A couple of weeks ago it was revealed that McKinsey was offering women students at Stanford business school a free lunchtime manicure in an effort to lure them to the consulting firm.
The recent news that Facebook and, from next year, Apple are offering up to US$20,000 to freeze the eggs of their female employees isn’t in quite the same category of perks, but it is another fascinating response as IT companies struggle to boost the number of women in the ranks.
Just to add to the sense of unreality, Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella got into hot water a week ago after telling a conference that women who don’t ask for pay rise are likely to be rewarded with ‘good karma‘. He has since apologised for the comment.
Is it possible that these leading firms don’t know what they don’t know? That some of the world’s savviest, smartest and most powerful people have a massive blind spot? It certainly seems that way.
The low level of women in IT is hardly a new problem but it has resurfaced in the last few months, after pressure from civil rights groups resulted in many of the largest US firms reporting on the gender splits in their ranks. Apple’s diversity report for 2014 showed that its workforce was 70% male, a similar figure to Google, while Facebook has reported 69% of employees are male.
A raft of media coverage has also been unleashed, including recent analysis by Professor Joan Williams in the Harvard Business Review article, ‘Hacking Tech’s Diversity Problem‘.
The problems for women in these firms – as in many other sectors – often revolve around the idea that there is a pure meritocracy at work, as Williams points out. Merit was one of the core myths in my book 7 Myths about women and work and it seems we’ve still got lots of work to do in debunking this unrealistic view of workplaces. Given how much we now know about motherhood bias and the impermeable nature of the glass ceiling the merit excuse is well and truly past its use-by date.
One path forward for IT companies, Williams says, is a range of interventions to confront and break down bias, and the practices and behaviour, which prevents women from having similar careers to their male peers.
This can be anything that changes the basic business system in a way that stops a pattern of bias in its tracks, she says. In one example researchers found adding the phrase ‘salary negotiable’ to a job ad helped address the reluctance women have to negotiate salary and led to a reduction in the pay gap.
But you can’t do something like this once, she adds, or think the first attempt is the answer. Firms must keep experimenting and trying time and again to have any chance of success. There is no silver bullet here.
The problem with manicures and perks to delay motherhood and endorsing the idea women should play nicely is they are all looking in precisely the wrong place for change. Despite its reputation for employing and providing services to a mainly young and cool cohort, IT firms seem to have a remarkably strong attachment to traditional male breadwinner norms. No amount of free food, yoga classes or creativity time is changing that.
Fixing women so they fit that prevailing norm is insulting and simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t change the dynamics of who can and should do the caring, whose work is valued and what it takes to do a good job and have a fulfilling career over a lifetime. It simply allows the status quo to go on and reinforces established gender roles.
Challenging that takes a very different outlook and genuine intellectual investment and creativity, something this particular sector has in spades. Now they need to harness all that talent and complex problem-solving skills to address it. It’s about upsetting the Apple cart.