Women Leaders: Not Hot

So who says the world is not biased against female leaders?

In this Washington Post article, “The label slapped on top women“, the writer contends that female leaders get unfairly labelled as “ruthless”, “conniving” and “mannish”, not because they have to be to elbow their way to the top in a man’s world, but because of ingrained beliefs of the nature of men, women and leadership.

“The roots are in stereotypes about women, men and leaders,” says Alice Eagly, a social psychologist at Northwestern University. “Culturally, women are the nicer sex, and men are more aggressive go-getters. Leaders are generically in our culture more like men than women in the way people think about leaders.“

Experiments show that women vying for leadership roles are automatically assigned two labels. The first is to be seen as nice and warm, but incompetent; the second is to be seen as competent but unpleasant. Women stuck with label A cannot be leaders, because the stereotype of leadership is incompatible with incompetence. Women who become leaders get stuck with label B, because if leadership is unconsciously associated with manliness, cognitive consistency requires female leaders be stripped of the caring qualities normally associated with women.

Judging from the tales of my female-manager friends, I would agree. As a female, women are often expected to be “nice” and “soft”, and when they exercise authority and act in the way male bosses do, they are automatically assigned descriptors such as “over-ambitious” and “ruthless”. Both males and females react with the same prejudice against females in authority positions, the article finds.

In a recent experiment, (New York University organisational psychologist Madeline) Heilman asked a group of volunteers to evaluate two leaders, a man and a woman. She devised two descriptions of executives with roughly similar qualifications.

Without the volunteers’ knowledge, Heilman regularly interchanged the names of the leaders in the descriptions. For each description, half the volunteers thought they were hearing about an executive named James, while the other half heard exactly the same description applied to an executive called Andrea. The volunteers were asked which leader seemed less likeable, and whether they would prefer James or Andrea as a boss. Nearly three-quarters said they thought Andrea was less likeable than James. More than four-fifths chose James as a boss. Women showed the same bias as men: Andrea seemed less likeable merely because she was a female leader.

Heilman’s finding replicates the conclusions of other studies: that the reason people see a highly competent woman as less likeble than a man with precisely the same qualifications is that such women are automatically perceived to have lost their feminine, caring side.

Filed under: Malaysiana, Newsprint, Women, Work & Productivity

Men in the Kitchen

I caught the tail end of Jamie Oliver last night, and as usual, drooled over his culinary creation. It was Caesar Salad with a very tangy twist – lots and lots of grated Parmesan and lemon juice, drizzled over crispy grilled chicken, crunchy croutons and a gorgeous bed of salad. Oh, yum.

Of course, Jamie’s yobbish accent doesn’t capture the imagination quite the way Nigella Lawson’s does but he is a cook I like to watch and learn from.

Back when I was in London, there were these amateur cookshows on British TV that I loved to watch - there was one called Ready Steady Cook where Joe and Jane Public were given fifty pounds (I think) to buy ingredients and had to bring them into the studio. There, they would be paired with professional chefs and had to prepare a proper meal: appetiser, main dish, dessert within 30 minutes. Invariably, one male chef – I forgot his name but he was tall, dark and rather handsome – would whip up creations that would win the studio audience’s hearts. And the members of the public were always quite evenly divided between male and female. In fact, gender wasn’t an issue at all – it was invisible and secondary to the culinary skills being demonstrated.

That, of course, is how the professional culinary world is. Actually, the world of professional chefs is male-dominated and no one kicks a fuss.

But in the world of households, though, particularly Asian ones like in Malaysia, it’s a different situation. A Vice Chancellor mentions that – with the gender imbalance in favour of women in Malaysian universities – it would not be inconceivable one day to find Malaysian men “forced” to go to the kitchen and take care of the children while their wives work, and the whole country is in an uproar. What! Malaysian men (Malay men in particular) doing housework? Unthinkable!

Filed under: Malaysiana, Newsprint, Personal Note, Women

Advert: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE “MUSLIM WOMEN IN THE MIDST OF CHANGE”

When there is a dearth of blog topics, advertise.

This is a good ad, though. The Muslim Professionals Forum, which lists as one of their objectives the provision of an “Islamic response to the intellectual and cultural challenges of the modern world and various school of thoughts, religion and ideology”, is organising a very timely Forum on Muslim Women on 1-2 September 2007 (Sat-Sun) at the KL Convention Centre.

Separated into talks and workshops over the two days, the topics to be covered in the Forum include Muslim Women in History, and the very interestingly titled, “Muslim Women as a Battlefield”. Main speakers are WALEED ALY, a lecturer in politics at Monash University, and a board member of the Islamic Council of Victoria; Dr. M. HAYTHAM AL-KHAYAT, a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, and DR. HEBA RAOUF, a lecturer of political theory at the Department of Political Science, Cairo University. There is also a Dinner Talk by SUSAN CARLAND, the 2004 “Australian Muslim of the Year” and a lecturer in the school of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University where she is currently completing her PhD, researching leadership challenges facing Western Muslim women. 

The second day of the programme is mostly workshop and Forum, and the leaders of the sessions include Kamar Ainiyah, whose name seems to crop up whenever there are family law cases in Syariah courts.

It is an intriguing line-up; I have to confess, as a Hijab-clad Muslim woman, with a family and career to juggle, the topics of Hijab, gender conflicts in relation to the Quran, and family vs work can get a little weary, in the sense that the talks and discussions seem intellectually stimulating, but you step out of the discourse venue and away from your spirited and noble-minded brothers and sisters, and the real world smacks you in the face once more. Still, the objectives of the Forum are worthy:

1. To understand the history and evolution of feminist “traditions” within Islam.
2. To discuss Muslim gender roles from the Quran and Sunnah.
3. To examine the injustices against women in Muslim societies and recommend solutions.

And I am sure the relationships and bonds that can be forged with Muslims from other countries would be invaluable. I am equally interested to follow the action, post-Forum.

The Forum is formally supported by the Ministry of Women and Family Development (Datuk Shahrizat is giving the opening keynote, I believe). If you are interested, contact:

Conference Secretariat, Muslim Professionals Forum, 54 Jalan Telawi 9, 59100 Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Tel : +6013-331 7430 (Azra); +6012-371 8518 (Siti Jamilah)

Fax : +603-2093 2450

Emails : azrabanu@gmail.com; musa@mpf.org.my

Filed under: Islam, Women, Work & Productivity

Bringing Office Management Skills Home – Better Not

If you’ve ever wished your home was as organised, orderly and as disciplined as the workplace, and if you have ever wished that your kids would respond the same way to performance measures and deadlines as you and your colleagues do, then you may have been tempted to transfer some of your executive skills to the home. Think twice before you do, as this article advises:

It’s one of those mistakes easily made as the line between work and family vanishes: thinking that the very expertise and practices that work well to get results and build influence at work will work just as well at home. You don’t need to have much pull in the office to recognize that you have even less at home.

“I not only don’t have any authority,” says Leonard Clapp, a retired lab technician with a penchant for sciences, “but my wife, who is something of an insomniac, immediately falls asleep as soon as I begin speaking on the subjects which are dear to my heart.”

“It’s not just the authority that declines,” adds Bob Hoffman, a chief operating officer. “The whole economic system shifts, from capitalism at work to communism at home.” If metrics existed for the family as they do for business, “you’re measuring gross family happiness and yours doesn’t count more than anyone else’s — and probably less,” he says.

(Why We Can Manage Staff but Not Our Own Families, WSJ Career Journal, 30 March 2007)

The article goes on to say that the reason work and family life are so different in modern times is because industrialisation has effectively separated the home, from the office. Prior to industrialisation, the article pointed out, agricultural economies revolved around farms that are usually family-owned and operated. On a point related to this, would people in family businesses then find that their authority in the workplace, working styles and management approaches work equally well in the home?

I do like what the article says about how family life influences, and shapes, attitudes at work:

Family life informs work more than the other way around. It goes beyond boasts that a company is one big, happy family. The home hones skills, such as fostering development, and virtues, such as patience. It’s easy to delegate once you’ve learned to let a toddler spend 23 minutes buttering toast without an overwhelming urge to intervene. One study shows employees rate their bosses with dependents more highly than they rate their bosses with none.

And as a Career Mom with two feisty boys, I can definitely attest to the truth of this:

Families don’t have to buy what someone who can’t fire them sells. “You can be a great boss at work but you can’t get your two-year-old into the bathtub,” says Ellen Galinsky, co-founder of the Families and Work Institute. 

But the part I especially love is the article’s parting shot on performance reviews (in the home):

Bringing proven office solutions home seems like a good idea. Analyst Chris Moule attended a conference last year in which an executive explained how she used “operational analysis” and color-coded spreadsheets to show progress with family goals. Mr. Moule tried to brandish his “project decomposition” skills by breaking down planning for a camping trip into small tasks. The reaction was unwelcome.“You don’t have performance reviews at home, except my wife gives me looks,” says Mr. Moule . “Usually her look says an awful lot.”

In essence, work and home are separate, and we should keep them that way.

Filed under: Newsprint, Personal Note, Women, Work & Productivity

Happy Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day to all Mommies out there. I hope all your families are giving you the tribute you deserve.

To those of you who still have your Mothers around: Celebrate and Appreciate. There’s no purer love than a Mother’s; I’ve been lucky enough to be able to tell you how true that saying is, and unlucky enough to have it gone from my life. So appreciate your Moms while she’s still around, not just on Mother’s Day, but always, and not just through gifts and hugs and kisses but also by paying attention to her, by listening, by realising that she’s a human being too with her own needs, and hopes, and fears, and dreams. Your Mother was once a girl, with dreams of being a Princess; she was once a young lady, with hopes of raising a good family; she is also a woman who wants to know she has made a difference in this world. And she has made a difference, I am sure. To you, at the very least. Let her know.

Mothers are a refuge from the world, as summarised by this passage:

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away. 

~Dinah Craik (English novelist and poet)

Mothers somehow are able to see all the good in you, forgive the bad, and believe you can do and be better. They take you as you are – chaff and grain – and their love reminds you that despite your imperfections, you are still an individual worthy of love, and affection, and all the good things in the world.

I am now a Mother myself, and I take heart this advice:

The best advice from my mother was a reminder to tell my children every day: “Remember you are loved.”

~Evelyn McCormick (Artist)

Happy Mother’s Day.

Remember that you are loved.

Filed under: Personal Note, Women

Women and MBAs

From CNN.com:

When asked to picture the archetypical MBA student, most people will describe someone relatively young, fiercely ambitious and focused on success. Oh yes, and most likely male.

While women make up slightly more than half the potential global workforce, they fill only around a third of seats in classrooms teaching MBAs and other graduate business degree courses. There are a number of reasons for this, everything from prejudicial attitudes towards women in the workplace to the greater demands family life can often take on businesswomen.

(Breaking the MBA Gender Barrier, 4th May, CNN)

I never thought of the gender issue in MBA courses before, and indeed, in the part-time MBA course I’m taking, it seems that half of us are women. Many are ambitious high-flying corporate executives in multi-nationals who seek to broaden their management skills by taking the MBA course, and in conversations with them, the gender issue where the MBA is concerned never arose. (In presentations and leadership roles within teams, yes, the men tend to be a lot more active but that’s a different topic for another day). 

Filed under: Newsprint, Women, Work & Productivity

Female Diplomats

It’s refreshing to read in The Sunday Star that the new Australian High Commissioner to Malaysia is not only young, but is also female. Penny Williams, 43, is Australia’s first female High Commissioner to Malaysia, and, according to the article is “among her country’s new breed of diplomats who reflect the highly urbanised islan-continent’s young, competitive society”. Ms Williams is a decade younger than former High Commissioner James Wise, and it’s noteworthy that she had exposure to Asian culture, specifically Indonesian culture, when she was an exchange student for a year to Indonesia. She speaks Bahasa Indonesia, Spanish and Arabic, breaking the stereotype of the “mono-linguistic” (and by extrapolation, mono-cultural) Aussie, says the article.

You can read more on Ms Williams in The Star article. I thought it better to highlight this interesting article from the Jakarta Post, written by Retno Marsudi, the Indonesian Ambassador to the Kingdom of Norway and the Republic of Iceland. Entitled “Indonesian Female Diplomats and Gender Mainstreaming in Diplomacy“, Ms Retno rather quaintly discusses whether or not females are suitable for careers in diplomacy.

Some people say that in Indonesia diplomacy is a man’s world. Many tend to believe the myth as they observe the relatively insignificant number of women diplomats, even when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will celebrate its the 60th anniversary on Aug. 19. Is the myth true? And if it is not then how can women diplomats contribute to the future of Indonesian diplomacy?

To test whether the myth is true, we must first closely examine the nature of the work involved in diplomacy. Often a high degree of mobility and constant responsiveness to ever changing environments are required. Such circumstances could easily compel women in our society to exert extra efforts if they decide to pursue this career. It would indeed seem rather tempting to conclude that on the surface, diplomacy is ideally suited for men.

However other critical components required for successfully conducting diplomacy, such as firmness, loyalty, empathy, prudence as well as meticulousness, are qualities generally possessed by women. Diplomacy itself has no requirements that could not be fulfilled by women. Any barriers to getting the job done originate mostly from sources beyond the control of women themselves.

Bravo for the conclusion, but it’s surprising that the issue is still being aired in this day and age.

Filed under: Newsprint, Women, Work & Productivity