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There was a certain irony in seeing the headline that ‘more than a third of teenage girls suffer depression and anxiety’ on the same front page as updated data on the gender pay gap (in short – there still is one; https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/23/gender-pay-gap-average-18-per-cent-less-uk-women).
(I wonder what it must be like to read the continual coverage about the pay gap, the casual sexism of the Olympic commentators, the constant trolling and victim blaming as an 18 year old girl? Pretty bloody depressing, I’d say.)
I read the pay gap coverage with an eye roll. Here we are again. At first I couldn’t even be bothered to comment on it. Creating systemic change in this arena is complex, painfully slow and full of people missing the point entirely.
Rather than add to the complexity, I’m going to focus on one thing I think the advertising industry could change to make a difference in this area – flexible working. The biggest challenge, in my view, is that the advertising industry finds it hard to create an upwards career trajectory for those choosing not to work 38+ hours a week. And, typically it is mothers who are requesting to work in a different way – albeit we are seeing increasing numbers of men adopt this work pattern.
- Flexible working needs to stop being seen as a women’s issue. I argued in The Guardian last Autumn that as soon as flexible working is seen as a people issue and a way of recruiting and retaining the best talent, it will start to get taken more seriously.
- We need to take risks. Of course we don’t know if two people doing a job share is going to work – but we’re never going to know unless we give it a shot. Too often, people take the tried and tested route and miss the chance to discover something amazing.
- We need to make it easier for recruiting managers to take a creative approach. Added to this, sign off systems can make it harder to get approval for a more creative solution. I understand why a manager would choose a full timer over a 4 day a week account exec if those were the only options available to them because of head count restrictions! But what if they were able to choose between a full timer OR a three day account exec and a three day assistant? Companies need to make it possible for the recruiting manager to make these solutions possible.
- We need to stop hiding behind our clients. Our clients work more flexibly than us (largely) and I don’t buy into most of the arguments that clients won’t allow it. I think that’s hiding behind a convenient excuse.
- We need to stand up to our clients. If there are clients out there insisting on full time Account Directors, (and I know there are a handful), we need to stand up to them and explain that flexibility may be required if they want the best person for the job. Use it as a chance to get out of that subservient client / agency relationship whilst you’re at it.
- We need to stop using people working flexibly as a way of saving money. Yes, I know you do it. The Account Director that only wants to work 4 days a week gives you a 20% overhead saving. Just no. That’s setting that AD up for failure and her team up for overload. Invest in getting the right back up resource and you might just see everyone thrive.
With the technology and cross border reality of 21st century work, it is astonishing to me that we are so wedded to 20th century work practices. It’s time that an industry that prides itself on being current, caught up with the times.
Rox
On Tuesday 28th June, we hosted our first ever conference – HeANDShe – with a diverse panel of speakers from the worlds of neuroscience, mental health campaigning, media and advertising.
Our intention was to discuss how to bring men along to the gender conversation, along with starting a debate about how men are also harmed by gender stereotypes.
The evening brought thought-provoking conversation about how and why the panel would tackle harmful gender stereotypes.
For those of you that couldn’t be there, here are some insights.
Dr Jack Lewis, neuroscientist, kicked off by stating that female and male brains are much more similar that dissimilar, and that nurture plays a huge role in shaping the brain differences between men and women. What this means is how we treat our girls and boys, which research tells us is different even before they are born if we know their gender, is what largely shapes the consequent differences in our brains. He suggested that the brain is more likely to remember narratives and stories, rather than facts. This may be why the idea that ‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’ has gained so much traction, when in fact the similarities are much more pronounced than the differences.
Natasha Devon MBE, the Government’s former Mental Health ambassador for Schools and co-founder of the Self-Esteem Team, explained the devastating impact that gender stereotypes can have on young men and boys, which is shown by the alarming high suicide rates and rise in mental health and self-esteem issues that young people suffer today. She suggested that having one emotion – whether that be happiness or anger – isn’t enough for any human being, and that men especially need to be able to have the space and opportunity to be able to open up and share how they’re feeling.
Harriet Minter, Women in Leadership editor for The Guardian, put forward the case that women need to do less and men need to do more, expect more and ask for more. She shone a light on how hard it can be for men to choose a career that they are passionate about over providing for their family, how challenging it can be for men to have the space to care for their children, and how it might actually be tougher for men to ask for flexible working and extended parental leave than it is for women. Harriet argued that gender equality is still just a “nice to have” in our industry and we need to continue having this conversation if we are ever to affect real change within our organisations.
Paul Frampton, Group CEO of Havas Media Group UK & Ireland, went last and did a great job at landing these insights in the world of advertising and media. He discussed leadership styles and how “leadership is changing… and emotions are the secret weapon of great leaders”. This, in his view, provides a strong case for more gender diversity at a senior level and the emergence of a feminine leadership style. He said, “We’re starting to see a world where vulnerability is valued in the workplace, especially for millennials” which is something that The Hobbs Consultancy has been championing for a long time.
Paul argued that “knock on change in the ad industry will have a knock on effect in wider culture”, and it is because of this that I think we all have a collective responsibility to affect change in our industry.
If you are interested in us bringing the HeANDShe conversation to your organization please get in touch.
Speak soon
Emily
(Marketing and Operations for The Hobbs Consultancy)
How women are portrayed, considered and represented is currently on everyone’s agenda.
In this guest post, Roxanne Hobbs and Flora Joll from Mullen Lowe London argue whether advertisers need to catch up with our changing culture.
We are in a unique position in the advertising industry. Everyone is jostling to lead the discussion around equality and conscious that the views around gender are moving faster in culture than in advertising. Yet we are also in a unique position to influence the outcome as we create part of our cultural landscape through our creative output in the advertising that we make.
As a case in point, Fairy asked the question of how fair the division of labour is in your household, to complement Ariel’s suggestion that men #ShareTheLoad in attempts to redress the balance of inequality. These campaigns perhaps have the intention to create a conversation about the distribution of household labour, whilst also selling a few more unit cases of detergent. Indeed we now know that the more fathers undertake their fair share of household labour, the more their daughters in particular express a greater interest in working outside the home and having a less stereotypical occupation.
Perhaps the sooner we question and thus subvert gender stereotypes, the less likely they are to persist. Riding on Allways’ coat tails, Barbie has changed her act and Target doesn’t stock blue and pink ‘gendered’ colours for their toys any more.
With this momentum, what is now required is a definitive statement of intent. It almost goes without saying that equality is the endgame, but now that the conversation has moved on, where should it go?
We believe that what is now required is a more progressive conversation about gender equality. Whilst we applaud the attempts to instigate a conversation in the media and through advertising, we suggest the end game is one in which gender isn’t even part of the equation.
Gender is just a small part of how people define themselves, and it would seem for the younger generations this is becoming increasingly true. Perhaps The Guardian got it right – “the next step in marketing to women is to stop marketing to women”.
We do not need to create a gender specific portrait of women, or men. We can create narratives that appeal on a fundamental level: human first. Gender stereotypes play out well on a creative mood board, but the cost of these stereotypes on a societal level are becoming clear. We predict these stereotypes will increasingly create resistance, and not attraction, to our brands.
Ultimately we envisage an advertising world in which we don’t even allude to gender stereotypes, even if the intention is to ultimately undermine them.
Change does not have to be dramatic or overnight – it can be done incrementally, as Soraya Chemaly pointed out in her TED Women talk “The Credibility Gap: How Sexism Shapes Human Knowledge”, saying that “small changes in initial conditions can yield exponential difference”. A deodorant brand that has been all about attracting scantily clad babes can show your girlfriend smiling next to you; it just so happens that it is her in the driving seat, as Axe showed in ‘Find Your Magic’.
Flora would argue that marketing should set the agenda for culture, whilst Roxanne believes, at the very least, it should reflect the culture around it. At the moment it would seem, given advertising’s obsession with the younger demographics, that in the arena of gender it is doing neither.
Author – Flora Joll, Strategist, Mullen Lowe
Contribution by Roxanne Hobbs, Founder, The Hobbs Consultancy
This year, I’m walking my ‘daring way’ talk, stepping in to the arena and organising The Hobbs Consultancy’s first ever conference. I do hope you will be able to join us.
The conference is going to explore our thinking about gender from a completely fresh perspective – what if we could integrate rather than separate? This is a topic which informs how we consider our target audiences as advertisers and how we think about our employees as HR professionals and line managers.
We will listen to some diverse points of view about gender from different places – from the world of neuroscience (where we are learning that many gendered brain differences might be environmental rather than innate), from the perspective of teens and self esteem (where we are more recently seeing male teens struggle with body image issues, something previously seen predominantly in girls), from a female leadership editor (whose job depends on our differences and yet has some surprising views on the future) and from an agency network CEO (who has recently talked about the need for men to get involved in the quest for gender parity).
My hope is that we further the debate in a constructive way, whilst also being entertained, inspired and having the chance to catch up with professional colleagues.
The topic is also pertinent to me on a personal level as it reflects the change in my thinking over the past five years since leaving the corporate world to set up on my own in 2011.
Whilst on maternity leave, I was able to look back at the media and advertising industry from a more objective viewpoint and saw, literally for the first time, how being a woman had impacted upon my career. Whilst working at MEC, then Carat and then Vizeum, as a grad through to a Managing Partner, I didn’t see how being female came in to the equation at all. I think this was partly because I lacked the ability to look from the outside in, and also because of the fast pace of the job – reflective time didn’t really get to happen.
I set up The Hobbs Consultancy initially to support women through the key inflection stages of their career – maternity and the step in to leadership. We don’t have a problem attracting young women in to our industry. We have an issue retaining them though their mid career stages, through the family stages and also in to leadership positions.
And let’s be clear. I am sure now that it was the organisations as much as the women within them that needed support. At the time I had self sabotaged and had brought my own challenges around perfectionism and people pleasing that often made it difficult to take the helicopter view and focus on what the right thing to do was. I was more focused on doing things right – keeping stuck in management rather than leadership mode.
Whilst working on a diversity project at a media network, I interviewed lots of men and women about gender in the workplace. I was really surprised by what I heard. There were three key themes from the men – either a disgruntled ‘why so much focus on women?’ which made them disengage from the project. Or a ‘my wife / sister / daughter is struggling with some of this and I want to be part of the solution’. Or ‘Why is it just the women that we’re talking to about extended leave and flexible working?’.
I began to realise that we very much needed men to be involved, that focusing solely on women is the antithesis of inclusivity and that our gender expectations or stereotypes can negatively impact on men as much as women.
I thought that talking about the business case for gender parity would be enough to get men involved. I no longer believe that. The men I speak to are actually far more interested on a personal level. How is this system not serving myself or the women in my life? How can it be different for all of us? How can I release myself from some of the expectations around masculinity? How can I get to spend more time with my family too?
So this is a conference for everyone. It’s about how our binary ideas of what men and women should do, feel and think can get in the way for all of us. The first wave of feminism, whilst making great strides forward (for which I’ll always be thankful) also got it wrong – they positioned themselves in opposition to men rather than with men.
I have a husband, a brother and two sons. I look at our expectations on them to provide, to ‘man up’, to not display emotions, vulnerability and weakness and I see the other side of the same coin that has produced the so-called glass ceiling in the workplace. Our gender stereotypes are damaging everyone.
What if we stopped thinking in opposition to one another and stopped thinking about how different we all are?
What would be possible?
Love, Rox
For more information about this conference please visit: http://thehobbsconsultancy.com/Events.php
To book tickets please go to: https://heandshe.eventbrite.co.uk
I am at the very inspiring Emerging Women conference in San Francisco at the moment. It’s been a huge undertaking to get me here – I was supposed to go last year to the one in New York and felt unable to go at the last minute. This year I have travelled to California with the whole family for a month of training, work, meet ups and holiday. It has been AMAZING.
I am feeling so overwhelmed with information, research and inspiration it remains a struggle to try and summarise a story, or a theme to share with you all. It’s as if there are tectonic plates shifting in my brain.
For the moment, I have the feeling that we are on the edge of something big. That there is a new paradigm that is emerging and that it is reaching critical mass.
I am hearing women ask – what if we just did things differently? We weren’t at the table for the creation of so much of our world. But what if we could be? What could the world look like when we catalyse feminine energy in this world? What will the revolutions be when we insist on bringing in the feminine paradigm?
Could we show that there is a place for compassion, for empathy and collaboration in every single institution?
Or, perhaps at a higher level still, what if we could escape the concept of trying to compartmentalise and separate the masculine and feminine? What could true integration look like? What could this mean for humanity?
I don’t know the answers to these questions at the moment but one thing I am hearing loud and clear is that we need to know ourselves, our wanting and our desires in order to get to this. We need to shut down the voices in our heads that tell us we can’t, or we shouldn’t. We need to reality check the stories that we are making up in the absence of real data. We need to take time to get out of our heads and in to our hearts.
It is not necessarily the external world that is stopping us from progressing. We are just as culpable. It is our responsibility to work through this and figure out what could happen in our lives and the world if we truly showed up.
It has struck me recently as absurd the way in which women tell their employees that they are pregnant. “I’m so sorry” seems to be a common offering. Both absurd and somehow understandable when you consider the cultural backdrop in the workplace against which the conversation happens. And yet I think there’s another conversation that needs tackling so that workplaces can become more inclusive – the ‘I’m trying to get pregnant (and I’m finding it really tough)’ one.
The workplace culture currently seems a long way away from this. In a culture that is increasingly competitive and demanding increased resilience, hours and commitment from its people, a focus on something that will one day temporarily take them away from the workplace seems problematic.
Add to this the fact that infertility is a deeply personal subject with huge potential for shame. Our wider culture, if not the culture in the workplace, prizes fertility as part of our gender identity. Not particularly helpful for a man that has been told he has a low sperm count or a woman who has been told they aren’t ovulating regularly. Add to that, talking about sperm, periods, ovulation and so on is just a bit uncomfortable, even with your closest friends sometimes. Of course people might not want to be open about it. It’s a shame storm waiting to happen.
However I’ve come to realize that we are losing out by not talking about this. By keeping silent we lose that opportunity to connect and realise our common humanity. As soon as one person opens up about a miscarriage, others share their experience. Suffering quietly means that you lose the opportunity for your peers to connect and support you through a truly testing time. You create a further stress on top of a pretty stressful situation – trying to keep the appointments and your hurt quiet. Your bosses continue to hurl work your way and wonder why you’re not too emotionally resilient these days – not realising you’re still coming to terms with the news that it’s unlikely you’ll ever conceive naturally.
And I’m beginning to sense that, through keeping quiet, we are missing the chance to build the kind of workplace that I think many of us would like to see. One in which we encourage people to bring their whole selves in to the workplace. The pressure of keeping your homosexuality to yourself has been well documented in the brilliant book ‘The Glass Closet’. What about the pressure of keeping your biggest disappointments quiet, and instead pretending that everything is just dandy? Could we create a workplace in which we show empathy and compassion for the struggles in our wider lives? Is it possible to create a workplace in which having children is seen as essential for the human race to continue – and so is welcomed and supported?
I am fully aware that the workplace is not ready for this conversation at the moment. It would be great if more women shared their stories, and yet my call is for a cultural shift led from the top. One of the most memorable moments in my career was hearing a founding partner of one of the top creative agencies talk candidly about her fertility struggle in front of 100 industry women. My call is for leaders to humanize the workplace, to role model having the difficult conversations and to bring in empathy. Let’s create a workplace in which everyone can bring their whole selves in to the workplace and be valued for it.
The Daring Way for female leaders talks about being brave, learning empathy and your purpose in the workplace : http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-daring-waytm-for-female-leaders-tickets-16016355350?aff=ebsavedevents
May 2015 will see us deliver a Daring Way™ intensive for female leaders. As someone who has worked at a senior level in the corporate world, and has been through this work, I thought it was worth sharing my experiences.
So what stops women from stepping in to their leadership?
Maternity really was a great opportunity for me to step back and reflect on what had been going on for me in the workplace the past 12 years. It was also a time – in 2011 – when women’s voices were gaining momentum and presence about the structures and processes that were holding them back at work. Or maybe I’d just been too busy to notice their voices until then.
What really struck me was the way in which I had unwittingly held myself back. I had self-sabotaged. I had to take responsibility for how I had shown up in the workplace.
Looking back at my career, I see a bit of a wobble getting used to being in the workplace after university followed by a rapid progression to middle management. I worked out quickly that the key to getting ahead was to be liked and appreciated in the office. And that meant being reliable, getting stuff done, fitting in with the culture, being easy to line manage and not making mistakes. I moved around the country quite a bit as a child and consequently learnt how to adapt and fit in. I worked out how to adapt and changed my behaviour accordingly in my new role.
The three years before maternity felt different. It felt like a struggle. I was working really hard, putting in long hours, getting great feedback from my clients and, it felt to me, not really getting the internal recognition for it. I was getting feedback from my seniors telling me that I needed to exhibit greater leadership, have a vision and be more consistent in my emotions. What I didn’t get was any clues as to how to actually do this.
Things began to shift for me on maternity leave and then further whilst exploring The Daring Way™ (Brené Brown’s experiential curriculum). The work helped me dig deeper in understanding where these behaviours came from and gave me tools and techniques to help overcome them. I realised that fear was what was stopping me from stepping in to my leadership.
Fear that people wouldn’t like me
The people-pleasing gremlin inside of me (that, let’s be honest, comes from a fear of not being liked), got in the way of me sticking my neck out, speaking uncomfortable truths and expressing my own point of view. Supporting and developing people in the workplace is a core value of mine and a great leadership trait. And I have come to realise that this is different to the hustle for being liked, which is driven by fear.
Fear that my ideas would be ignored or rejected
I had become known as the ‘do-er’ and it was pretty hard to shift this behaviour or this brand image, partly because I hadn’t understood what was driving it. It was fear. Doing, completing tasks, staying in action felt safe. People would accept and appreciate what I was offering. I was unconsciously terrified that if I stopped doing that, and offered ideas and vision instead, my contribution (and therefore myself) would be rejected.
Fear that if I became too “powerful” I wouldn’t fit in
This was a new learning from The Daring Way™ for me. When I was growing up my Mother was the head teacher of the local school. She was actually a brilliant role model for me for female independence and drive. Ridiculously (and understandably), as a child, I felt self-conscious of her difference to the other Mums and felt we didn’t ‘belong’ in the community as a result. It had taken me a long time to feel like I ‘belonged’ in London and the unconscious internal messaging was that I would lose that sense of belonging if I progressed to the top at work.
So it was fear that stopped me from stepping in to my leadership. And I suspect that managing all of the above fears were what drove the ‘inconsistency of emotion’ that my managers noted.
I see women being given similar feedback to me regularly and not being given the development, tools and techniques to truly address what is holding them back. I think part of the challenge is that the process runs deep and involves some soul searching. It isn’t something you can tick on a ‘to do’ list. I trained to deliver the Daring Way™ because I instinctively felt that it would provide the tools and techniques to support women in showing up and being seen in the workplace.
The outcomes of this Daring Way™ work for female leaders are:
– Increased confidence and self-belief in your own perspectives, beliefs and vision
– Greater resilience; being able to be with conflict and difficult situations
– Freedom from limiting beliefs about your offering and your creativity
– A process to support you in stepping in to your leadership and managing what holds you back.
Contact roxanne@roxannehobbs.com for more information and click here to sign up to the event https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-daring-waytm-for-female-leaders-tickets-16016355350
Those of you reading popular science books or media articles about gender will have most probably formed an opinion that male and female brains are wired differently in utero and that these different brains create different minds.
In a fantastic read, Cordelia Fine’s work ‘Delusions of Gender’ seeks to unravel these assumptions and show just how unproven they actually are.
With chapter titles such as ‘sex and premature speculation’ (which the immature part of my own brain found highly amusing), she shows just how hastily conclusions are being made about the brain’s potential – perhaps just as the Victorians attributed intelligence to measures such as skull volume and brain weight.
For a start, brains are inextricably linked to the social context in which they develop and function. How can we be sure that the differences seen in brain imaging aren’t a result of a lifetime of living in a society with very clear gender expectations? What if sex differences in the brain were preventing sex differences in behaviour by compensating for the physiological differences? What if smaller numbers of neurons are compensated by greater transmission capabilities of the neurons?
Attempting to summarise the thorough research analysis in to a few key points feels reductive and clumsy; and yet most won’t have the time or inclination to sift the research yourselves. And this is what makes some of the current claims so scary – they quickly become part of the culture in which our brains and minds develop. The results seem intuitive, gender expectations continue to be learned quickly and are then primed by the social context.
I’ve seen this borne out in the research I’m doing in the corporate world. Talk to anyone about why there should be more women on the board, and they say that women are better at developing people and they are more empathetic. I get it, I really do. It’s easier to convince senior leaders of a business case in which women are going to bring something different to the boardroom table. I’ve been guilty of sneaking in a ‘research suggests that women make empathetic leaders’ type comment just to get in the door.
Unfortunately there’s also a lot of research that shows that women don’t actually make more empathetic leaders. It’s pretty hard to measure empathy. Women are certainly more likely to say they are empathetic – but is this because of the gender expectations on them right from the start of their lives? Is that because the popular media is constantly telling us that women are more empathetic?
The problem is that these scientific explanations (based on flimsy science according to Fine) make their way in to our culture and then impact the decisions that women make – thus continuing to fuel the so called differences between the sexes. Women are more likely to choose careers requiring caring for people and empathy that, incidentally, seem to be the lowest status ones. Those not displaying empathy are harshly criticised (perhaps as ‘ball breakers’). In many instances a limitation on capabilities is implied – if you are empathetic then it is implied that you can’t make the hard choices when they’re needed, that you won’t be able to make unpopular decisions.
The reporting of the science in the popular press continues to place an expectation of how to behave and what choices to make dependent upon gender.
I certainly think a greater amount of empathy in the boardroom would be a wonderful thing. But… I don’t think it’s solely the role of women to bring that empathy in. And I think women can bring so much more to the board room table besides.
Towards the end of 2014 I started working with companies to help them with the diversity and inclusivity agenda. This has been a big shift for me. My work supporting women through workplace challenges is super rewarding and really helps the individual women. And yet… I worried it sent the message that it’s the women that need fixing.
This isn’t the case.
Sustainable change needs to come from the top in organisations. My own recent research and also voices in the media point to a huge motherhood penalty for women.
From a recent Guardian article;
“It was assumed my priorities lay elsewhere”
“Before I had a baby I would really have questioned whether such sexism even existed”
“My previous responsibilities were removed”
http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2015/jan/06/mommy-track-maternity-leave-careers
Companies need to rethink how they approach maternity and the introduction of new paternity laws in April provide an ideal timeframe. I actually wonder whether it will be when men seize the opportunity to take extended paternity leave in significant numbers that change will start to happen.
And at the end of the day, this isn’t just about getting more women to the top of organisations. This is about creating a workplace in which every body can bring their whole self in to the workplace and be valued for it. Just focusing on gender is not a particularly inclusive way of approaching the issues. Instead I am getting a stronger handle on what gets in the way of everyone showing up and being truly seen in the workplace.
My hunch is that a more diverse boardroom, which embraces our differences, will lead to a more creative and innovative environment. My work therefore focuses on helping individuals show up and be seen; whilst also advising companies of structural and cultural changes they can make.
What to expect from me in 2015:
One of my resolutions for the year ahead is to get my voice heard. Expect to see articles from me championing the importance of diversity and inclusivity. I will continue to reach out to women encouraging them to stand up and be counted in the workplace. Alongside this I will be giving strategic advice and offering training to organisations in how to create a more inclusive and diverse workplace. My newsletters will encompass both angles and will appeal to anyone with an interest in inclusivity in its broadest sense.
I will be running The Daring Way™ workshops, based on the research of Dr. Brené Brown throughout the year to support everyone in living brave and being truly seen.
I will continue to coach and provide support for women in stepping in to their bravest and most authentic selves.
LOOK OUT FOR:
The Daring Way™ for leaders: retreat in Brighton, March 26
Taking place at the boutique hotel – Artist Residence – in Brighton, this two day leadership event offers you the chance to step in to daring, authentic and vulnerable leadership. Learn how to create the support you need as a leader, how to build authentic and trusting relationships with colleagues, how to build resilience to the (inner and external) critic and how to continue to dare greatly as a leader. If you’re keen to take more risks, stand out as an innovative leader, build stronger relationships and access your creativity – this retreat is for you! Find out more here
The Back to Work MOT
Supporting women in returning to work with confidence and style, this is my new partnership with Sally from Queen Bee Styling. Find out more here
My guest blog for Driven Woman
in which I talk about Daring Greatly in 2015 click here to read
Roxanne Hobbs' Blog 