On a beautiful Sunday in February, about 60 South Asian Professional Women met in Santa Clara, CA at a Neythri event, to hear Dr. Des Jardins speak about gender in the workplace and how we, as women leaders, could understand and affect change.
Dr. Des Jardins is the author of 5 books and has been a professor at Harvard College and City College of New York. She consults with Facebook and other companies on the re-imagination of the workplace and how to reframe the conversation regarding work-life balance. Dr. Des Jardins arrived in Silicon Valley 3 years ago, and while impressed with the culture of innovation, she was shocked by the dearth of women in STEM fields and in leadership roles. Leadership is tough for women and even worse for women of color. Women only hold 20% of the leadership roles in Silicon Valley and women of color only hold 1% of those roles.
Dr. Des Jardins has done extensive research for and written the book “Madame Curie Complex” (2010). Her fascination with women in science dates back to Harvard College in 2005, when the president of the University at the time, Larry Summers, stated in a conference that women were not biologically inclined to STEM fields and Technology. [This comment led to a firestorm of criticism as well as the eventual resignation of Larry Summers as the President of Harvard.]
For Dr. Des Jardins, this comment by Larry Summers struck a nerve. She felt that the women in STEM problem was not a women problem but a STEM workplace culture problem. People think that women can be good in science and technology fields only if they act like men because society has a masculine association with science and technology fields.
Dr. Des Jardins dove into the works of the 19th century and studied one of the most prominent women scientists, Madame Curie, to understand why science and technology is considered a masculine profession. She chose to go back to the 19th century because that is when the field of science became “professionalized”. At that time, these professional fields were attributed with masculine characteristics in part because of what they were NOT — feminine attributes — a professional scientist was NOT emotional, NOT subjective and had credentials (ie. formal education). For American women to be seen as “acceptable” they had to be “likeable”, and in order to be “likeable” a woman, they had to be a domestic woman. And if one was a domestic woman, they could NOT be a scientist. It was a paradox.
In her book, Dr. Des Jardins shows how women scientists in the 19th century were characterized as “amateur” hacks because they were defined by domesticity and not by traits that had been associated with “professional” scientists. Women were seen as emotional and were often only defined by their roles in the home — wife/mother. Even Madame Curie was defined in this way, although she had won 2 Nobel prizes in Physics and Chemistry!
After the death of her husband, and a rumored affair, Madame Curie was struggling to continue her work due to lack of funds. She could not even buy 1 gram of radium, the element that she had discovered, to continue her research. It was in this situation that Missy Malone, a very well-connected American leader of women, interviewed Madame Curie in 1920 in Paris. When Missy learned of Marie’s circumstance, she decided to launch a widespread PR campaign in America to raise the funds for 1 gram of radium (which then, was a cost of $1M).
In order for Missy’s PR campaign to be successful, she knew that Madame Curie would have to be seen as “likeable”. So, Missy painted Madame Curie in glowing feminine terms as a domestic woman. For example, Missy positioned Madame Curie’s science achievements as motivated because she was a mother, a nurturer who wanted to help people. She didn’t want to do research for pure science discovery. Missy could not paint Madame Curie as a scientist, because a “woman scientist” was an oxymoron. While Missy’s PR campaign was very successful and the funds were raised for Madame Curie’s research, it did raise the visibility of what Dr. Des Jardins calls the “Madame Curie Complex” — women feel that they can only compete in science fields if they are heads and shoulders above the rest as a mother and as a scientist. Because of this view, women disqualify themselves because they can’t be all things to all people. They can’t be the quirky scientist like men can.
Dr. Des Jardins disagrees with the current focus on women “leaning in” because that approach is about getting women to behave more like men. She feels that most times what women do naturally is what makes them great leaders, so why would we want to change that?
In our society, we often confuse confidence with competence, and arrogance as confidence. However, arrogance and confidence are inversely related to leaders. We know that good leaders have: great interpersonal skills, board listening skills, are empathetic, good at connecting people, are risk-takers, and are humble. And these are the traits that are disproportionately displayed by women.
Today, our culture looks at leaders as the solo hero, the “lone wolf” who creates market winning results. And women typically don’t see themselves this way (and don’t act this way) and therefore are not viewed as leaders. The good news is that this definition of leadership is changing. Millennials are redefining leadership and what it means to be a great leader. Millennials are defining leadership in more feminine terms, and workplaces will need to change with this new influx of employees and the cultural norms they demand.
Dr. Des Jardins acknowledged that while this change is great for women and their instinctive leadership styles, this change is happening at glacial speed.
I found this discussion engaging and useful to understand the historical context of current corporate workplaces. However, I also wondered what each of us could do NOW to change our teams, our organizations, and companies to promote women’s leadership. Here are some of my ideas to change cultures to celebrate those aspects where women shine AND are critical to company successes:
Connect women’s natural styles to business results. Show that women leaders are great for companies because they produce the results that boards, investors and Wall Street care about.
Tie business results in collaborative team efforts and not the work of a single “hero”. Maybe all corporate awards should go to teams, and not individuals.
Celebrate cross-team and cross-functional relations that drive innovation. Make it clear that innovation is a cross-functional and collaborative team sport.
Mentor women and celebrate their unique leadership styles
Promote women and diverse employees to team lead and formal leadership roles
Create multi-dimensional business success scorecards — where business results such as revenue and profitability are measured, but also where other factors such as social impact, environmental impact, minority participation, and promotions, are measured and therefore become important to all in a company.
Author Bio Niti brings 20+ years of experience to clients. Prior to founding Stage 4 Solutions, she held marketing leadership roles at Agile Software/Oracle and HP. Niti has been a speaker at industry associations in Silicon Valley and at leading business schools, including Stanford University, UC Berkeley and Santa Clara University. Niti has an MBA from Stanford University and a BS in Accounting and Finance from The Wharton School of Business.
Comentarios