ALLURE MEDICAL - all•u Magazine all·u Magazine Fall 2018 | Page 18

CONFESSIONS
OF AN IGNORANT MAN
"Corporate boards
have more men
named John, Robert,
William, or James than
women in total."
>>
We need more men like Judd Apatow to
go to bat for women. Sadly, many men
don’t, because they’re blind to gender
bias. I know, because I was one of them.
When I worked in advertising, a
female colleague mentioned that male
board members weren’t taking their
ideas seriously. I was convinced she
was imagining it. She was brilliant,
and it was the 21st century. I wanted
desperately to believe that we were
living in a just world. As Margaret
Heffernan puts it, I was willfully blind.
My eyes started to open when my wife
and I welcomed our first child, and
then our second—both daughters. All
of a sudden, I found myself worrying
about their future, and noticing how
different the world was for them. I
learned that the daughter effect isn’t
unique to me. In Working Fathers,
Jim Levine and Todd Pittinsky report
that companies were most likely to
become family-friendly and embrace
flexible work schedules when a male
CEO’s adult daughter was working in
a less supportive environment. And
two years ago, I wrote enthusiastically
about evidence that having daughters
motivates male CEOs to pay their
employees more generously and
male legislators to vote in support
of women’s reproductive rights.
Back then, I was encouraged that
having daughters makes men more
concerned about women—it gave
me hope that more men would
18
in math, when graded anonymously,
girls outperform boys, but when
teachers know their names, boys do
better. And when students rate their
favorite professors, they describe men
as “geniuses” and women as “nice.”
This is sad and unacceptable. We may
be in the 21st century, but we’re still
a very long way from gender parity.
Those combined events shattered my
naiveté, and motivated me to start
writing, teaching, and speaking about
equality for women. I told audiences
to take my comments with a grain of
salt, since to my knowledge, I’ve never
been a woman. But as an organizational
come on board. Now, I just find it
psychologist, I feel a responsibility
embarrassing. Why didn’t I think about
to shed light on what the data say
these issues before I had daughters?
about half of the population. And as
Shouldn’t loving my wife, my mother,
a man, I don’t feel that this is just a
and my sister have influenced me?
woman’s issue; it’s a social issue. I
My wife and I spent a lot of time
wish I hadn’t waited to become an
discussing how to promote equality for
advocate for women until I became
our girls, but I didn’t think much about it a dad to daughters and the evidence
in the workplace until I watched Sheryl was staring me in the face. But I
Sandberg’s TED talk and then read
guess it’s better late than never.
Lean In. I was stunned by the mountain
Last year, Sheryl Sandberg asked me
of evidence that gender stereotypes
what my own data showed about
continue to hold women back.
gender. I had done more than a
Even then, I shied away from talking
decade of research on success at
about gender in my Wharton classes,
work, but because of my resistance
fearing that it would divide rather
to acknowledging gender biases, it
than unite. After all, I had read
hadn’t occurred to me to systematically
overwhelming evidence that on virtually analyze differences between men and
every attribute ever studied, men
women in my studies. When I finally
and women are remarkably similar—
did, I was mortified: men got credit for
including intelligence, math and verbal
speaking up and helping, but women
abilities. Instead of claiming that men
didn’t. To bring these persistent biases
are from Mars and women are from
to light, we decided to write a New
Venus, I thought it was high time to
York Times series on women at work.
recognize that we’re all from Earth.
Our fourth piece in the series is
Two colleagues, Sigal Barsade
live today. We make the case that
and Nancy Rothbard, convinced
gender equality isn’t just good for
me that I was wrong to stay silent
women—it makes us all better off.
on gender. Even though there are
There are still too few men who step
more similarities than differences
up as champions for women. Guys, it’s
between the sexes, that doesn’t
about time that we #LeanInTogether
mean the world is fair to women.
for equality. To learn more, visit
Today, U.S. corporate boards have more leanintogether.org.
men named John, Robert, William,
or James than women in total. Recent
coverage by Claire Cain Miller has
brought more chilling data to light: