New Thinking on Gender and Gen Y in the Workplace — Take Five with Dr. Elisabeth Kelan

Elisabeth Kelan, PhD is Assistant Professor of Management at King’s College in London, where she teaches Corporate Social Responsibility and Managing Diversity and Inclusion. A leading scholar on gender and generational identity in the workplace, she is the author of the groundbreaking Performing Gender at Work (2009). Dr. Kelan’s deep research on these topics lead her to differentiated insights that go beyond best practices. She spoke persuasively about Europe’s glass ceiling in March at the 2010 World Diversity Leadership Summit EU held at the Austrian Ministry of Finance in Vienna. We met there, and we took five at the legendary Palmenhaus café where I asked her some pressing questions about women and Millennials in the workplace.

Take One: You write and speak about the 50/30/10 Rule which describes the seemingly unchanging representation of women in organizations: 50% at the entry level, 30% in middle management, and 10% in executive leadership.  Why has it remained unchanged after one, two, and in some places, even three generations of women in the workforce, and particularly in companies that have been explicitly committed to gender diversity for many years? What keeps companies from getting to 50/50/50?

EK: The 50:30:10 rule emerged from a research study that we did with a wide variety of corporations in Europe. It seems to hold true for many organizations in the world. I think that this is an expression of the fact that most organizations committed to gender diversity have only focused on getting more women into organizations by developing flexible working practices and networks for women, rather than developing women as leaders. Our research has shown that to become a leader, three experiences are essential: undergoing executive training, leading critical business projects and working abroad. Yet few organizations offer women these critical experiences.

Take Two:  Women face multiple dilemmas when it comes to how their managerial and leadership performance is evaluated in the corporation. What are these dilemmas and some of the best antidotes to address them?

My research has shown that most organizations have a dormant stereotype of an ‘ideal worker’ who is able bodied, white and male. Everybody who does not fit into that template is, implicitly, not seen as the ideal worker who can fill important roles in management and leadership. To overcome dormant stereotypes that unconsciously shape behavior, it is important to expose them. This allows us to develop practices to broaden our biases and develop more inclusive ideal workers.

Take Three: When it comes to gender issues in the workplace, the focus has been almost exclusively on women: what additional support they need and how they can connect with other women in the organization. But what about men?  What is their responsibility for improving the gender dynamic in the workplace?

Most organizations follow a fix-the-women approach. It is all about fitting women into models that were designed with men in mind rather than questioning the masculine nature of corporate culture. Although related to the problem of  numerical domination by men, this masculine nature of corporate culture is a distinct issue.

It is vital to include men in the conversation about gender roles. After all, they affect men as well as women. Men are still expected to be the breadwinners and to conform to gender stereotypes at work which restrict their identities and behavior. It is often assumed that men have a lot to lose from gender equality, i.e. the loss of power and status. However I think the opposite is true. Men have a lot of freedom to gain.

Take Four:  Millennials have often been depicted by older generations in superficial, sensational, and judgmental ways.  What do organizations need to understand about Millennials’  needs, wants, and aspirations in order to attract and retain them?

When I started the research on Millennials or Generation Y, I was shocked by much of the literature. Some of it offered negative stereotypes of entitled, selfish young adults that seemed to be based on biased research or the commentators’ experiences with their own children.  I strongly felt that a much more nuanced portrayal of Generation Y was needed.

In our research on Millennials we narrowed down our focus: we talk about young professionals who are the future leaders of elite organizations. We avoided using a survey but instead listened to what these young professionals had to say. We found that they were not selfish or arrogant. Rather, they are the first generation that has fully incorporated the concept of living with risk. For them risk is a fact of their working life. They know that stable jobs are a thing of the past and to succeed they need to remain employable. Therefore they work to learn and to develop new skills. They want feedback because they know that only this feedback will ensure that they can deliver a top performance. Organizations need to understand this urge to learn in the context of more risky employment.

Take Five: In offering up practical ways to apply your research on gender and Millennials, you have made several recommendations. But there is one recommendation – focusing on leadership development – that shows up on both lists. Why do you believe that this is the most neglected, yet most necessary, support that companies can give to women and young professionals?

Leadership development and the way we deliver it is centrally important. I mentioned before that organizations don’t do the right things to develop women as leaders. If you want to have more female leaders, it is important to make sure that they get the opportunity to collect the right skills. However the problem is much more deep-seated than this. We also need to ensure that men are comfortable in managing women and to be managed by women. I therefore argue that it is important that general leadership training includes a focus on gender diversity to allow leaders to manage effectively in a diverse workplace.

For Gen Y diversity is no longer an issue, and they see the gender problem as solved. Young women in particular are highly skeptical towards women’s groups and often feel that these women’s groups are not for them.  it remains vitally important, however, that in their leadership training Millennials come to understand the intentionality and skill needed to get the best performance from a diverse workforce. Inclusive management does not just happen, and leadership training needs to take it more seriously, even with Generation Y.

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