Enlightening the Male Mind about Women’s Leadership Challenges

This is the blog post I never expected to write. Really. For most of my working life I’ve been blissfully oblivious to women’s workplace challenges. I am just another garden variety dunderheaded guy, prone to ignoring and dismissing women’s issues, and admittedly, sometimes women. I have not been intentionally or purposely malicious. I am not a bully. I strongly support ‘equal rights.’ It’s just that, like a lot of guys, I’ve simply allowed myself to stay ignorant to challenges that women face in the workplace, assuming – and more often hoping – that it is none of my business and beyond my control.

And then something happened. I was asked to speak at a women’s leadership conference. I’ve written a few books about workplace courage and risk-taking, and the conference organizers thought a presentation on how women could work more courageously would be useful to their attendees. Easy peasy, I thought. Just another gig.

The best way to do a good job is to research your audience and their needs, so I started surfing around the web to get educated on issues affecting working women. The more I researched, the more enlightened I became about the significant challenges women face at work. I knew about the pay disparity – that for every buck a guy makes, women, on average, make 78 cents – but I didn’t know that women only hold 18% of top level positions, or that only 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. These statistics stand in contrast to another fact I learned 89% of the American public say they are comfortable with women in leadership roles. That struck me as intellectually interesting and morally troubling: we’re comfortable with women leading, but we’re not letting them lead.

As I became more enlightened to women’s workplace challenges, I was also invited to lead a webinar on Courageous Leadership for Women. The webinar was hosted by the Center for Creative Leadership, one of the world’s preeminent leadership organizations. I present in multiple webinars each year, but most are not gender-specific. I had a hunch that with a narrower, gender-specific focus, the webinar would have a low turnout. And boy, was I wrong. Over 1000 people attended, more than any other webinar I’ve ever given. Women clearly see the topics of courage and leadership as very, very important.

Something else profound happened during that webinar when the women on the call helped enlighten me even more. During the presentation I offhandedly asked them to type in their answers to a question that I had struggled to find answers for: What are some workplace challenges that women face that men might not? Immediately, there was an avalanche of responses. Here is a small sample:

• Being the only female in the room
• Being “towered over” by taller guys
• Having to leave teenagers unsupervised while traveling
• Husband feeling threatened because I travel with male colleagues
• Taking maternity leave and returning to work after maternity leave
• Breastfeeding at work
• Walking long distances in heels
• Working in a male-dominated company
• Dealing with male customers that would prefer not to deal with a female
• Being considered the “mom” of the group
• Men speaking over you in meetings
• Being targeted by other women who see you as a threat
• Sexually charged workplace
• PMS at work

To be fair, not all of these challenges are experienced exclusively by women. Men have to travel for work and be away from their kids – and sometimes a jealous wife – too. Some customers, even male customers, actually prefer to deal with a woman. Even short-statured men are towered over by larger male co-workers and peers. It is very likely though that women experience these co-ed challenges more pronouncedly and more negatively.

Why should men (and women) care about the unique or intensely-felt challenges women face in the workplace? Because research is starting to show that women in leadership roles get better results than men. If both sexes came together to lessen the impact of some of the issues women face, the results could be even more stellar.

No matter your gender, here are some actions you can to learn more about issues affecting women in the workplace, and proactively support female leaders:

• Stop contributing to stereotypes. Stop saying things like “women aren’t strategic” or “women are too emotional.” Those statements aren’t factual, they’re hurtful.
• Start reviewing the data and statistics about the challenges women face at work, and the positive impact that women have in leadership roles.
• Talk to a woman leader who you admire. Ask her about the challenges she’s experienced in her career and how she overcame them.

Bill Treasurer is the Chief Encouragement Officer of Giant Leap Consulting. His latest book is Leaders Open Doors, and focuses on how leaders create growth through opportunity. Bill is also the author of Courage Goes to Work, an international bestselling book that introduces the concept of courage-building. He is also the author of Courageous Leadership: A Program for Using Courage to Transform the Workplace, an off-the-shelf training toolkit that organizations can use to build workplace courage. Bill has led courage-building workshops for, among others, NASA, Accenture, CNN, PNC Bank, SPANX, Hugo Boss, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs. To inquire about having Bill work with your organization, contact info@giantleapconsulting.com.