Gender Discrimination Still a Factor in Modern Organizations

“Gender Fatigue” Hampers Productive Language to Address Inequality

The World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report states, “No country in the world has yet managed to eliminate the gender gap.” In the U.S., the Bureau of Labor Statistics cites women working 41 to 44 hours per week earn 84.6% of what men working similar hours earn; women working more than 60 hours per week earn only 78.3% of what men in the same time category earn. The disparity between men and women in the workplace is the subject of a recent study by King’s College London.

The researcher (Dr. Kelan) found that workers acknowledge gender discrimination is possible in modern organizations, but at the same time maintain their workplaces to be gender neutral. The author notes, “gender fatigue” as the cause for workers not acknowledging that bias against women can occur.

The study included 26 men and women from two Swiss information communication technology companies. The companies were given assumed names for this study—“Redtech,” a local 50-person Swiss company and “Bluetech,” a subsidiary of a multinational enterprise, employing 3000 staff in Switzerland. At Redtech 11 men and 4 women participated in interviews and at Bluetech 6 women and 5 men were interviewed; 16 individuals were also followed on the job for several hours. The interviewees, ranging in age from 24-54, were asked about their views on gender discrimination as well as other issues.

Employees from both companies claimed their organizations were gender neutral and that employees were evaluated based on merit. With further questioning, men and women interviewed could describe past situations where gender bias occurred against women, but limited it to happening 10 to 20 years ago, from contacts outside their own organizations (i.e. customer contacts), or to an isolated male colleague from an “older” generation. “Instead of denying gender discrimination, workers acknowledge it can happen but construct it as singular events that happened in the past, placing the onus on women to overcome such obstacles...”.

Participants in the study displayed, what the author calls, “gender fatigue” where individuals tire of acting upon gender discrimination in spite of the fact that incidents of gender bias either occurred at one time within their organization or could occur again. “The problem with gender fatigue is that it prohibits productive discussion regarding inequalities between men and women, making gender bias difficult to address,”. “Future studies should explore what happens to gender fatigue over time and whether practical strategies can be developed to shape the way in which people in organizations speak about gender.”

Article: “Gender Fatigue: The Ideological Dilemma of Gender Neutrality and Discrimination in Organizations.” Elisabeth K. Kelan. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences; Published Online here

Some advice on storytelling

Being able to tell a good story is the critical element in any conversation where you want to make a point, gain support or influence someone. However, how to actually tell a story isn't as obvious as it sounds. Prevailing wisdom tells us that a story should have a point and that a story becomes a story when it is time bound. The actual art of storytelling is something that I have long been interested in and something that I haven't always excelled at. Weather it is pitch, pace, length, context or language there is no doubt that storytelling can be a challenge.

In this great YouTube clip which I found over at the excellent Anecdote site we are given a few tips on how to tell a compelling story.

I really like Scott Simon's delivery style - the pace is perfect, his voice just makes you want to listen and his manner is very open.