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.
She lost me at “Darwin.”
Yep, when I was a consultant, back when we had to wear suits, the girls in our group were not allowed to wear dresses - made them look like secretaries.
That line bothered me. They are not saying all women are crazy, they’re just saying over time they are likely to run into ONE woman who is crazy and/or malicious, and the consequences of that happening are too high to take the risk.
“Why would anyone in a position of power hire a woman knowing she could blackmail him or get him fired with a fake charge.”
I read the article, waiting for her to broach the topic of fake charges, but she did not.
She only talked about men being afraid, but refused to really explain what they are afraid of.
Just one fake charge now can destroy a business. And what use to be dealt with with a rebuke or a slap now requires a million dollars to heal the woman’s sensitivities.
Probably hurts them across all employment opportunities. Caring companies will be double guessing and non-caring companies just will hire men.
All a woman has to do is claim you touched her butt and you are fired with no recourse. She said, you’re fired. Who wants to be in that situation?
our credit union is the opposite. Tons of staff, but usually 1 or 2 customers tops, unless it is payday.
That’s so on point! Even when I wear dresses, I always wear a jacket on top, but it doesn’t have the same feel as an elegant suit. I love a nice pair of flowey trousers and a longish jacket. This is NOT the same pantsuit that Hillary wears... I don’t even know where she acquires the outfits she seems to find. I swear I could have done a much better job dressing her.
exactly...
The whole wear what you want and no one is allowed to criticize you, thanks to the slut walk movement has created some very ill-informed young people. You can throw getting too many tattoos and dying your hair a distracting hair color in with the lack of sensibility with dress style.
At least men with tattoos used to understand you only put them where they can’t be seen if youre fully dressed.
I’ve been in big organizations where truly ugly women seduced fat ugly bosses.
Talk about ego elevation. Don’t dare say anything negative about the absolute **** secretaries the boss’ squeeze hires. Oh, and never mind they were both married.
In the other, FatBoy’s equally fat ugly wife was leaving him, and there’s no way in hades any decent looking woman would want him. So he takes up with ugly cowgirl, who’s ex was a rodeo clown. Get the picture?
Next thing we all know, she’s drunk at Girls Night Out (on the firm’s AMEX card) and telling everyone who’s going to get fired soon.
Eventually upper management had no choice but to run them off as the numbers of quality employees they had run off became too great to bear.
That is very true, although I’ve seen quite a few gay young men thrown in there.
If there’s one company I have found that does a great job training young people for future corporate jobs, it’s enterprise rental car.
It’s doing to women what McCabe and Comey and company did to the FBI - making the whole look bad because of the “leaders” (activists)...
Identity politics will hurt anyone who embraces the ideology in normal companies and businesses. All the snowflakes need to go to Twitter, Google and Facebook. They will run them out of business.
I completely agree. We have a dress code but few follow it. Now that the some management is coming from the millennial pool, they see nothing the matter with what some wear.
It’s harming their chances in Romance. I can’t tell you about Finance.
Most women expect men to be the initiators and risk-takers while they sit and judge. It’s reaching the point where even asking a woman out can be misjudged into a criminal act. Therefore, men stop asking.
“Why isn’t she complaining about government jobs such as teachers with good pensions and benefits that are predominantly filled by women?”
Probably because she is in the financial business and this is published in the Harvard Business Review. Now, if she were a teacher/professor and the publication were the Chronicle of Higher Education, well, then, “Bob’s your uncle” as they say.
All women are crazy? No.
Enough that it’s dancing in a minefield? Yes.
Well gee gosh wonder how automated phone systems came about can’t say the wrong thing new robots about to appear.
WARNING WARNING young Will.
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