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July/August 2010

Gender Asbestos

By Kellye Whitney 04-14-2010

As a member of the media, I know better than most how easily and how often we as an industry skirt complex issues in favor of sensational and shallow coverage.

To some degree, it’s not our fault. Media outlets compete just like any other players in an industry. We only have a few seconds to grab a reader’s attention — and that associated click-through — and sad, truthful — or not — as the fact may be, trash and sass sell.

Case in point, in the past year there has been a mélange of headlines that have come out discussing the pay disparity that women still suffer from in comparison to their male peers in the workplace. Many of them have crossed my desk, and I’ve commented in some form or fashion on the information presented therein. It’s a worthy topic, but as Avivah Wittenberg-Cox said in her recent blog, “Why Focusing on the Gender Pay Gap Misses the Point,” “The real issue isn't salaries.”

Cox said, “Women represent one of the world's biggest and most under-reported opportunities,” yet “companies — and their business school feeders — have been slow in adapting and profiting from this … and part of the reason is that media too often focus on small, sensational and misleading parts of the story, including aspects like the wage gap.”

It’s true. At this point, we all know that women often don’t get the same money for the same jobs men do. But Cox said this is merely “a symptom of a deeper issue: a massive corporate mis-adaptation to today's talent realities and the subsequent inability to retain and develop women as well as men.” Or, “gender asbestos. It's hidden in the walls, cultures and mindsets of many organizations. But ridding the structure of the toxins will require more than pointing accusingly at the mess. It requires a detailed plan for how to move forward — and a compelling, attractive portrait of the result.”

Since we all know what the problems are, Cox suggests that we stop whining about them, which is a waste of time and valuable resources, and instead, “let's give companies a better picture of the opportunities. As two BCG consultants argued in the September 2009 HBR article "The Female Economy" … women represent a growth market twice as big as India and China combined. We need to stop with the endless attention on the barriers, obstacles and issues that remain. We know them already. It's time to focus on solutions.”

Preach!