Will the #MeToo movement hold the number of women in leadership back?
ANALYSIS | Overly cautious men could be the stumbling block
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Jena McGregor.
Prominent leaders like Barack Obama and Sheryl Sandberg are calling for more women in power, given the recent wave of sexual harassment allegations. In article after article, from the Harvard Business Review to this newspaper, promoting more women into influential roles has been offered as a fix.
But will the current watershed moment lead to more women in top management roles — or could it actually hold them back?
That’s a question getting more attention as the #MeToo movement takes root in workplace after workplace with acute, urgent risks such as reputation-crushing headlines or expensive legal proceedings. Some experts worry any backlash to the moment — from overly cautious men to organizations with unfair expectations for the women who do get promoted — could hurt the numbers rather than help them.
The ‘collateral damage’ of #MeToo
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and founder of the Center for Talent Innovation, said her organization’s data shows that women in technology, in particular, often opt to leave to avoid “frat-boy cultures.” She added, “If we were able to change that and make them more inclusive and not so predatory toward women, women would not just stick it out — they would be much more ambitious.”
But she and others warn about the potential “collateral damage” of the #MeToo movement, in which senior executive men could cut women out of social events, one-on-one dinners and informal after-work mentoring out of fear that they could say or do the wrong thing. Before the story about the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, Hewlett’s research found that 64 percent of men were already hesitant to meet one-on-one with female co-workers, because they were fearful of the encounter being misconstrued.
That figure could be even higher now. Human resources executives are reporting that they’re seeing evidence of more-cautious men. Brian Kropp, who leads the HR consulting practice at CEB, said that issue has come up in 10 to 15 percent of the conversations he’s had with HR executives over the past month.
“Some men — while a minority, certainly — are so concerned that something could happen that they’re reacting by not engaging women in the informal part of work where you’re mentoring people,” Kropp said.
When that happens, it creates a particular hurdle for women trying to be promoted into more senior roles. At the higher ranks of an organization, it’s critical for women to have not only a mentor but also someone Hewlett and others call a “sponsor,” or a higher-ranking, more-powerful executive who not only offers advice but also actively advocates for a junior employee’s career.
“No one is going to get from the middle to the top unless there are people willing to speak up for them behind closed doors,” Hewlett said.
But doing that requires more risk — speaking up on behalf of the wrong junior executive can be damaging. That’s why senior executives willing to speak up on someone else’s behalf need to develop the kind of trust and understanding that’s typically created in social and informal settings — not in office meetings.
Another risk is that organizations promote women because they have a cultural problem that needs fixing and then expect them to do all the work.
“In all jobs, women do more of these service roles,” such as ending up on diversity committees, said Stefanie Johnson, a management professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “They call it organizational housekeeping.”
If that happens, playing the role of culture police puts women in a particular bind, setting them up for the risk of failure once they reach those leadership roles. As New York magazine writer Rebecca Traister put it in a recent piece, “as designated guardians, entrusted — whether as colleagues or wives — with policing men’s bad behaviors, [women] will get dinged for complicity if they don’t police it vigilantly enough, and risk being cast as castrating villainesses if they issue sentence.”
Solutions
To help ensure men continue acting as sponsors for more-junior women, Hewlett suggested more communication and more accountability.
- One option is requiring senior managers to sponsor junior executives who don’t look just like them.
- Also important, Hewlett said, is for companies to be clear with executives about the places and times where informal work meetings are appropriate, so there’s no question about whether a meal at a restaurant would set off alarm bells.
- Also critical: Make sure that both men and women are expected to “sponsor” other employees. Catalyst’s research shows that women face a double bind in which they don’t get credit for supporting other workers but get penalized if they don’t. Men, meanwhile, get praised if they do take extra time to help colleagues but face no repercussions if they skip it.
Such steps could guard against what some see as the possible — if not inevitable — backlash.
“I hate to say that, because I want to be more positive and optimistic, but this is about power and men’s dominant place in society,” Johnson said. “And I think when people feel threatened, an obvious response is to push back.”
