Women Don’t Need Exposure

Tech Crunch founder Michael Arrington argued in “Too Few Women in Tech? Stop Blaming Men” that he and other men already do plenty for women: he has a female CEO, two out of four of his senior editors are women, and he begs and pleads for women to speak at his conferences.

Arrington’s counter-point, an article in the Wall Street Journal, is equally insidious. The Journal reports that Mediaite founder Rachel Sklar “co-founded a group called ‘Change the Ratio’ to shine a light on women in entrepreneurial roles, and to address the dearth of women at start-ups” and goes on to report that technology investor Fred Wilson said “the industry needs catalysts to spark a virtuous circle of more successful women-led tech start-ups leading to more women in tech start-ups.”

Wilson pledges to “write about successful women entrepreneurs and prod conference hosts to include women on panels. ‘Little things like that will make a big difference,’” he says.

Arrington, Skylar, Wilson, and the many, many other opinions in an uproar about this are really arguing the same thing:  we need more exposure and awareness around women and tech. Their points of differentiation center on how much exposure will actually move the needle and create an acceptable number of women in tech. But how much or how little is irrelevant.

Women don’t need exposure. We need strategy. We need equality.

Interviewing women and inviting women to conferences and reporting on women-founded start-ups and creating women-focused events and so on and so forth might make everyone feel a bit better and be politically correct, but does little to actually support women.  These obvious proof points make it easy for Arrington and Wilson and Sklar to say, “Look! I’m doing my part!”

But women are less likely to advance in their careers despite all this “support.” And that’s because they’re not actively sponsored the way men are, the Harvard Business Review reports. “Many women explain how mentoring relationships have helped them understand themselves, their preferred styles of operating, and ways they might need to change as they move up the leadership pipeline.”

Arrington’s ideas are a good example of such encouragement; he argues that women may be too nurturing and risk averse for tech and alludes that changing that behavior is the key to more start-up companies founded by women.

“By contrast, men tell stories about how their bosses and informal mentors have helped them plan their moves and take charge in new roles, in addition to endorsing their authority publicly,” the study says. Men develop a special kind of relationship with other men that goes “beyond giving feedback and advice” and instead has men using their influence to advocate and ensure the success of male friends.

The rules of the old boys club have already been passed down to the young boys and without the key, women have somehow garnered special attention and kid glove treatment. But we need more than well-meaning supporters and intentions.

Just let us play the game on the same field.

To Michael Arrington’s credit, his walk seems to outpace the talk of Fred Wilson and Rachel Sklar. But watching the pendulum swing between who to blame neglects the obvious: equality isn’t about keeping score. That’s what business is for.

See you in the club.

Start-Up Games.

The Miseducation of a Woman

Florida at Christmastime isn’t particularly warm, but it’s near tropical for Wisconsinites (of which I am finally one), so it is not the light breeze that causes my arms to hover close to my core while sitting at the pool. In fact, it is something that exists entirely in my head, and I have to consciously and decidedly lift my elbows and hands away from my hips and stomach towards the armrests so as to appear confident.

The right to be a woman, in the finest sense, relies on such confidence.

My two-piece bathing suit beguiles a certain flirtatious composure (it’s got polka dots), and at 5’8” (okay, 5’7” and a half) and 130 lbs, I wear it well. According to my original Illinois driver’s license, that identifying information hasn’t changed for ten years. I still weigh the same as I did in high school, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think I feel fat.

When I look at pictures of myself, I can see rationally that I am skinny, that I look skinny. That I am healthy, and I look healthy. That I am beautiful, and I look beautiful. Rationally, these are all facts that can be written and entered into evidence.

Quite irrationally, I can tell you that the daily struggle of being a woman is that my stomach expands when I eat, my thighs are big and my hips are large. I also worry about the backs of my arms, the portion of my leg directly underneath my butt, and the meeting place of my neck to the space underneath my chin.

Necessary qualifiers: I have an active lifestyle, I love to cook, I love to eat, I don’t read so-called women’s magazines and I usually love my biggest “flaws” – my thin lips, pale skin, imperfect nose and uneven eyebrows, thin fingernails, fine hair, big feet, small breasts, large rear. I’ve been known to run errands without make-up.

But I am looking in the mirror more often lately. Ryan says this to me, over Christmas vacation, while we sit in a high-rise condo that has a mirror on every wall and round every corner. There are a lot of mirrors here, I reply, but I know what he is talking about. He is worried about me, he says.

I don’t wonder at air-brushed models but the pre-teen girl walking down the street in West Palm Beach, dressed with too many inches exposed on her sapling thighs. Or the girls at the Philly wedding whose legs are the size of my arms and whose arms are the size of my wrists. Is this sickness? Disease? Good genes?

A couple mornings later, I spend too much time getting dressed considering I work for a start-up with a casual dress code. I dress up because I like to. I try not to stand out too much from my colleagues who wear jeans and sweatshirts by wearing a cotton t-shirt fabric scarf, or nice boots over leggings. I wear a lot of casual dresses with tights. I try to match the VPs (all men), but since there are no women executives, it’s difficult to know if I’ve got it right.

I could go on.

And then, on any given day, I read about why there are fewer women CEOs, that women are better CEOs, that women are less promising as candidates for promotion, that surgeons can now relocate fat from your thigh to your chest, that kids see housework as a women’s domain, just 4% of venture capital goes to women, wives earn more than their husbands, and just being a woman is a pre-existing condition in healthcare.

I find the truth somewhere, not in the piling up of research, like clothes discarded on my floor, but in accounts from real-life women, between the lines in their interviews, bluntly stated in their ethos, and shared and protected among friends.

“The truth is,” Joanne Lipman says, a former deputy managing editor at The Wall Street Journal and founding editor in chief of Condé Nast Portfolio magazine, “women haven’t come nearly as far as we would have predicted 25 years ago. Somewhere along the line, especially in recent years, progress for women has stalled. And attitudes have taken a giant leap backward.”

No-nonsense advice from Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz

Ever since Carol Bartz became CEO of Yahoo, I’ve been watching her closely. I love that she’s a woman leading a tech company, I love that she’s outspoken, and despite all her detractors, I think she’s going to do amazing things for Yahoo. Every interview she does is awesome, and I particularly liked these quotes from a recent piece in the New York Times:

When people come to me and say, “I can’t work for so-and-so anymore,” I say, “Well, what have you learned from so-and-so?” People want to take a bad situation and say, “Oh, it’s bad.” No, no. You have to deal with what you’re dealt. Otherwise you’re going to run from something and not to something. And you should never run from something.

–

I grew up in the Midwest. My mom died when I was 8, so my grandmother raised my brother and me. She had a great sense of humor, and she never really let things get to her. My favorite story is when we were on a farm in Wisconsin; I would have probably been 13. There was a snake up in the rafter of the machine shed. And we ran and said, “Grandma, there’s a snake.” And she came out and she knocked it down with a shovel, chopped its head off and said, “You could have done that.” And, you know, that’s the tone she set. Just get it done. Just do it. Pick yourself up. Move on. Laugh.

–

Via the New York Times.

Midwest women marry early

In some more research related to my post on feeling pressure to marry early, Pew Demographics reveals some fascinating statistics in their infographic on marriage and divorce. For starters, the numbers back up my assertion that Midwest women marry earlier; a Wisconsin’s woman median age of first marriage at 26 is a full two years earlier than a New York’s woman median age of first marriage at 28.

And in another intriguing twist, it seems that the rate of divorce seems to increase in States where couples marry sooner and is lower in States where couples hold off a couple years, with some interesting exceptions.

Pew Infographic via GOOD.

Career women should try harder – especially in the Midwest

Ryan and I recently celebrated one year of dating officially. What makes this more impressive is that we’re both extremely career-oriented. Even more extraordinary is the fact that we’re not married with babies.

There’s a lot of pressure to settle down, never mind the fact that I don’t feel anywhere near ready to have children. And while I can imagine my life with Ryan, I don’t see the rush. With previous boyfriends, things could have ended at any moment. Now I have time.

In the Midwest, however, I do not. Twenty-six years of age is starting to get old and the female role models to dispel such rumors are few and far between. I can’t, in fact, think of a single woman in Madison that I look up to and follow for her career. Perhaps because the women I know in leadership roles exemplify negative stereotypes, and perhaps because there are simply more men than women leading business here.

It’s difficult, yes. When I graduated college and entered the real world, I had no idea how difficult it would be. Even in the start-up world, women are barely a consideration. When it comes to founding successful companies, apparently old guys rule. Young guys have a shot too. But women aren’t even part of the equation.

And while I love my job and am lucky to have been given opportunities I wasn’t afforded in previous positions, the patterns, however unintentional, are still there. It’s predominately male in our office and women are predictably relegated to the customer service and marketing departments.

The same pattern is propagated throughout society. For instance, Nisha Chittal reports on a study from Media Matters for America that shows on average, Sunday Morning show guests are 80 percent male (on shows like Chris Matthews, Fox News Sunday, Face the Nation, and Meet the Press).

And yet women do seem to make great strides career-wise. Ernst & Young went so far as to say that the world needs more female bosses. “Investing in women to drive economic growth is not simply about morality or fairness. It’s about honing a competitive edge,” Ernst & Young chairman and CEO Lou Pagnutti said. “Women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, China and India.”

But the Midwest seems to be particularly fond of holding onto the old formula of success for women: meet, marry, opt-out. This is purely anecdotal of course. The newest Census study shows it’s actually a myth that privileged, well-educated women are opting-out. Even when broken down by geographic location, the Midwest has drastically more married couples with children and both parents in the labor force, compared to say, California or New York (see page 15 in the report).

Which makes me think we’re not telling the right stories.

I recently broke down to Ryan, “I don’t want to be like the young couples we sit with at weddings or the rich ones we meet at events. Their eyes are so vacant. So disappointed. They’re stunned or seemingly regretful. It scares me.”

“Rebecca,” he replied, “do you think we’re anything like those couples?”

I sniffled and agreed, maybe he was right. But I need women to be stronger role models and more outspoken – whatever path they choose. I don’t want to be afraid of motherhood. And I don’t want to be afraid of missed opportunity either.

There are some enthralling stories about the beautiful complexity that is marriage and motherhood. But these stories just don’t exist about being a woman in the workplace. We need to start telling those. Now. Not just recognizing powerful career women, say on a list or with an award, but telling the stories that infuse society. I need to hear more stories with women that inform my consciousness each morning. And I need to hear them right here in Wisconsin.

Women will lead Generation Y – what will men do?

I really like alpha males – Hercules is the latest and perhaps greatest example in my line-up. Johannes is another. But these male leaders are not only a dying, but now an unnecessary breed.

Evolution from an industrial to a knowledge economy realizes the day of Hercules – known for strength, dominance, and authority – as fleeting. “Men could become losers in a global economy that values mental power over might,” Business Week argues. The age of force is over.

Issues of dependence and independence, dominance and subordination are largely irrelevant to how emerging young women see themselves, Harvard psychologist Dan Kindlon argues in his book Alpha Girls. “Generation Y is the first generation that is reaping the full benefits of the women’s movement,” he says. “Women corporate leaders blend feminine qualities of leadership with classic male traits.”

Gen Y women have both masculinity and feminity, developing as the best of both worlds. We balance the typically female feeling part of ourselves with the typically male thinking parts. We are powerful hybrids integrating “the intuitive and rational, the tender and hardheaded, the self-sacrificing and self-serving.”

We utilize a “transformational approach that focuses on building a team. The team approach is less hierarchal than the traditional business model. A girl’s primary goal is not to win but to maintain relationships,” Kindlon says.

The way of the alpha girl is the rallying cry for Generation Y. We disdain complex rules and authoritarian structures.

In contrast, men and boys “base their reasoning on how established rules or laws should be applied, rather than on the feelings of those affected by their decisions,” Kindlon reports. “Male children learn to put winning ahead of personal relationships or growth, to feel comfortable with rules, boundaries, and procedures.”

Men and boys with such personality types are not naturally in tune with other people’s feelings, a key to success in the new economy. Leadership that marshals and directs is often observed by young women as part of the dinosaur age.

Gen Y women will lead the new generation to positive and meaningful change. The ascent of women in the workforce will be unprecedented in history, and promises to have far-reaching implications.

We already see more women than men attaining bachelor’s degrees. In 2005, nearly 59 percent of undergraduates were granted to women. By 2050, it is projected that the degree gap will grow drastically.

Jobs are no different. Business Week reports, that “from last November through this April, American women aged 20 and up gained nearly 300,000 jobs, and American men lost nearly 700,000 jobs.” Research also shows that women who are in management make companies more profitable, even among the Fortune 500.

Roles traditionally filled by men – that of lawyers, doctors and managers – are seeing an influx of women. Other male-dominated industries such as manufacturing and construction seem to be perpetually in downturn, while women are found concentrated in upcoming and thriving industries such as education and healthcare.

As men are being hemorrhaged in blue-collar, white-collar, and gold-collar jobs, young women are picking up the slack, becoming both the providers and the glue for families.

The new economy is largely dominated by young women who have unique skills, not by men who have been taught to follow the rules.

“Men are less suited than women to the knowledge economy, which rewards supposedly female traits such as sensitivity, intuition, and a willingness to collaborate,” reports Peter Coy in Business Week. “Men have tended to do better in the hierarchies, following orders and relying on positional power.”

Young men then, seemingly devoid of the meaning and opportunities that once defined them, are left in a prolonged state of adolescence. And this limbo doesn’t bring out the best in young men, columnist Kay Hymowitz argues.

“Men feel threatened by female empowerment,” Hymowitz states in one theory, “and in their anxiety, they cling to outdated roles.”

Today’s young men are “following the line of Peter Pan, ‘I don’t want to grow up.’” Hymowitz argues. “Plus, who needs commitment when there is a fantasy football team league to dominate, the possibility that a gaming product better than the Xbox 360 could be on the horizon, and your live-in girlfriend will have sex with you whenever you want?”

Young men today “suffer from a proverbial fear of commitment,” and this may be the biggest problem – “a tendency to avoid not just marriage but any deep attachments,” leading to a life that is as empty of passion as it is of responsibility, Hymowitz says. For the contemporary guy, it’s “easy to fill your days without actually doing anything.”

The solution? Not a new career, but marriage. Marriage, she says, turns boys into men.

Kindlon agrees. Married men are more successful in work, getting promoted more often and receiving higher performance appraisals than single men. Married men are much less likely to engage in risky behaviors such as drinking heavily, driving dangerously, or using drugs. They are more likely to work regularly, help others more, and volunteer more. Married men also have better immune systems, and are half as likely not to commit suicide.

But women don’t need men like they need us.

“Marriage is generally more beneficial to men than women,” Kindlon reports. “Research found that women who stayed single in their lives seemed to have good mental health, while men who stayed single all their lives did not. Choosing to be single seems to be good for women but not so good for men.”

Role reversal.

This post also published at Brazen Careerist. 18 more comments, opinions and viewpoints there.

Gen Y women – out of the workplace woods?

Here’s the thing. I work with a lot of men. During phone calls, I speak with men. For meetings, I sit down with men. At networking events, more men walk in the door than women. In particular, at entrepreneurial events there are lots and lots of men, and just one or two women.

And guess what? I could care less.

Sort of. Because not immediately, but always eventually I notice there are fewer women than men in my life. And then, inevitably, I feel that it’s necessary to say something like, “Where are my women at?” I don’t know why such words fly out of my mouth because I feel comfortable around these men. They’re good guys. But there’s this undercurrent that just doesn’t feel right.

Monica O’Brien calls this casual sexism, and basically tells us to shut up about it, play by the rules and move on. Which is good advice. It’s the path that’s gotten me where I am today.

Indeed, this month’s issue of Portfolio observes that nobody wants to talk about it because most people think there’s nothing to discuss.

Generation Y women in particular are growing up believing they don’t have to worry about sexism. In college I certainly didn’t feel there were inequalities.

It was only a few months after graduation that I learned otherwise. Somehow I had finagled my way onto the Board of a local nonprofit, and the rest of the Board was comprised of men. Older men who didn’t listen to me. There was one woman who joined our meetings by teleconference; she was pregnant and bed-ridden. And those meetings always made me a little indignant.

Like when I read advice that tells me I have to get married and have babies before I’m thirty. I guess it’s smart advice, but it doesn’t resonate with me. I don’t feel that my entire life needs to be managed around having a baby, because I don’t feel that my sole purpose in life is to have a baby.

But it seems that because women are different, being built to have babies and all, that our success isn’t the same as the success of men.

For example, when one of the top alpha females in my area personally called me last week to congratulate me on a recent success, I was ecstatic. I told Hercules all about it, and he said to me, “That’s great. But you know, she’s really not all that smart.”

And I took what he fed me, because I respect Hercules and I like him a lot. But then, do you know what I did after that? Each time I told the story, I added that clause to the end. That this wonderful, well-respected woman who personally called me might not be that smart in reality. What?!

That belittles her success and it belittles mine. It’s casual sexism at its best.

This is what Gen Y women are dealing with. And it may be entirely more dangerous than outright discrimination since it seeps quietly into our minds and then out of our mouths. That sucks.

Because while we may not be marching for our rights any longer, we’re still debating whether pantsuits are unfeminine and men like Jun Loayza now think it’s charming to ask if we were “a little crazy as an undergrad.”

We’re not out of the woods yet.

Gen Y women will have to breed an entirely different form of feminism to deal with this. I don’t have the answer here, because I often feel conflicted. I genuinely enjoy being a woman. In my view, I want to wear the dresses and have the power. Only time will tell if I can have it all.

Working girl.

12 reasons why being a woman leader is challenging

1. Being nice is seen as flirting.

2. Men say in response to your success, “I always knew you were beautiful, but I had no idea you were intelligent as well,” and you just smile.

3. The female commons is tragic.

4. A meeting is never just a meeting.

5. You’re told to use your sexuality. But not too much.

6. You’re told to ask. But not too much.

7. You’re told to be ambitious, but ambition makes you a dirty word.

8. You’re told that you’ll never marry, but married men love you.

9. You don’t know if it’s safer to be walked home or to walk home alone.

10. Pearls, candles, and lotion are supposedly better gifts for you than iPods, books, and domain names.

11. Shoes determine whether you’re a prude or just plain incompetent.

12. And if you’re a feminist, you have better sex, which doesn’t matter because feminism has “completely screwed you.”

Rise above.

Generation Y breeds a new kind of woman

This post is an opening argument to the question, “Do women need men and/or children in order to be fulfilled?” Check out the opposing viewpoint from Justin Sanders here. This post was also published at Damsels in Success.

Update: This post was also published at Huffington Post.

Women need men. Just not like we used to.

While career guru Penelope Trunk insists that we will find deeper fulfillment from relationships over work, others like Hannah Seligson wonder why we can’t talk about “young women and careers without talking about the hunt for a husband?”

Generation Y women don’t relate to either. We don’t live container lives, with work and family and play muffled under air-tight lids. Our life bleeds together, and instead of a singular goal of family or career, we lead our lives as a continuum, family and career ebbing and flowing.

The reality of young women’s lives today is that we want it all, despite the warnings. While coming of age during 9/11 reinforced that family is deeply important to us, we were also raised to believe we could do and be anything, especially equal to men professionally.

It’s not about prioritizing one over the other, nor is there a single answer that works for everyone; there are extremes at either end. What remains consistent in women, however, is their sense of increasing independence.

Whether we check off men, children, career, or all of the above, the fact is that we have a choice, and what fulfills and limits us is not created by society and media, but increasingly our own desires.

As a result, our roles are changing. Women are becoming the leaders, and men the supporters. Even in relationships where children are the priority, and the woman chooses or is able to stay at home, women take on the dominant role, commanding a deeper respect than any time in history.

Many view the shifting roles as threatening the very basis of our biology. But it isn’t. It is simply uprooting the traditional western viewpoint.

Indeed, while spouses and children still rank as a source of fulfillment for women above careers, one’s personal fulfillment is increasingly not just augmented by, but necessitated by professional fulfillment as well.

Bored with motherhood and marriage, we savor the challenge of work. Michelle Obama said in a recent interview, “I love losing myself in a set of problems that have nothing to do with my husband and children. Once you’ve tasted that, it’s hard to walk away.”

Women don’t need men or children for fulfillment. They might get on okay with a cat, or their career, or another woman. But really, Generation Y doesn’t need much. We’ve been coddled and spoiled, and have long surpassed what we might need, and are instead creating what we want.

And what we want is to define a new kind of woman, a “compassionate alpha.”

The Generation Y woman has leadership and strength, and promotes community and empathy. We don’t dismiss motherhood, but embrace our strengths and use those to change the workplace, reaping from it a greater sense of fulfillment than ever before.

It is not a coincidence that at a time when power-hungry hierarchies are being broken down, women are leading and infiltrating the workplace. It is our skills and talents that have created such an influential shift.

Generation Y women are high-achievers, shrewd, well-dressed, and possess an emotional intelligence that far surpasses our male counterparts. We don’t rule by insecurities or fear, but by knowing ourselves well, and seeking connection with others.

In short, we’re women. We strive to be who we are, in our sexual identities, and in how we construct our personal and professional lives. We acknowledge our own complexities.

Our personal and professional lives are blurred more than ever before, and a woman’s strength in today’s society is the fact that we are true to ourselves — more so than any other generation — because past generations fought for our right to do so.

Ruthlessly beautiful.

Women need men and children to be fulfilled

This is a guest post from Justin Sanders who writes at www.thestateof.com. It is his opening argument on the question, “Do women need men and/or children in order to be fulfilled?” and it does not reflect my personal views. Check out my opposing viewpoint, “Generation Y breeds a new kind of woman,” here.

It is said that famed feminist Gloria Steinem once quipped, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Well, if that’s the case, fish need bicycles.

In heterosexual marriage, the male wins a woman’s trust (i.e., love) through courtship. A woman cannot love a man she cannot trust. In return, she gives him the power to love her. This exchange of power for love is how a man and a woman become one, which is the primary goal of marriage. It is the psychological key that allows us to grow. Sex is the symbol of this permanent and exclusive bond. Without this growth and this bond, the lives of most people are unfulfilled.

Feminism teaches that male and female are the same and sex roles are merely “stereotypes” imposed by men. As a result, millions of people are clueless about their sexual identities and suffer from arrested development. Nowadays, women are socialized to work in corporations, not to be wives or mothers. Feminism has destabilized society by undermining heterosexuality and the family. This perverse assault on gender difference is disguised as an act of “defense” of women’s’ and homosexuals’ “right” to be single and childless. Women have been duped into seeking “power” and “independence” (aloneness) through climbing the mirage of the corporate ladder. What women really want is power expressed as male love. They will get it when they are able to believe in a man.

True femininity acts in concert with its masculine counterpart, just as masculinity needs a feminine companion in order to truly develop. This has been the natural order of human beings from time immemorial. The natural result of this union between the masculine and the feminine is the child – Heaven’s most precious gift. Without a child to care for, a woman often becomes frustrated, bitter and distracted. She often uses the “success” of her “career” (which is simply a glorified word for “job”) as a replacement for the void of the missing child. Motherhood changes a woman permanently. The job, which once seemed so important, quickly becomes secondary to the starry eyes of her loving child. I’ve seen far too many women recite feminists mantras only to discovery – in their late 30s – that all they really wanted was a warm baby to snuggle.

Men and women are different, biologically, emotionally and physically – and there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that, so long as we never attempt to confine women to certain limited roles. In the past, men “overplayed their hands,” so to speak, and wrongly confined women to solely domestic roles. Now, a vicious cycle has been created because men are overcompensating for their past transgressions by feeling as if they must act and think like women in order to make themselves more attractive (i.e., metrosexual). These men typically have a hard time keeping a woman’s interest because women innately reject weak men. A man gains fulfillment by protecting and providing for a family. Weak, feminized men cannot do this.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with a woman having a career. What is wrong is when women prioritize their career and neglect the deeper fulfillment of family life.