“It took a revolution to get women where they are in business today. But now, to push hard-won gains wider and deeper, a different approach is necessary. It is a strategy based on small wins – incremental changes that have the power to transform organizations positively for both men and women.” – Debra Meyerson & Joyce Fletcher
This article does an excellent job in describing where we are as a society in regards to women in the workplace. While the authors, Meyerson and Fletcher, argue that significant strides have been made towards equality in the workplace, “the truth is, women at the highest levels of business are still rare.”
The authors also mention that while women have successfully made progress climbing the corporate ladder, many women who approach the very top have a tendency to “jump off, frustrated or disillusioned with the business world.”
So what are we to do if we wish to finally shatter this glass ceiling that has prevented women, for years, from succeeding in a male-dominated workforce?
According to the article, the only way that the glass ceiling will be shattered in this new millennium is through a strategy focused on small wins.
And what exactly does a “small win” strategy do?
Instead of focusing on revolutionary measures that often scare people and cause massive amounts of resistance, small wins focus on “incremental changes aimed at biases so entrenched in the system that they’re not even noticed until they’re gone.”
According the article, small-wins strategy causes change through the following three steps:
- diagnosis
- dialogue
- experimentation
These steps, as expressed by the authors, are much more effective as opposed to harsh revolutionary measures.
This article goes on to present very simply and yet so intelligently, the reason why glass ceilings continue to prevail in the modern day workplace.
As the authors mentioned, it used to be that gender discrimination was very obvious in the business environment. For example, a female executive would lose a promotion to a male counterpart, possessing less experience. Or, in another instance, a female worker would find herself having been demoted immediately after going on maternity leave.
Today, this gender discrimination is not so obvious.
“Today such blatant cases are rare; they’ve been wiped out by laws and by organizations’ increased awareness that they have nothing to gain, and much to lose, by keeping women out of positions of authority. That doesn’t mean, however, that gender inequity has vanished. It has just gone underground. Today discrimination against women lingers in a plethora of work practices and cultural norms that only appear unbiased. They are common and mundane – and woven into the fabric of an organization’s status quo – which is why most people don’t notice them, let alone question them. But they create a subtle pattern of systemic disadvantage, which blocks all but a few women from career advancement.”
It is a sad but very true reality, as mentioned above, that gender discrimination lingers within an organization’s cultural norms. Gender discrimination, in part, is continually reinforced by the way a company is structured.
For women, it’s frustrating to know that regardless of the progress that has been made, this inequality still remains in the workplace.
However, by following the steps and the guidance outlined in this article, organizations can help to encourage continuous progress in regards to gender equality in the workplace.
The biggest take-away is the following:
We need to start the conversation. We need to begin dialogues that allow for people to truly understand the problems that women are facing. Start the conversation, spread awareness, and then begin experimenting with policies and initiatives, in an effort to discern which approaches deliver the best results.
Reference: Meyerson, D. & Fletcher, J. (1999). A Modest Manifesto for Shattering the Glass Ceiling. Harvard Business Review.
Shattering All Ceilings 