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Gender

Gender Initiatives Are Culture Change Initiatives by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox

October 14, 2015

jennifer maravillas FOR HBR

“I wish honestly that I could rewind time and go back and put that

women’s equality issue into the culture from the beginning,” says

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Benioff’s business is growing hyper

fast, and he knows he needs both halves of the population to fuel

that growth. But Benioff, and anyone else who has tried to gender

balance large organizations, also knows that one of the key

obstacles to change is the culture created by the group currently

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in power.

Companies are human systems with patterns, habits and

mindsets that have evolved over time. In most organizations,

change and transformation are at the top of the strategic agenda,

and culture is considered a top priority. And yet established

systems, processes, and mindsets are notoriously hard to shift.

On gender, the shift is slow and only partially understood. One

gender’s rules dominate the game in most companies, because

they created it in their image over the past 10 or 150 years. The

more corporate cultures are male dominated and male defined,

the more these companies are hemorrhaging female talent. The

oft-criticized tech sector is just a slightly more extreme version of

what most large companies still face, the existence of “a

persistent, male-oriented nerd culture that actively drives women

out of the field.”

Part of the reason change has been slow is that so many

companies misunderstand the reality of the issue: it ain’t the

women who need to change.

It’s the cultures that need to change.

Young companies may have an advantage here, as Benioff’s

comment emphasizes: it’s a lot easier to fix a culture early, before

it is well established and entrenched.

That’s what one young, 40-person tech start-up called VOTO

Mobile is doing. Co-founder Louis Dorval actively aimed, early

on, to gender balance the company he and two other “over-

educated, privileged white guys from Canada,” created in 2012.

He is gender-balancing by design, almost from the start. Why?

“It’s for the performance of the organisation I’m creating.”

What is so unusual about their approach, and what others could

learn from their innovations, is how conscious they are that the

culture of tech companies is not adapted to women. And that if

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they want to gender balance the team, they need to adapt their

culture – from the very first moment of recruitment, all the way

through retention issues and promotion criteria.

Dorval knew that vocabulary was key, right from the first job ad.

He read the research that men and women respond differently to

certain words. He’s right. The use of certain words unconsciously

flags cultures that are more masculine normed.

Dorval is also very conscious that the company has a lot to learn

about women, and that managing them will require cultural

adaptations. This excerpt from the first email sent to their

prospective female hires is a good example:

“As I’ve discussed with a few of you already, there is a lack of

diversity amongst the leadership team. We [the founders] are

all similar in age and race (read white men). Why does this

matter? This unconscious choice may end up having

consequences that affect your day-to-day experience at

VOTO (think an all-male college dorm room). But do not fear,

we are keen on improving this situation and working

towards a more inclusive company culture as we expand and

move forward…”

“The door is wide open to suggestions for change. All is on

the table: company culture, the words we use, the actions we

take, company processes, company tools, company norms,

budgets, etc. Our goal: within the next 3 months, you will feel

so at home that you will be recommending to your friends to

join VOTO.

So let me thank you in advance for your understanding and

help in this area.”

The company now proudly boasts of having a “near even gender

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split,” and most of my client companies could benefit from copy-

pasting this leader-led, “all is on the table” approach to change.

And yet this is the opposite of what I see in most companies,

where leaders are still working hard to get women to adapt to

their existing corporate culture.

The manager of a large American tech company is a typical

example – he confessed to me recently that he was having a really

hard time finding women “who fit the culture.”

This is backwards. Established companies should instead be

focusing on changing their culture to fit women. Three simple

steps could help:

1. Have the CEO lead the charge (not women, not HR, not the

head of diversity).

2. Align senior leaders on the need for change (trust me, they

aren’t) and how to implement it (again, I guarantee they don’t

already know how).

3. Hold them accountable for progress (just as with any other

business target).

These may look familiar, given that they likely resemble what you

are doing with every other change initiative you are facing. But

that’s the key.

Unfortunately, this is a million miles away from the current

practice, evident in the results of a recent McKinsey/LeanIn

report. The study underlines that most executives don’t think

gender balance is a priority in their organizations. Sadly, they’re

right: until leaders convince everyone that gender balance is a

business issue, it won’t happen. And the more years they talk

about it without making progress, the less credible they become.

Will companies spend another generation trying to get women

(now 60% of college graduates worldwide) to adapt to male-

dominated corporate cultures — or will they consider that global

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