When Change isn’t Really Change
by Miki SaxonLast year, when I had more time, I occasionally wrote for Technorati; this article was published there first.
Company vs. Societal Culture
There are many companies and other organizations that pride themselves on their diversity and the effective programs that opened opportunities for women, but are they effective in changing the way people actually think?
Not so much.
MIT is an excellent case study, especially since it was an MIT study 12 years ago that triggered many changes; not just in academia, but in the corporate world, too.
However, changing organizational culture is easy in comparison to changing societal attitudes.
Let me use a bit of personal history to illustrate.
In 1977 I joined MRI as a recruiter. Fortunately for me the manager with whom I interviewed left and it was his second in command who actually made the decision to hire me (his predecessor thought I was too pushy).
I was given a choice of two areas, insurance and telecom, and I chose telecom.
Telecom meant engineering and included military, e.g., microwave, RF, radar, etc. I worked telecom for 12 years, migrating from the military/industrial stuff to commercial voice and data. Another woman worked a biomedical desk.
Although we were both in the top producers circle all 12 years I can still remember other managers at the beginning asking my boss how he managed us and what he did if we cried. And the (usually) unstated assumption by male recruiters that we closed our deals by sleeping with the clients. (I found this hysterically funny considering the number of clients, most of mine on the East Coast, and the time required for the “visits.”)
Today the accusation is more general, that women are promoted because they are women, not because they are good at what they do.
“No one is getting tenure for diversity reasons, because the women themselves feel so strongly that the standards have to be maintained.” –Marc A. Kastner, Dean of the School of Science, MIT
When I am working with clients to change/shift their company’s culture I remind them that the most they can hope for is solid functional change. It is unlikely, if not impossible, that their efforts will actually change the way people think.
And I always remind them how far away we still are from Bella Abzug’s definition of success, although I must admit we are much closer to that reality in politics.
“Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel.”
Stock.Xchng image credit: asterisco
July 18th, 2012 at 12:53 pm
I recently received survey results of my profession and though not all details were available I still was dismayed to see that males averaged more in wage than females in the same catagory. I know that some of this comes from women taking off time from work to have children. And because I don’t have all the details there are probably other factors but sometimes it just seems like the women are going back ward in equality instead of progressing. In my field especially you can’t tell me that women don’t perform just as well as men. And we vastly outnumber them!
July 18th, 2012 at 4:07 pm
Hi Julie, The factors you don’t have are pretty negligible; I doubt they would change the results much.
The disparity has little to do with competency and everything to do with the unarguable fact that equality of pay is still a distant goal in pretty much any field you consider.
Sad, but true.
Thanks for adding to the conversation; I wish I had more readers like you!