ceos of Fortune 500 companies for 276 years, and Congress won’t reach gender parity for nearly a century.1 equality won’t be on offer until organizations change—and they aren’t changing fast. gender bias remains a common experience. one reason the gender revolution has stalled is because of implicit bias. the typical implicit association training sends a simple message: we are all biased. true, but not very useful. in order to help people spot and correct for bias, what they need is to understand how bias plays out in everyday workplace interactions. that’s what this book does. We now have some concrete answers about why women don’t reach the highest levels in proportionate numbers. Men get promoted based on fewer accomplishments than women would need to reach the same level. Women are more likely than men to be penalized if they make a mistake. And when women have children, they need to start proving themselves all over again—and to cope with disapproval from colleagues who believe, explicitly or unconsciously , that a mother who is still highly committed to her career is failing as a mother. 300 • Conclusion: Jump-Starting the Stalled Gender Revolution if women need to accomplish twice as much to get half as far and accomplishments are distributed evenly among men and women, it stands to reason women don’t reach the top. but that’s not all. even highly accomplished women face office politics that are far trickier than office politics faced by men. Men are allowed a wide range of behaviors: the socially clueless geek, the gentle soul, the slick politician, the office screamer, the bull in the china shop—in many environments, men can progress without being particularly savvy. For men, political savvy helps, but much is forgiven. Savvy is a threshold requirement for women. We have to be astute enough to tack back and forth, navigating between the Scylla of being “too feminine” (and so liked but not respected) and the Charybdis of being “too masculine” (and so respected but not liked). unlike men, women face gender wars. Men don’t have other men undercutting them for a coveted position because there’s only room for one man. Men don’t have to navigate the tight space between being “too tied up with women’s issues” and being “queen bees” who do not help other women enough. And those are just two of the way gender bias against women complicates office politics for women. Assuming savvy is equally distributed between men and women, it’s hardly surprising that women don’t reach the top as often as men do. “let’s call the book ‘Dealing with the Crap While Waiting for Change,’” said a friend of Joan’s. Women need tools now to help them navigate office politics deeply shaped by gender. that’s what this book has tried to bottle. but providing women with individual strategies to navigate through gender bias is not the ultimate answer. individual strategies do not erase the pressing need for institutional change. Many people are earnestly committed to changing institutions to retain and promote more women—but are going about it the wrong way. What’s required are two startlingly simple steps. the first is to change what Arlie hochschild long ago called “the clockwork of male careers.”2 in high-level professional jobs today, Conclusion: Jump-Starting the Stalled Gender Revolution • 301 the ideal worker must be ready, willing, and able to work 50 hours a week or more—sometimes much more.3 the last time Joan looked, less than 10 percent of working mothers aged 25–44 worked more than 50 hours a week. the percentage of college-educated mothers is a little higher but not much: only 13.9 percent of college-educated mothers work more than 50 hours a week.4 Most people stoutly refuse to believe this statistic. but it’s true. And it means that, even if employers do everything else absolutely perfectly, they will never attract a proportionate number of women, given that over 80 percent of women have children.5 Changing time norms involves not the marginalized part-time schedules and flexible work arrangements that are commonplace (though by no means universal). What’s needed instead are careers...