Posted on 03/25/2018 6:07:02 AM PDT by TigerClaws
When my mother graduated from college in 1972, she interviewed at an investment bank where a manager told her that for certain positions, women were interviewed but never hired. Even in the late 1980s, she went on interviews with headhunters who would explicitly tell her, “They want to interview a woman,” with the emphasis on “interview”— as in, not hire. Through the decades, as she’s climbed the ranks to become a CFO of publicly traded company, I’ve often told these stories to show how much more opportunity exists in the workplace today.
In the aftermath of the MeToo movement around sexual harassment, I wonder how much progress we’ve really made; recently, several men have privately told me that they have no intention of hiring women for open roles, or of managing young women if they can avoid it. I now worry that the movement has already sparked a destructive backlash.
As someone who works in finance and is currently a student in the executive MBA program at the Wharton School, I’ve heard men say that they’re less likely to hire or associate with women as a result of the intensity of MeToo. Whether consciously or not, I am not sure how any man in America isn’t reassessing his hiring practices. I have heard directly from male executives at two prominent Wall Street firms that they are moving their female direct reports to report to female bosses.
Even if we could get past the troubling message this sends, this isn’t practical — women only make up about 25% of the executive team at the top Wall Street firms, and there simply aren’t enough women to sustain this model. I’ve also heard from male fund managers that they didn’t want to take on the “risk” of hiring a woman in their small shops. An employee of a large bank shared that any future women analyst hires should be “unattractive.”
This environment is particularly troubling for my female classmates and me if we want to obtain a job in financial services, which is what Wharton is known for. Even if I were smarter or more qualified than one of my male classmates, why would an employer hire me when the guy next to me is good enough and is less likely to make an accusation of harassment? Females make up just over 25% of my class, there is no short supply of male MBAs to hire. I have already heard from some men at small hedge funds that they won’t hire women because we’re too “risky,” and from men in VC that they won’t have one-on-one meetings with female founders.
But such candor is rare, and off the record, because such discrimination is illegal. And women may never know why they were passed over. In some ways, I think my mother was afforded a better interview experience — at least they were being honest when they flat-out told her they won’t hire women. I fear this spring will see many female MBAs interviewing at firms that wish to appear to be striving for gender parity, but have no real intention of hiring any young women.
To some, including the men I spoke with, it seems like the MeToo movement is not just about stopping harassment, but essentially trying to achieve the impossible: desexualize the workplace, which goes against Darwin. Chemistry between human beings can’t be stopped, so what’s the answer? To many men, that answer is protecting themselves by avoiding socializing with or hiring women. It may be illegal, but that won’t stop it from happening — most cases would never get to court, and even if they did, they’d be really tough to prove.
My close friend, Vanity Fair contributing editor, Bethany McLean, views this fear as another excuse to exclude women. Before becoming a writer, she spent her days as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and certainly understands Wall Street culture. “That argument betrays a fundamental lack of respect for women,” she told me. “When men say that they’re afraid of being alone with women, what they’re actually saying is that there is a high likelihood that all women are crazy and will read something into a situation that isn’t intended. Women shouldn’t buy into the patriarchal point of view that women can’t be trusted.”
Her point of view is supported by a 2016 study on corporate sexual harassment policies. It found that most corporate sexual harassment policies were ineffective because employees interpreted them as protecting irrational or oversensitive women at the expense of men. “We found that the actual words of the sexual harassment policy bore little resemblance to the employees’ interpretations of the policy,” wrote one of the researchers. “Although the policy clearly focused on behaviors of sexual harassment, the participants almost universally claimed that the policy focused on perceptions of behaviors.”
Although men’s fears may be grounded in an unconsciously biased view of women as untrustworthy or irrational, I do think that the MeToo movement bears some of the blame for the backlash I’m currently seeing. The hashtag and media reports have had a telescoping effect, essentially blurring important distinctions between rape, groping, and clumsy come-ons. As a victim of sexual assault who lived through a U.S. federal landmark case, I want to support the movement, but when the social media waterfall started last fall, I couldn’t bring myself to share my experience — which brought me to the brink of depression for three years — under the same hashtag as women who were briefly fondled at a holiday office party. While neither sexual harassment and assault should be tolerated under any circumstances, they are not the same thing. But the level of condemnation offered to each now seems to be the same. As Sarah Chiche, one of the main authors of a French riposte to MeToo, told the New York Times, “Men whose only fault was sending a slightly salacious text message or email were being treated, on social networks, exactly the same way as sexual criminals, like rapists.” Watching the pendulum-swing of society’s reaction to sexual assault has been whiplash-inducing, and to me, worrisome.
I’ve heard many female peers say that they think the MeToo movement will speed gender parity in the workforce and create access to more executive positions. But we are not at a moment of celebration yet. As a society, we’ve worked so hard to try and take gender off the table, and now more than ever, it seems like it’s very much there.
The response to MeToo shouldn’t be to celebrate with expectations about the promise of this future. I don’t have the answers, but I do believe the start requires addressing the reality of how scared men have become to work with and hire women as a result, and that trust between sexes in the workplace is broken. If the MeToo movement allows us to address this openly and honestly, then society will be much better for it. My concern is this is not happening; rather, women are silently being pushed to the side, making the road to the C-suite and boardroom just as hurdled as it was for my mother 40 years ago.
Why would anyone in a position of power hire a woman knowing she could blackmail him or get him fired with a fake charge.
These days, a man could level the same charge against another man ~ it’s crazy out there.
Why isn’t she complaining about government jobs such as teachers with good pensions and benefits that are predominantly filled by women?
Business is based on personal relationships, and why should any male business owner trust a woman? He has too much to lose. Loose lips sink businesses.
You can't treat them like a friend, because that means honesty, and you have to judge every syllable out of your mouth, for fear it might be misinterpreted.
Only the naive would think not.
/.02
Last year, I said to a client ( a female) who brought her assistant (also a female) to a meeting with a potential: Does your assistant have a blazer or anything to wear on top of her inappropriately low cut blouse?
The client told me she didnt’ know what to do and couldn’t directly say anything. She specifically told me this assistant was given to her as she to gone HR and complained about two male superiors commenting on her dress style as not being business like.
Honestly, over the decades I’ve been involved in various businesses, I have always noticed that the women who dress provocatively do so with purpose.
Men wear a uniform, it’s called a suit. It can’t be sexualized, beyond its inference as a symbol of power.
At least in the 80’s women were on board for this and the female power suit was born. Today, women come to meetings in dresses more appropriate to a cocktail party... and yet the wonder why people don’t take them seriously?
So now young women are moaning that men won’t hire them because they are a liability. They won’t be abused while they are unemployed.
Yes.
Too bad. Does anyone in a position of responsibility in any of these companies give a sh!t?
#MeNeither
Women have taken over the retail banking business. Branch banks are all women
Women are cheap and can be programmed to follow the extensive list of rules to the letter.
Branch banks are where women are in total control
Obviously a man would have to be completely stupid to hire a female in this kind of witch hunting social and legal environment. #MeToo attaches so much risk to hiring females that no matter how productive the worker, she cannot offset this liability.
“When men say that they’re afraid of being alone with women, what they’re actually saying is that there is a high likelihood that all women are crazy and will read something into a situation that isn’t intended.”
Bingo.
I do startups. I ain’t hiring anybody but robots.
Sexual harassment is currently defined as involving “making of unwanted sexual advances”. The implicit assumption is that the guy should know, in advance, whether the advances will be unwanted. The definition grants far too much power to women, and the result is men taking steps to reduce their vulnerability.
There is a similar dynamic operating in the marriage sphere, with more men being wary of the power women have to destroy them in divorce court.
In both cases, men decide that putting themselves into a vulnerable position with a woman is not worth the risk.
MeToo
MeToo
But enough about Me, what do you think about Me?
Thank goodness I am no longer part of the “work force”. As much as I love women, there is no way I would hire or work with them, given the “pound me too” mindset today. No way!
A young receptionist was hired and I had to send her home 3 times because of her dress. I heard one weekend she wore a see through blouse (she was wearing a black bra) and a few other employees told her how inappropriate it was. She never had a clue. Thank goodness she finally was let go.
I had a senior bank executive explain to me how this works:
1. Very few bank customers use branches at all.
2. And yet most local customers -- individuals and small businesses -- will only do business with a bank that has a local branch.
3. So the banking industry opens and maintains these local branches simply to have a local presence to show that they exist, and to be there in case anyone has an unusual banking need that requires a personal visit.
That's why you can walk into a local bank and find almost no staff there even though there are plenty of desks and teller windows around.
Glad the writer brought up the “perceptions of behaviors”. This alone can get a man fired and I think is more dangerous than anything. A look, a word, casual conversation could get a man in trouble in a heartbeat.
"Not being able to say anything (without risk of legal issues)" is exactly the problem. An employer SHOULD be able to issue guidelines as to appropriate dress, and tell people that violations are grounds for termination.
The assistant in question is obviously on the prowl for a high-status/high-income executive to "notice" her. But even if noticed, no executive with any sense is going to ask her out.
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