“The Closing the Women’s Wealth Gap Initiative is a national forum where advocates, organizers, researchers, practitioners, and funders are coming together to close the gap by building wealth for low-income women and women of color.”
[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”http://womenswealthgap.org/” title=”Learn about Women’s Wealth Gap.org” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Learn about Women’s Wealth Gap.org[/x_button]
“When it comes to issues of race, gender, and diversity in organizations, researchers have revealed the problems in ever more detail. We have found a lot less to say about what does work — what organizations can do to create the conditions in which stigmatized groups can reach their potential and succeed. That’s why my collaborators — Nicole Stephens at the Kellogg School of Management and Ray Reagans at MIT Sloan — and I decided to study what organizations can do to increase traditionally stigmatized groups’ performance and persistence, and curb the disproportionately high rates at which they leave jobs.One tool at any organization’s disposal is the way its leaders choose to talk (or not to talk) about diversity and differences — what we refer to as their diversity approach. Diversity approaches are important because they provide employees with a framework for thinking about group differences in the workplace and how they should respond to them. We first studied the public diversity statements of 151 big law firms in the U.S. to understand the relationship between how organizations talk about diversity and the rates of attrition of associate-level women and racial minority attorneys at these firms. We assumed that how firms talked about diversity in their statements was a rough proxy for their firm’s approach to diversity more generally.
Two findings were particularly intriguing. First, there are two fundamentally different ways that diversity statements seek to appeal to the stigmatized groups they target. One appeal is to differences and how differences are important. We call this the “value in difference” approach. For example, a value in difference approach advocates for increasing awareness of differences and bias, and signals the organization’s belief that these differences not only improve employees’ experiences in the workplace, but also advance the firm’s bottom-line goals. The other approach is an appeal to equality and fairness irrespective of differences. We call this the “value in equality” approach. For example, a value in equality approach affirms that differences will not be an obstacle to career opportunities and advancement, and that all employees are judged equally and fairly based on their skills, qualifications, and effort.”
[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-your-diversity-program-may-be-helping-women-but-not-minorities-or-vice-versa” title=”Why Your Diversity Program May Be Helping Women but Not Minorities (or Vice Versa)” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Read the full article[/x_button]
“Iris Bohnet thinks firms are wasting their money on diversity training. The problem is, most programs just don’t work. Rather than run more workshops or try to eradicate the biases that cause discrimination, she says, companies need to redesign their processes to prevent biased choices in the first place.
Bohnet directs the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School and cochairs its Behavioral Insights Group. Her new book, What Works,describes how simple changes—from eliminating the practice of sharing self-evaluations to rewarding office volunteerism—can reduce the biased behaviors that undermine organizational performance. In this edited interview with HBR senior editor Gardiner Morse, Bohnet describes how behavioral design can neutralize our biases and unleash untapped talent.”
Selected quotes:
“It’s very hard to eliminate our bias, but we can design organizations to make it easier for our biased minds to get things right.”
“Until we see more male kindergarten teachers or female engineers, we need behavioral designs to make it easier for our biased minds to get things right and break the link between our gut reactions and our actions.”
“So if managers see inflated ratings on a self-evaluation, they tend to unconsciously adjust their appraisal up a bit. Likewise, poorer self-appraisals, even if they’re inaccurate, skew managers’ ratings downward. This is a real problem, because there are clear gender (and also cross-cultural) differences in self-confidence.”
“Enlisting men is partly about helping them to see the benefits of equality. Fathers of daughters are some of the strongest proponents of gender equality, for obvious reasons, so they can be particularly powerful voices when it comes to bringing other men along. Research on male CEOs, politicians, and judges show that fathers of daughters care more about gender equality than men without children or with only sons.”
[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”https://hbr.org/2016/07/designing-a-bias-free-organization” title=”Designing a Bias-Free Organization” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Read the full article[/x_button]
“It’s hard to argue with the benefits of diversity, given the decades’ worth of studies showing that a diverse workforce measurably improves decision making, problem solving, creativity, innovation, and flexibility.Most of us also believe that hiring, development, and compensation decisions should come down to who deserves what. Although the two ideas don’t seem contradictory, they’re tough to reconcile in practice. Cognitive roadblocks keep getting in the way.”
Selected quotes:
“We believe we know good talent when we see it, yet we usually don’t – we’re terrible at evaluating people objectively.”
“If those in power think this world is basically fair and just – they won’t even recognize – much less worry about – systemic unfairness.”
“At each stage she consistently found that evaluators had little or nothing to say about the “rock stars” or the “rejects.” They deliberated mainly about candidates in the middle, which is where stereotypes about women and minorities came into play.”
“Women and minorities who actively push for diversity are punished by their organizations – they get lower performance ratings than those who don’t. Men who promote diversity don’t suffer the same penalty.”
“Millennials think of diversity and inclusion as valuing open participation by employees with different perspectives and personalities. In contrast, older workers think of its equitable representation and assimilation of people from different demographic groups.”
“Senior leaders need to recognize their organizations’ inequities – probably more than anyone else, since they have the power to make changes. But once they’ve climbed to their positions, they usually lose sight of what they had to overcome to get there.”
“It’s extraordinarily difficult to rewire the human brain, but we can “alter the environment in which decisions are made.” This approach – known as choice architecture – involves mitigating biases, not reversing them…the idea is to deliberately structure how ou present information and options: You don’t take away individuals’ right to decide or tell them what they should do. You just make it easier for them to reach more rational decisions.”
[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”https://hbr.org/2016/07/we-just-cant-handle-diversity” title=”We Just Can’t Handle Diversity” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Read the full article[/x_button]
“It shouldn’t be surprising that most diversity programs aren’t increasing diversity. Despite a few new bells and whistles, courtesy of big data, companies are basically doubling down on the same approaches they’ve used since the 1960s—which often make things worse, not better. Firms have long relied on diversity training to reduce bias on the job, hiring tests and performance ratings to limit it in recruitment and promotions, and grievance systems to give employees a way to challenge managers. Those tools are designed to preempt lawsuits by policing managers’ thoughts and actions. Yet laboratory studies show that this kind of force-feeding can activate bias rather than stamp it out. As social scientists have found, people often rebel against rules to assert their autonomy. Try to coerce me to do X, Y, or Z, and I’ll do the opposite just to prove that I’m my own person.”
Selected quotes:
“Firms have long relied on diversity training to reduce bias on the job, hiring tests and performance ratings to limit it in recruitment and promotions, and grievance systems to give employees a way to challenge managers… Yet laboratory studies show that this kind of force-feeding can activate bias rather than stamp it out.”
“It’s more effective to engage managers in solving the problem, increase their on-the-job contact with female and minority workers, and promote social accountability – the desire to look fair-minded. That’s why interventions such as targeted college recruitment, mentoring programs, self-managed teams, and task forces have boosted diversity in business.”
“The positive effects of diversity training rarely last beyond a day or two, and a number of studies suggest that it can activate bias or spark a backlash.”
“But studies show that raters tend to lowball women and minorities in performance reviews.”
“Things don’t get better when firms put in formal grievance systems; they get worse.”
“A number of companies have gotten consistently positive results with tactics that don’t focus on control. They apply three basic principles: engage managers in solving the problem, expose them to people from different groups, and encourage social accountability for change.”
“On average, companies that put in diversity task forces see 9% to 30% increases in representation of white women and of each minority group in management over the next five years.”
[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”https://hbr.org/2016/07/we-just-cant-handle-diversity” title=”Why Diversity Programs Fail” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Read the full article[/x_button]
“For two decades, the Vermont Women’s Economic Opportunity Conference has been a staple of that effort, serving as a catalyst of entrepreneurship and an engine of advancement. It has helped countless Vermont women from all walks of life embark on new careers, build new partnerships and develop new skills. It has empowered them to take risks, to follow their passions and to fight for their rightful seat at the table. And in doing so, it has created jobs, grown businesses and helped strengthen the economy not only of this great state, but of the entire nation. That’s because the prosperity and well-being of America is increasingly tied to the prosperity and well-being of American women. Today, women constitute more than half of the country’s workforce. More women are graduating from college than men and have since the 1990s. And a growing number of women are now their family’s primary earner, which means that how much we spend on things like housing and health care increasingly depends on women’s professional success. As President Obama has said, “When women do well, everybody does well.”
“Ultimately, that’s what your presence here today is all about. By daring to make your dreams a reality; by demanding to be treated as equals; by striving to hone your skills and expand your horizons; and by forging bonds and building relationships with one another, you are creating positive change, right here in your great state. You are challenging our institutions to become more open and inclusive. You are helping our society to recognize that diversity only makes us stronger. And, above all, you are serving as powerful role models for your daughters, your granddaughters and all those who will follow, ensuring by your example that the next generation will carry us even further down the path to a brighter, a more equal and a more just future.”
[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-loretta-e-lynch-delivers-remarks-20th-annual-vermont-womens-economic” title=”Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at the 20th Annual Vermont Women’s Economic Opportunity Conference” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Read U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s full remarks[/x_button]
