By Sara Shapiro-Plevan and Rabbi Rebecca W. Sirbu
All of a sudden, one of the men in the room let out a loud “Oh wow.” Looking at the job description in his hand, he repeated, “Wow! This says ‘Qualifications.’ In fact, all of these three job descriptions say that. I have never seen that on a job posting before. I always thought they said ‘Recommendations.’ I have never let a skills list hold me back from applying for anything. I always saw this as ‘recommendations.’” An entire room of Gender Equity Advocates in training nervously laughed, as we recognized the power in this revelation.
One of the greatest roadblocks to women’s leadership and their ability to rise into senior positions in the workplace is the way that women and men differ in their interpretation and reading of job descriptions, and the ramifications that stem from that reading. Endless sources, originally drawn from a Hewlett Packard internal report circa 2012, indicate that men and women apply for jobs differently: men are willing to apply when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, but women apply only if they meet 100% of those same qualifications. Sheryl Sandberg, Amy Cuddy, Tara Mohr, and Grace Killlea have contributed to this flood of research. We too know this clearly: this has become a powerful rationale for our work with the Gender Equity in Hiring Project, as we work across the Jewish community to remove gender bias from hiring processes in Jewish organizational life to help women rise to positions of leadership. We believe that our work is to support organizations to make these shifts, and to train them to recognize, acknowledge and release biases and change their internal processes in order to change the reality for women on the ground, inside their organizations, and across our Jewish community.
Let’s tackle the linguistic difference between qualifications, requirements (another term often used interchangeably with “qualifications”), and desired or recommended skills. “Qualified” and “required” assumes that without this, an employee would not be able to do the work, either by law, or by virtue of some necessary certification. Within our Jewish professional community, we know that there are limited cases in which a skill is truly “required.” This is why a shift to more expansive terms like “desired” and “recommended” is helpful. This shift means no hard line around what is obligatory for applicants.
One excellent reminder of this is the “years of experience” category. Men will gladly apply for a position that requires “10+” years of experience in a given area, even if they only have 8 years of experience. Women with 9 years of experience will not. The shift in language from requirements to recommendations here enables more expansive thinking, as does the elimination of numbers of years. What would it look like to say “senior-level experience,” instead of 10+ years of experience? Perhaps this indicates the same big idea, and an organization might be able to do without the limit of years on the job for a strong candidate who is young but with fewer years in the workplace, or an older candidate who worked part-time for years while gathering many more years of experience. Organizations, in order to open their applicant pool to more women, can offer a fix as simple as this shift in language. This helps to work around the biases that fix our minds and anchor us in a way of thinking, causing us to believe that we must have 100% of the “qualifications” at the outset. Change the words you use. See what happens as a result.
But what about the clearly evident confidence gap that this roadblock seems to indicate? Embedded, entrenched beliefs and biases hold women back: in a report by McKinsey’s Joanna Barsh, we are reminded that women are hired based on their performance, while men are often hired based on their potential. And that’s how others see us. What about how we see ourselves? Women don’t feel confident about applying for a job until they’ve ticked off all the “requirements.” In other words, women must be 100% confident to act. What would it take to act if we were only 60 or 70% sure? Would it be possible to imagine a list of recommendations on a job description as an organization’s hopes and dreams, recognizing that there is no 100%? Women, in order to open up their minds to the possibility of rising into these roles of senior leadership, can be ready to think about what it might look like to step forward and act, perhaps in spite of fear. Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, in their book The Confidence Code, recommend stepping away from perfection (100%) and striving instead for the confidence to raise one’s hand, stand up and be noticed … smaller steps. This does not require ticking off all of the items on a job description in perfect order, like a to-do list of accomplishments.
Organizational mindsets and individual biases at work in this process are causing the pipeline for advancement to leak, and offering women more off-ramps than on-ramps, leading us to the current reality: embarrassingly few women at the most senior levels of leadership anywhere – and especially in our Jewish organizations. Big fixes are necessary: the ways in which women feel less than and lack confidence and the ways in which this lack of confidence shifts their ability to rise into leadership roles. At the same time, we are also able to offer – and make – smaller fixes that work to undermine and eliminate biases, shift the ways in which we work and help us to speak and think differently, all in an effort to make change. When you’re ready to think differently, to write job descriptions differently, and to offer a different point of access to women seeking an on-ramp to leadership in your organization or any other, find us. Be like the Gender Equity Advocate whose story we shared above. Look for places to make a difference, notice your biases and be prepared to do something about it. When you are, we’re ready to help.
Sara Shapiro-Plevan and Rabbi Rebecca W. Sirbu are the founders of the Gender Equity in Hiring Project, a grateful recipient of funding from the SRE Coalition.
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Fascinating! When PRIZMAH published its list of schools welcoming new Heads, I was disappointed to see how few women in comparison to men were on that list. This article brings to light another road block to women’s rise in leadership.
The more things change, the more they say the same. Thirty years ago, in a management group we discussed that a man would reply “of course” when asked if he possessed a skill that he had not yet mastered. Then he would go home and and learn it. Most women would say, “no.” “Confident” women would say, “no, but I’m sure I can learn quickly.”
Sara – wishing you hatzlacha in this very important work.
Work needs to be done with hiring committee bias as well. Women who do make it to being a finalist in searches for top positions are not getting the offer.
In addition to these really important correctives targeted at “the hiring processes in Jewish organizational life,” there is another important area that needs to be addressed, namely the way our community trains women leaders in general. Rather than relying solely, or even disproportionately, upon the organizations to adapt the changes the authors recommend, what would it look like if the myriad of leadership training programs throughout our community provided women executives with the very insights and skillsets they need to begin to address these issues on their own behalf? Through curated role play, problem based learning, videotape feedback, and the like, programs purporting to be about leadership training and development can provide women leaders with the agency and confidence required to take greater control of their own professional growth and leadership trajectory.
In my work as a professor of leadership and executive coach, I have found that many aspiring women executives (and certainly most of their male colleagues) are not even aware of the insidious dynamics in the workplace summarized by the authors of this article. By naming them specifically in training and by providing opportunities to practice the very skills necessary to address and ultimately, upend them, women leaders will be better positioned to grow their own careers while we wait for the myriad of Jewish organizations to incorporate the changes recommended by the authors.
The challenges women face in the Jewish organizational workplace are not of their own making, nor are women professionals singularly responsible for responding to them. But relying primarily upon the organizational infrastructures of our community to “see the light” and implement the authors’ otherwise wise recommendations will take too long. Noel Tichy, the famed teacher of leadership, once wrote a book entitled, “Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will.” I am not naive; the changes we desperately need in Jewish organizational life regarding women in the workplace require a joint effort between our organizational infrastructures and those women (and men) who aspire to lead them in the future.
Dr. Hal M. Lewis
Chancellor, Spertus Institute, Chicago
Principal Consultant, Leadership For Impact LLC
Will curated role play result in hiring a woman to be the CEO of a major Jewish organization? Asking for a friend.
Naw, I’m pretty sure that through my extensive education combined with 20 years in the field it is not my “skill set” that is lacking- it’s that darn uterus that just seems to make search committees hesitant. I don’t think that “curated role playing” will fix that…
Dr. Lewis, with all due respect, unless you’ve been the woman sitting in that interview chair, you have absolutely no idea how far off your analysis is. Yes, I have had years of executive coaching and have never been told that “confidence” is a challenge area. RATHER, it is often the women who DO possess the full package that scare search committees- especially lay ones. How many CEO level interviews you been on where the committee asks about your children or your ability to perform the position given your spouse’s job? This is all while the committee is literally holding your highly accomplished resume in their hands. Maybe if men role played that exact scenario they *might* be able to understand.
This much of the reason that I have simply given up on attempting to contribute my skill set to certain organizations. If you can’t see past the fertile ovaries, it is just not going to work out.
Respectfully,
Shoshanna R. Schechter, MA (Gender Studies), Ed.D (ABD)
Thank you for such an insightful and focused discussion on the obvious and imperceptible realities of our communities and organizations. I do wonder how these behavior patterns and perceptions change or are similar in segments of our Jewish communities that are populated by 99% women? Our early childhood educators are vast majority female and these positions of leadership, have major impact on individuals at the start of their families’ lives. The value of these relationships have impact on our synagogues and communities’ future and individuals’ identity, and therefore the positions yield power. If ALL the candidates for these positions are female, are the stereotypes, expectations, preconceived notions and perceptions still slanted or are the candidates compared with each other more accurately as individual human beings? We have much work to do in growing toward the future and our changing populations and priorities. Our perceptions, our language, our protocols, if rooted in contemporary Judaism, still have a long journey of development ahead of us and each of us can have impact on that growth.