What Is The Role Of Allies? (Part I)

Please Share With The Ally In Your Household

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It seems to me that we (still) live in a world where misogyny is the last acceptable bias. It’s crazy to me, growing up being told I could do anything I wanted to, if I wanted it badly enough, to know that my success is a threat to anyone.

I’m not even certain why some men are so threatened by their mothers, sisters, and daughters. (I’m not a social scientist. And you’ll note, in these blogs, that while I speak my mind, I don’t pretend to have the deep research skills to get to the root causes of some of these issues.) But it is the case, without fail, that every metric showing the improvement of women in business roles and leadership results in a backlash of manufactured scarcity—a cry of “Affirmative action!” by white men.

To be clear, at no time do these improvements threaten to have women become dominant, even though we are 51% of the population at large. Only in professions deemed “women’s work” do women hold a majority of the roles. Nope. These backlashes occur over even modest improvements that don’t threaten anyone. That tells me that they’re not backlashes at all; they’re actuAlly triggers that enable men to push a “keep-the-status-quo-white-men-first” agenda. Again, I’m not a social scientist, but I remember that “cultural backlashes aren’t reAlly backlashes” from history class a million years ago. 

I recall a conversation with an old friend: a straight, white, successful, and talented Republican male. (I know this from 40 years of friendship, not just because he sent me a photo of the “White, Republican Male” coffee mug his girlfriend gave him.) And he argued that marginalized people get handouts, and maybe he’d get more if he was marginalized. My response was that I understood how being asked to share resources, even in an expanding market, feels like a loss. But he should not look at the problem as a pie chart when it's reAlly an asymptotic XY chart.

In other words, as economic growth expands, opportunity expands toward infinity.  And at no time do the resources on the “W” line cross (or diminish) the resources on the “M” line. The good news is that my old friend is an engineer, so he followed this logic nicely. (He also is very indulgent of me because he’s known me for 40 years.  And I sent him a photo of my mug to remind him to whom he was speaking.)

The reason I bring up this conversation is that I know my friend came out of college with a super strong network for employment and mentorship. A graduate of SUNY Maritime, any mechanical engineering major could have their pick of defense, commercial shipping, hospital, and other mission-critical systems employers. Opportunities came to him through his network and the reputation built during summer work on the good ship USS Empire State, SUNY’s training ship. 

Make no mistake: he’s reAlly good at what he does. And because he was already visible, he was readily offered new opportunities. To this day, the demographics of SUNY Maritime skew overwhelmingly white and male. The alumni network, at least for men, is a jobseeker’s dream. My friend’s perception of normal career advancement does not match reality for the rest of us. And that’s what he didn’t understand until I explained it to him. 

Not everyone comes out of college with a network and professional mentors already in place.  Being visible is a big part of the challenge for so many talented and capable non-white and non-male professionals, who suffer the indignities of CEOs who claim that the reason there are not more of us at leadership levels is the “limited talent pool.”*

Let me just say this: if you only look in the Men’s Locker Room at the Club, you’ll only find what’s in the Men’s Locker Room at the Club.

I’m assuming that an Ally calls himself an Ally because he’s going to work proactively to improve outcomes for marginalized people. Otherwise, he is an “Ally in name only.” My goal here is to provide something productive that Allies can and want to do to achieve more gender parity and gender equity in the workplace because you are sons, fathers, and brothers of women. And the reason I am venturing that Allies would want to do this is that it’s in their best interest to expand all markets. 

Why? Because when they do, they get more of all the good stuff too. In other words, if the only way to get someone to do what you want them to do is for them to want to do it, more of everything is a pretty good argument.

The role of Allies is to scout and recruit women to leadership. We cannot wait to build leaders from management trainees and expect to remain competitive in the world. We need women to be targeted for opportunity, not merely mentorship.

According to the (not new) research of www.catalyst.org, Fortune list company performance metricAlly benefits from having three or more women on boards of directors. So, the first reason to seek out women is that it will improve shareholder value. Women’s leadership perspectives are invaluable for performance because they are also, increasingly, the consumers and employees of these same organizations. 

Allies should pay themselves to be successful. After all, compensation drives behavior, right? Why not include gender parity or balance as part of the management team’s objectives and reward them for accomplishing it? Gender balance and age balance are the keys to keeping our economic growth humming along in a population that is increasingly older and female. If a message, to be heard, needs to come from the “right lips to the right ears,” everyone will need women and older leaders to attract these women and older clients. (Coming soon, a discussion on using our influence.)

And make no mistake, affirmative action media commotion is just political noise, so stop listening to it. Yes, there are mediocre women and minorities who have risen through the ranks, which reminds me of Bella Abzug’s argument that true equality will be observed when women schlemiels are promoted as quickly as male schlemiels. But there are still far more white male schlemiels. As I write this, I have endured Maria Shriver kvelling about her son, Patrick, landing a role on The White Lotus, as if the sum of his hard work and talent is somehow worth more to the producers than the surname Schwarzenegger. (Maria is great; I’m still rolling my eyes about this, however.)

But I digress.

If you, an Ally, are tempted to question whether something is an unfair opportunity for women or marginalized people, ask yourself if you would consider it an unfair opportunity if the beneficiary were a white male. If you, an Ally, are tempted to question whether a media judgment of a woman is sufficiently punitive, ask yourself whether it would be sufficiently punitive if the object were a white male. In other words, the cure for affirmative action perception disorder (my coinage) is simply to put the shoe on the other foot and take a few steps. You won’t be able to unsee that something being taken away from men is fiction.

So, the ask of Allies is that they seek out non-traditional networks and expand their searches. Women, especiAlly #WOACA, are out here. Truly, we want to work collaboratively and mentor the upcoming generation. And if Allies put in half the effort to recruit women that they do to recruiting sports teams, we will achieve gender parity and balance, and the economic expansion trend lines will be off the XY chart.  #NotYoungNotDone

Reading:  Avivah Wittenberg-Cox on Gender, Generations, and the Workplace of Tomorrow

https://www.thehrdigest.com/avivah-wittenberg-cox-on-gender-generations-and-the-workplace-of-tomorrow/

* https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/wells-fargo-ceo-apologizes-for-comments-about-finding-qualified-black-applicants

© 2024 Madrina Molly

The information contained herein and shared by Madrina Molly™ constitutes financial education and not investment or financial advice.

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