误解与真相：现代职业女性精英7个鲜为人知的秘密
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牛顿投资管理公司（Newton Investment Management）总部位于伦敦，共管理着880亿美元的资产。海伦娜•莫里西是这家公司的CEO——同时，她还是9个孩子的母亲。 没错，是9个孩子。 人们可能觉得，一边养育一堆子女，一边晋升到一家主要金融公司的最高管理层，这简直是不可能的事。然而莫里西认为，人们对女性领导者的认识和她们的实际状况之间存在脱节。莫里西请了一位保姆，她的丈夫也在家全职照料家庭，但已是商业巨擘的她确信：养育子女并不是职业晋升的障碍。而现在就有一个研究结果支持她的观点。 莫里西创办了30%俱乐部（30% Club），致力于提高英国女性管理者的人数。6月一个周三的晚上，彭博社纽约办公室举办了一场活动。其间，这家俱乐部在美国首次发布了有关人们对职场女性误解的研究结果。30%俱乐部与咨询公司毕马威（KPMG）和商业心理学公司YSC合作，共调查了全球100多家公司的数据，评估了近10,000人给出的反馈，同时还和大约100名来自组织层面的女性（及数名男性高管）进行了面谈。调查结果表明，在藐视限制职场女性发展的性别障碍上，莫里西不是唯一的一个人。 下面是这项研究针对的7个主要误解： 误解1：养育子女妨碍女性升迁 真相：生育子女对女性职业发展的总体影响可能比人们认为的要小。统计数据上，有子女和没有子女的女性所得到的晋升次数没有明显的差异。然而，男性得到升职的机率还是比女性高得多：在整个职业道路上，男性得到5次以上晋升的比例是38%，而女性只有29%。 误解2：女性无法升至高层是因为缺乏信心 真相：女性的风险意识极高，这使得他们比男同事更为脚踏实地。这一点却通常被误解为：女性没有男性自信。然而，研究人员发现，在上级的鼓励下，男性和女性争取升职的机率没有任何差异。 误解3：女性对高级领导角色没有渴望 真相：在英国商界开始职业生涯的人中，男性晋升到执行委员会的机率比女性大4.5倍。但是，女性的职业抱负一点不亚于男性。事实上，在判断成功的因素时，男性和女性给出的两项最重要标准是相同的：做真正有意思的事，建立积极的工作关系。 误解4：女性不会为达到最高管理层而坚持不懈 真相：研究人员发现，没有任何证据表明，放弃事业的女性比男性人数多。然而，对于在执行委员会以下一级或两级的女性来说，她们得到内部升职的机率要比男同事低2倍。 |
Helena Morrissey is the CEO of Newton Investment Management, a London-based firm with $88 billion under management. Morrissey is also the mother of nine children. Yes, nine. The masses might think that getting to the top of a major finance company while raising a full gaggle of kids is impossible. Yet Morrissey believes a disconnect exists between perceptions of women leaders and what women are experiencing on the ground. Yes, Morrissey has a nanny and her husband is a stay-at-home father, but the business tycoon is convinced that childrearing is not a barrier to getting to the very top of the corporate ladder. Now she has the research to back up her hunch. During an event Wednesday night at Bloomberg’s New York offices, Morrissey’s 30% Club, an organization committed to advancing female managers in the U.K., debuted a study for the first time in the U.S. on myths that pervade the career choices of women in business. The 30% Club partnered with advisory firm KPMG and business psychology company YSC to survey data from more than 100 global companies, evaluate feedback on nearly 10,000 individuals, and interview roughly 100 women (plus several senior men) from all organizational level. The results support the idea that Morrissey is not the only one defying the gender barriers often prescribed to working women. Here are 7 major myths called into question by the study: Myth 1: Raising children stops women from getting to the top Reality: The total impact of having children on women’s career choices is less than people may believe. There is no statistically significant difference in the number of promotions between women with children and women without children. Still, men are promoted significantly more than women with 38% of men receiving more than five promotions throughout their careers as opposed to 29% of women. Myth 2: Women don’t get to the top because they lack confidence Reality: Women are keenly aware of risk, which keeps them more grounded in reality than their male colleagues. This often gets interpreted as women lacking confidence compared to their male peers, yet the research found no difference in the number of times that men and women make a career move only after being nudged by a superior to do so. Myth 3: Women don’t aspire to senior leadership roles Reality: Although men starting their careers in U.K. corporations are 4.5 times more likely to reach an executive committee than their female peers, women’s career aspirations do not differ from men’s. In fact, men and women define what matters most to success with the same top two criteria: Doing something intrinsically interesting and having positive working relationships. Myth 4: Women don’t stick it out to make it to the very top Reality: The researchers came away with no evidence that women are giving up on their careers in any greater numbers than their male colleagues. However, women at one or two levels below executive committee are two times less likely to be internally promoted then men. |
