CHAPTER SEVEN

Understanding Gender

Inclusivity and Inequality

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Leaders need to create the conditions under which collective endeavour can be maximized. They need to be able to unify people in the pursuit of common goals and create a collective identity, cohesion and efficiency.

For this reason, good leadership concentrates on things we have in common. Our future, a vision and shared ambition. Qualities that unify. Take the motto of the United States, for example, E Pluribus Unum (out of the many, one). It is one of the greatest leadership statements of all time. The United States doesn’t care where you’re from. It cares where you’re going.

To unify groups, one must first understand them. One of the largest of all group sub-identities in the workplace is gender. This has become a hotly debated issue for a number of reasons, so we should be careful to generate light rather than heat. We’re not interested in judgements. We’re searching for the truth.

Our motivation in understanding gender is to allow leaders to create effective, modern, aspirant and representative teams that liberate potential. This chapter is not therefore just about gender. We’re interested in both masculine and feminine thinking traits. We’re not just concerned with whether someone is male, female or transgender. All genders can be the provenance of both thinking traits. Women can think in a masculine way and vice versa. This is about potential and how to access it. If we’re going to embrace 21st-century leadership, we need to understand the issue of gender.

The gender debate in leadership is frequently framed as a matter of justice to women. It certainly is that, but that justice belongs to all those who feel the impact of leadership failure.

This is what we will cover:

Assumptions

We will start from a principle of stating some assumptions. Of course, these are open to question, but we state them nonetheless as a starting point.

First, we believe there is such a thing as Western Reductionism or analytic thinking. If we believe this, then it follows that an alternative way of thinking is also possible. This is synthetic or parenthetic thinking. This joins up the dots rather than analyses the difference between them. We refer to this as the left-brain process and the right-brain process. We know that neuroscientists such as Ian McGilchrist1 have shown that these processes are not located in those hemispheres. Instead, he and others have shown us that distinct processes in each are meant to work together. That is our goal here – not to choose between the two approaches, but to become more skilled at both.

Another assumption is that there are gender traits embodied in the two types of thinking. Drill-down, short-term, tactical, quantitative left-brain thinking is often associated with masculine traits. Big-picture, compassionate, empathetic, qualitative right-brain thinking is often associated with feminine traits.

Here we make another assumption. We separate gender traits from gender identity. We will not use the terms ‘male’ and ‘masculine thinking’ interchangeably. We’re only interested here in masculine and feminine thinking, not in male or female genders. Why does this matter? Because leadership needs both sets of skills. It needs both left- and right-brain thinking. Like playing a keyboard, it needs to be able to play all the notes and not just part of the keyboard.

Understanding gender

Debates about gender are depressingly predictable. This is often because they are about gender differences rather than the desired outcome. Is there evidence of gender inequality? Yes. Only 7 per cent of the FTSE 100 companies have female CEOs.2 Is there also evidence of a gender pay gap?3 Yes. The reasons for both, though, are complex.

Investors are increasingly demanding that firms create more gender diversity. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has said it will divest from firms that have fewer than two women on their boards.4 Most organizations remain hierarchically structured irrespective of the gender of board directors.

Why is this so entrenched? To understand, we need to explore further. What we’re trying to get to is the three values of modernity, aspiration and representation. These are brand values that all of us can buy into. Of course, these values are well served by a larger proportion of women in leadership roles, but not if they just simply replicate a masculine way of thinking.

If the male is like water and the female like oil, then we don’t need a separation here. We need an emulsion created by a vigorous and energetic leadership culture.

Problems with the playing field

Let’s look at the basics of gender as applied to leadership. Some of it is physical.

Height and authority

Height is associated with authority.5 In Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink,6 he suggests most powerful people are tall, which gives them an advantage in business. Gladwell found that most male CEOs were a shade under six feet tall. Most male bosses are three inches taller than other men; the average height of men in the United States is 5’9". American women are 5’4" on average. ‘Most of us, in ways that we are not entirely aware of, automatically associate leadership ability with imposing physical stature’, Gladwell says. ‘We have a sense, in our minds, of what a leader is supposed to look like, and that stereotype is so powerful that when someone fits it, we simply become blind to other considerations.’

Confidence and loudness

Loudness is correlated with confidence7 and men have deeper, louder voices than women.8 This seems to matter. Training female leaders to stand tall and project their voices can help equalize these issues to level the playing field.

This does not, however, address the issue of confidence. In many instances, men’s confidence is wrongly (and dangerously) correlated with confidence. We’ll hear more of this later.

Are women more agreeable?

Jordan Peterson is a University of Toronto clinical psychologist. In an interview with Cathy Newman on Channel 4 in January 2018,9 Peterson pointed out a personality trait known as agreeableness. Agreeable people are defined as compassionate and polite. He went on to say that agreeable people get paid less than disagreeable people for the same job and that women tend to be more agreeable. Again, much can be done to offset this with assertiveness training. This can result in more rapid promotion and more equal pay.

Is a ‘hidden’ patriarchy to blame?

Newman went on to suggest that the problem was a patriarchal society. This idea comes directly from antiquity. The works of Aristotle, who educated Alexander the Great, portrayed women as morally, intellectually and physically inferior to men. He saw women as the property of men. He claimed that women’s role in society was to reproduce and serve men in the household. He saw male domination of women as natural and virtuous.

Feminist theory sees patriarchy as an unjust social system that enforces gender roles and is oppressive to both men and women.10 It often includes any social, political or economic mechanism that evokes male dominance over women.

Sociologist Sylvia Walby11 composed six overlapping structures that define patriarchy and which take different forms in different cultures and different times:

  1. The state: women are unlikely to have formal power and representation.
  2. The household: women are more likely to do the housework and raise the children.
  3. Violence: women are more prone to being abused.
  4. Paid work: women are likely to be paid less.
  5. Sexuality: women’s sexuality is more likely to be treated negatively.
  6. Culture: women are more misrepresented in media and popular culture.

The above broadly remains the case. So, on that basis, the patriarchy lives. This is a culture, though, and as such, needs little active help to perpetuate itself. The anger with this culture is that many of its beneficiaries either turn a blind eye or do not notice or recognize it (more likely). Leaders may think a discussion in this area irrelevant, but this is more than just about gender. It’s about how leaders harness all resources and understand key dynamics within the organization.

More interrupted, less listened to

Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg teamed up to write an opinion piece in The New York Times entitled ‘Speaking While Female’.12 In it, they list several studies that show how the spoken contributions of women in the workplace are consistently undervalued.

It’s not just that women are interrupted more frequently than men. It’s that their ideas, contributions and data are more likely to be discounted. Across environments as diverse as the television industry, politics and corporations there are similar patterns. First, men who contribute good ideas receive higher evaluations. The more men speak up, the more helpful they are perceived to be. Women’s data and insights are more likely to be discounted than those of their male counterparts.

More judged on looks

In a piece entitled ‘Why wearing too much makeup harms a woman’s leadership chances’13 for The Daily Telegraph, Science Editor Sarah Knapton points out work by Abertay University in Scotland. Researchers asked participants to view a series of images of the same woman fresh faced, or made up as if for a night out. Computer software was used to manipulate the amount of makeup worn. They found that people judged heavily made-up women as having poorer leadership skills than those who had not used cosmetics.

The cult of the individual

Perhaps the greatest reason for the failure of leadership is far too much attention being focused on the ‘leader’ and too little on the ‘ship’, the team of people behind the leader. Could this also be reflective of a typically egocentric and male approach? The Judeo-Christian tradition places emphasis on male leadership, for example Moses, David and Jesus. It’s possible we have become programmed to our model of leadership as being individual, male and infallible.

The Führerprinzip was another example of this leadership model. It described the basis of all political authority in the governmental structures of the German Third Reich. The idea behind it was that the order of the Führer (leader) superseded any law. All governmental policies, decisions and offices were geared towards the realization of this end. When the veneration, belief and expectation of the individual leader tend towards this sort of infallibility, is it any wonder failure is so common? It undermines the strength and collective good sense of the team.

Are women more emotionally intelligent?

One of the great problems with any sensible discussion in this area is the tendency to generalize. It’s just not that simple. For instance, some measures suggest women are on average better than men at some forms of empathy. Others, that men do better than women when it comes to managing distressing emotions in themselves, at least. Any man might be as good as any woman at empathy. Every woman, as good as any man at handling upsets.

Writing in Psychology Today Dr Dan Goleman asked the question Are Women More Emotionally Intelligent Than Men?14 Emotional intelligence has four parts: self-awareness, managing our emotions, empathy and social skill.15 He indicated that in many tests of emotional intelligence (EI),16 women tend to have an edge over men. In leadership roles, EI is a critical, perhaps non-negotiable, skill.

Empathy is another key skill. There are three kinds. Cognitive empathy understands how the other person sees things. Emotional empathy feels what the other person feels. Empathic concern is ready to help someone in need. Women tend to be better at emotional empathy than men, in general. This is an important leadership skill because it fosters rapport and chemistry. People who excel in emotional empathy make good counsellors, teachers and group leaders because of this ability to sense, in the moment, how others are reacting.

But why is this? Neuroscientists point to a region of the brain called the insula,17 which senses signals from our whole body. When we’re empathizing, the brain mimics what that person feels and the insula reads that pattern and tells us what that feeling is. Goleman says women differ from men where the other person is upset, or the emotions are disturbing. Women’s brains tend to stay with those feelings, but men’s brains do something else. They sense the feelings for a moment, then tune out of the emotions and switch to other brain areas that try to solve the problem that’s creating the disturbance.

There is a great deal of neuroscience here. Some research18 points out that while male brains are more connected within the hemispheres, female brains are more connected across them. ‘On average, men connect front to back (parts of the brain) more strongly than women,’ whereas ‘women have stronger connections left to right’, says Ragini Verma, an associate professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania medical school.

If the female brain is literally more joined up, could this explain why feminine thinking is considered more connected and more empathetic?19 Dan Goleman writing in Psychology Today says: ‘Women often complain that men are tuned out emotionally, and men that women are too emotional – it’s a brain difference. Neither is better – both have advantages. The male tune-out works well when there’s a need to insulate yourself against distress so you can stay calm, while others around you are falling apart – and focus on finding a solution to an urgent problem. And the female tendency to stay tuned in helps enormously to nurture and support others in emotional trying circumstances.’ Goleman termed this as part of the ‘tend-and-befriend’ response to stress.

In another fascinating test,20 women that were injected with testosterone became more egocentric and less attuned to the needs of the group. The hormone disrupted their ability to work together. ‘Egocentricity bias is the degree to which people over-weight their own opinion. If you are more egocentric, you are more likely to think you are right’, said study researcher Nicholas Wright, of University College London. ‘These women were more likely to say they were right when they were on testosterone, than when they were on placebo.’ In short, the testosterone made women make more selfish decisions which were less in the interests of the group.

There’s another way of looking at male–female differences in emotional intelligence. Simon Baron-Cohen at Cambridge University says that there’s an extreme ‘female brain’21 which is high in emotional empathy but not so good at systems analysis. By contrast, the extreme ‘male brain’ excels in systems thinking and is poor at emotional empathy (he does not mean that all men have the male brain, nor all women the female brain, of course; many women are skilled at systems thinking, and many men at emotional empathy).

What this points to is that a form of masculine and feminine thinking can be identified as distinct from just gender alone. This brings us back to the problem of generalization. Psychologist Ruth Malloy at the Hay Group Boston says when you only look at the stars – leaders in the top 10 per cent of business performance – gender differences in emotional intelligence abilities wash out: ‘The men are as good as the women, the women as good as the men, across the board.’22

Do women collaborate more?

In a paper, ‘Are Women More Attracted to Cooperation Than Men?’,23 Peter J Kuhn and Marie-Claire Villeval from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that women are, in fact, far more likely to collaborate than men. The two economists said it was to do with relative competence, the degree to which you think your ability matches up against that of your colleagues. In short, men tend to overestimate their abilities and downplay those of their co-workers, while women short-change their skills and defer to their peers. This theme will be echoed by other studies later, as we shall see. According to the study, women are more aware of a feeling that not everyone is getting a fair deal. Unsurprisingly, men are less sensitive to the asymmetry.

Kuhn and Villeval made the link that this approach is reflected in compensation as well. They ran an experiment allowing men and women to select teamwork versus solo work, for equal compensation. Then, they ran it again, increasing the returns from excellent teamwork by about 10 per cent. Once they did this, the cooperation gap between men and women disappeared. So, if compensation is orientated towards the team, then men will jump at the chance to work more closely with their colleagues.

Their research into the gender wage gap is also worth a look. Why, for instance, are women overrepresented in certain fields, such as the non-profit sector, and underrepresented in other fields, such as financial institutions and board positions in major companies? Women outnumber men in many caring occupations, from charitable organizations to nursing, both of which offer cooperative production with less financial reward. One reasonable question to ask about the pay gap is: How much should we blame the system and how much should we chalk this up to women’s decisions?

Maybe that all sounds too theoretical? The number of Fortune 1000 companies using workgroup or team incentives for at least a fifth of their workers more than doubled between 1990 and 2002.24

This isn’t just a story about gender wage gaps; it’s a story about motivation. In manufacturing and other complex processes, teamwork is vital. It’s not enough to focus on making women feel confident. It’s also key to make overconfident men trust that their colleagues just might be as competent as them.

In a piece in Forbes, entitled ‘Collaborating While Female’,25 Shani Harmon and Renee Cullinan pointed out the work of Cal Newport, a professor who has studied the habits of exceptionally productive people. In his book Deep Work, he makes the case for blocks of distraction-free work time (see the overload in Chapter 1). Doing so, he argues, allows the assimilation of complicated information and better results. This independent thinking time is important to effective collaboration. Independent focus on a project brought to a group for consideration brings improvement in the quality of the discussion. Most of the time people just come into a room and try to figure it out.

The alternative to deep work, he says, is interruption and jumping from task to task: going from one meeting to another, responding to e-mails as they come in, fielding social media and so on. The cost of this switching is high. When we move from one task to another, a percentage of our attention remains on the prior task. This ‘attention residue’ diminishes our performance on the task at hand. The more we switch between tasks, the greater the attention residue, the worse the performance.

Simply put, those who carve out 90 minutes of focused work time during the work day get more done. This is where there is another important gender divide.

Women are less likely to carve out time during the work day to focus on their top priorities because it feels selfish. Harmon and Cullinan say this is partly because women and men differ on what it means to be a good team player: ‘According to research, women are more likely to agree with the statement: “Being a good team player means helping all of my colleagues with what they need to get done”.’ In contrast, men are more likely to agree with the statement: ‘Being a good team player is knowing your position and playing it well.’ While both perspectives are valid, they say, they lead to different patterns of collaboration. For men, blocking the calendar is consistent with being a great team player. For women, blocking time can feel like just the opposite.

That instinct to be available to others has a double effect. Not only are women less likely to carve out time for their own work, they’re also more likely to give time away. They’re also more likely to feel guilty about ignoring a request or declining a meeting in order to prioritize their own work.

Social scientist Benjamin Voyer explains why that might be: ‘Guilt is an “other-focused emotion”’ – an emotion that involves thinking about others, which research indicates is typically a female trait. ‘Whatever the reason,’ researchers say, ‘the result is the same: work slips into the evenings and weekends, which may be one of the reasons why women work on average 50 minutes more a day than men.’

Introducing the LAB Brain Model

We can see the LAB Brain Model in Figure 7.1. It puts together what we already know about Western Reductionist thinking – the so-called left-brain process with its ‘compare, contrast and analyse’ functions – and juxtaposes it with the right-brain process and its imaginative, divergent qualities. These processes belong to both genders.