#1 The journal article, “Individual Change Won’t Create Gender Equality in Organizations,” authored by Alison Wynn, points out that gender bias as well as disparity are still very present in today’s workplace and decision makers need to step up to decrease this. Jessi Hempel in the article, “Why Are There Few Women in Tech?” explores this concept from a pre-employment recruiting standpoint as to how companies alienate women and thus do not end up with qualified female candidates with science, technology engineering, or math (STEM) degrees.
The article discusses preliminary recruiting sessions in well-known colleges, which apparently routinely discourage women from applying to their tech organizations. The gaffes that tech companies make while attempting to recruit female candidates are numerous and clearly indicate not only an unwelcoming environment for women, but rather a misogynistic environment within the organization.
As Alison Wynn indicates, this atmosphere is crystal clear from the start of staff recruiting sessions. Women were relegated to refreshment control and handing out swag (did I hear the term secretary whispered?). Female engineers were not given featured roles in presentations but rather served as window dressing and if they did get a word in…they had the real possibility of being rudely interrupted by a male colleague. Of the sessions Wynn’s research team observed, only 22 percent featured female engineers talking about technical work. When those women did speak, according to the sessions observed, male presenters spoke over them. Moreover, recruiters used gender stereotypes of women in sexy attire and discussed porn. Seriously? Is this a frat house party or recruitment of individuals with an Ivy League degree?
As expected, many women walked out of the recruitment meetings without submitting an application. In the words of Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If organizations expect to recruit female candidates, they must change the manner in which they interact with potential candidates. Failure to do this will continue the inequality in the organizations.
#2 Who do I think would most benefit from reading this article? I think decision makers from HR managers to CEOs to recruitment team members need to not only read this article but to take a cold hard look at the manner in which they recruit individuals. While this article focused on female recruitment, I suspect we could add other demographics to this as well. I can’t even begin to contemplate what the recruiters would think of someone with a disability (my research paper area). By actively including female candidates in their recruiting efforts an organization can move forward and make the most of its diversity by creating an inclusive, equitable and sustainable culture and work environment. The diversity of women creates the potential for greater innovation and productivity, inclusion is what enables organizations to realize the business benefits of this potential. Equity refers to fair treatment in access, opportunity and advancement for these individuals. Work in this area involves identifying and working to remove barriers to fair treatment for this group. Obviously one way as the article suggests, is to recruit more females into tech firms.
Wynn’s group research however shows some of the problems in the recruiting teams sent to bring more females into the firms. These are a few of their findings.
In an attempt to appear approachable, presenters often made comments that disparaged women or depicted them as sexualized objects rather than talented technical colleagues. For example, in one session, a man mentioned the “better gender ratio” at the company’s Los Angeles office compared with its Silicon Valley office. “I had no girlfriends at [University Name], but now I’m married,” he said, suggesting that the better odds had helped get him hitched.
This type of informal banter occasionally devolved into overtly sexualized comments. One presenter from a small startup mentioned porn a couple of times. Another, when talking about a project that would allow banking on ships, suggested that sailors needed access to cash for prostitutes.
I think if HR managers, CEOs and recruitment team members were to look at these findings with an unbiased eye, they might recognize this certainly is not the way to encourage women to work with them. I also believe if their legal staff were to review these statements, there might be other issues at hand as well.
Frankly when I read through this article for the first time, I almost laughed because the examples were almost so ludicrous. Is this real life? Sadly it is. Effective recruitment means companies recruit individuals with a collective mixture of not just similarities but differences to provide the company with a diverse group of employees. Until the recruiters and their firms learn how to present information in an unbiased manner, there will continue to be a lack of females in the tech field.
Great work, Ed–when we think about these shocking examples as *institutional* failures (i.e. failure to recognize the foreseeable outcomes of talking like this in recruitment sessions), rather than *individual* creepy people, then we can do something about it. We too often shrug off individual bad actors, but when we recognize recurring patterns, THEN we might feel moved to do something about it.