Column“Lean In” continues to divide women on issues related to work, privilege and balance. Is my decision to go freelance leaning in or leaning out?

Sheryl Sandberg and the Lean In brand have suffered a few blows recently.

Sandberg threw her big name behind Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a congressional candidate who has a consistent record of voting against women’s rights.

Then there’s the Makers Conference. What started as a documentary about the history of women’s equality is now its own fancy-schmancy entity — and Sandberg is at the center of the controversy. Makers’ three-day (invite-only) conference where she and other powerhouses plan to “reset the agenda for women in the workplace in the 21st century” is under fire for its obvious elitism.

But, I mean, Chelsea Handler will be there, so at least it should be a good time.

With this renewed interest in — albeit criticism, of “Lean In” — I’m looking at my own recent choice to leave my full-time job and go out on my own and wondering: Which way am I leaning?

Some might say the decision to leave a career where I was on the team of strategic decision-makers for a company is leaning out. But, I am building my own business, which is a definite lean in. I’m incorporating, you guys!

That said, the path to Libby, Inc. may not impress Sandberg. I spent a lot of time chasing the dream job until I realized that the magical ‘90s office (with work-life balance built into the culture in the form of a ping pong table and a keg) didn’t exist anymore — if it ever did.

I have quit 13 full-time jobs since graduating from college. Yet I have managed to advance in my field and learn new things. In fact, I have learned enough stuff to feel good about my ability to make a living working for myself. That brings me to work-life balance — or, the lean.

I’m working way more hours than I did as a full-time employee and I’m making less money. But, I went to yoga this morning, regularly wear yoga pants all day and take breaks to cuddle with my dog.

I work from home nearly every day, and if you know anything about the weather in Chicago this winter, this is a perk that cannot be underestimated. And I’d say this to the queen of working from the office, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer: I can prove that I get more done out of an office.

While I’m not Makers Conference invite privileged, I don’t take it for granted that even thinking about work-life balance is a privilege. I’m extremely lucky to have a choice in how I make a living, and to have had access to an education that enabled me to get the jobs that have taken me this far.

My goal isn’t to lean in or lean out. My goal is to stay centered and recognize that balance and success are intertwined, not different sides of a coin.

Related on EcoSalon

Feminism According to Sheryl Sandberg: That Happened

Marissa Mayer: Put on Your Big Girl Pants and Get to Work

I Was Told There Would be Beer: That Happened

The Freelancer’s Dilemma: Should You Work for Free?

Image: Giorgio Montersino

That Happened is Libby Lowe’s weekly column for EcoSalon analyzing media, news and pop culture through a feminist lens. Keep in touch with Libby @LibbyLowe.

The post ‘Lean In’ and the Work-Life Balance: That Happened appeared first on EcoSalon.

For the first time in history, women have eked past men as the most popular hires for tech jobs. Yes–as in IT support, engineers, developers and even more of the positions typically reserved for geeky guys. (I’m sorry, I meant geniuses.)

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, sixty percent of the 39,000 tech job hires between January and September (2013) went to women. “In every other year of the past decade, men claimed a greater share of new tech jobs,” reports Business Insider. Typically as much as seventy to eighty percent of tech jobs go to men in a year. So, what gives? Why the sudden shift?

CNN notes, in a let’s-call-it-a-bit-more-than-slightly-sexist-tone, that where exactly the hires are going is unclear, “It’s possible tech firms could be hiring huge teams of female administrators and still mostly male engineers.” Right, because all that engineering is like, really complicated and stuff! Does anyone have a nail file? I think I just chipped my pinky typing “definition of bullshit” into the Google.

It’s not just the jobs that are going to women, overall these computer-thingies and all kinds of digital content have piqued women’s interest. Last month, the Telegraph reported on a study that found women over age 35 now outnumber men when it comes to playing digital games. “In Turkey, Brazil, Netherlands, US, UK, and France, there are more women over 35 gaming than men, and [the report] states that 73 per cent of Turkish women aged 35-44 play online games.”

Should we even discuss how many women are running the booming online porn industry?

The shift is likely due, in part anyway, to women tech stars like Yahoo CEO and ex-Googler Marissa Mayer and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (and let’s not forget EcoSalon’s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Laura Klein). Mayer and Sandberg were all over the media this year, making the tech industry look less like the good ol’ boys club and more like a non-gender-specific industry ripe for female influence. Sometimes, it’s even downright sexy.

But, big surprise: women still aren’t earning as much as men, according to Business Insider. “In computer and information systems roles, for example, women working full time make only about 80 cents for every dollar earned by men.”

Regardless of why it’s happening, it’s a pretty big swing in favor of women, who still only make up a little more than thirty percent of tech industry jobs in total. The year’s not yet done, either. Neither are women.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Related on EcoSalon

That Happened: I Was Told There Would Be Beer
That Happened: Marissa Mayer: Put On Your Big Girl Pants and Get to Work
That Happened: Feminism According to Sheryl Sandberg

Image: Mike Licht

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While all the hubbub around Seth McFarlane’s Oscar homage to sexism was bouncing around the country, I experienced another side of men here in Los Angeles—one I’m willing to call the return of the Sacred Masculine.

I’ve been calling it the best men-are-awesome ten days ever: Overlapping the Oscars, I attended events featuring four of the most compelling, artistic men of modernity: First was an epic performance by Tomahawk fronted by former Faith No More lead singer Mike Patton. He’s known for his ability to switch from operatic, ballady vocals to insane sounding shouts, raps, and indescribably strange noises. He’s both extremely playful and deadly serious, and 100 percent wow-worthy. Second, was the album release concert for the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds record, Push the Sky Away. Like Patton, Cave is a master at showcasing his vulnerability. He also rears a slightly terrifying side, screaming, wailing, arms waving. It’s fantastic, thrilling and some of the most life-changing music I’ve ever experienced. The third event was the sixth time I’ve seen composer/DJ Amon Tobin perform. His shy persona (we met in the lobby) seems to perfectly balance his output of the boldest and most creative electronic music being made today. Tobin seems to be writing a new language—one that reaches beyond Earth’s boundaries. And, speaking of aliens, the last event in those ten-days of men-are-awesome was my first viewing of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 on the big screen at LACMA (I’ve seen it a dozen times on TVs, and it’s a totally different experience). Kubrick may have been a jerk to work with, but he was a most serious artist, with sensitivities and aesthetics unrivaled to this day.

We hear a lot about women’s rights, the goddess movement and the return of the Sacred Feminine. While bra-burning Steinem days may be long gone, we ladies still have our battles to fight as we struggle to make as much money as our testicled counterparts, or thwart unnecessary objectification and violence while still honoring what it means to be a woman responsible for bringing human life to this planet and nurturing it into self-sufficiency. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is picking up quite a bit of slack for her Lean In campaign and new book urging women to claim our rightful place in the mix. Women who speak up are often called bossy and bitchy, she said in her recent 60 Minutes interview, while men who demonstrate the same behaviors are hailed as leaders. Modern women are expected to earn our keep but still be submissive and sexy, virtually all the time. Yes, clearly, there is much to work out; and whether the return of the Sacred Feminine is underway or not, doesn’t it seem just as important, if not more so, that we look to encourage the return of Sacred Masculine as well if anything’s really going to change?

I’ll admit it: I laughed at McFarlane’s “We Saw Your Boobs” song. I liked that it was racy, and thought it was challenging the uptightness of the Oscars more than it was offensive. Besides, eventually, most everything is going to offend somebody. And McFarlane was simply illustrating the sad truth of where we’re at as a nation, a culture, a species. Of course we saw boobs…we always see boobs. Every so often (please, God, how about more of the “often” part?), we see Daniel Craig’s ass, too. During Django Unchained, when Jamie Foxx’s character is captured and hanging naked upside down, I seriously, embarrassingly, turned to my partner (who works in Hollywood art departments) and asked him if that was, in fact, Jamie Foxx’s actual penis. It seemed impossible to me that a man would show himself in that way.

And that really got me thinking.

Not only do women regularly take it all off on the screen, but we most often do it alone, especially if there’s a man in the scene. That sounds less like sexism on the part of men and more like an expression of their sheer terror and fear, perhaps even a little bit of jealousy. Not necessarily from the actors or filmmakers, but from the male audience in general who eschew seeing other naked men, mostly because that’s what they’ve been taught. I’m not saying we don’t objectify and mistreat women (we certainly do) as a result of the frequent nakedness (or in spite of it), but there is another problem we don’t talk about nearly as often, and that’s just how traumatized our collective image of men is.

Whether or not a man has been circumcised, millions and millions are and have been throughout history, and that has greatly shaped how our society–and men–view the world and their place in it. Circumcision is a traumatic, unnecessary genital mutilation that if we did it when they were just a few months older, would be considered a horrific, punishable crime. It scars, desensitizes and sometimes even severely damages the penis. But we do it anyway. We don’t talk much about it. We certainly don’t apologize for it. The effects of sexual trauma, as we know from the countless childhood molestation and rape cases, can last a lifetime. It can distort relationships with the opposite sex. It can cause resentment, fear and dozens of other emotional issues not uncommon in our world today. Men need to talk about this, heal from this and hopefully help stop it for future generations.

Of course, circumcision is not the only cause for modern man’s awkwardness and lack of sensitivity, but it’s a damn good place to start looking at how to heal these issues our men face. Like Patton, Cave, Tobin and Kubrick, some men channel the male awkwardness into art. They confront what masculinity means directly, looking at it through the lens of creativity rather than the muddled goggles of society’s acceptable definitions. Men coming to grips with their fears and vulnerabilities become stronger, not weaker. Surrender is acknowledging what you can and cannot change. And art is one of the best ways to explore and even transcend that.

Who is the Sacred Masculine? I’m not exactly sure. We can stereotype him as a New-Agey pony-tailed man who’s not afraid to cry or eat tofu. But, come on. Men don’t have to give up being men (but giving up meat’s not a bad choice) any more than a woman has to give up her bra. We don’t need to revert to archaic definitions of genders; we are evolving and creating a new tribe, new ways of honoring and expressing ourselves. It requires rethinking, redefining and re-experiencing who we are as both men and women and everyone else in between. Like Nick Cave sings on the title track of the new record:

And if you feel you got everything you came for
If you got everything and you don’t want no more
You’ve got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away

Sexism is, and always has been, a two-way street. The definitions our society puts on our gender roles can only be rewritten if we look at the masculine as well as the feminine–and just how similar they really are, both in their most magnificent glory and constricting oppression.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Image: MiiiSH

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Column Until we remove the stigma around feminism and stop creating barriers between each other, we’re not going to achieve equality, no matter how far in we may lean.

The first act of feminism I witnessed was mortifying. I was at my Brownie Fly-Up ceremony, the celebration of our troop graduating from Brownies to Girl Scouts. There we were. On stage. And the leaders of all of the local troops were supposed to sing us a song before we walked the ceremonial bridge over a mirror, which is actually a little creepy when you think about it, to become Girl Scouts. I watched in horror as our leaders—one of whom was my own mother—stood silently staring into the crowd. Not singing.

Suddenly, Troop 310 was walking the plank. I glared at my mom and asked why she had done that to me. She replied, “Did you listen to the words of the song?” I had not.

It was a cheery rhyming number, the gist of which was that while we failed at everything from tent-pitching to sports, they were letting us graduate anyway. I looked for this song in the official Girl Scout songbook and came up empty. It was probably a local specialty.

At the time, I cared very little about the words and just wanted my mom to have sung and shut up about it. On the way home, we had a long talk about what it would have meant. I lived in a house where Ms. Magazine sat comfortably on the table with an assortment of novels, the New Yorker and newspapers. I distinctly remember an intimidatingly heavy-looking book called Backlash on the table for a while. When my mom explained why the song was wrong, I got it. I was still pissed because, at eight, being embarrassed is about the worst thing possible. But I got it: As a feminist, you don’t belittle yourself and your friends. This is a lesson I have had to relearn many, many times.

And it’s a lesson that seems to be getting lost with this new generation of feminism. This wave (I forget how many waves we’ve had at this point) started last year with Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article in The Atlantic: Why Women Still Can’t Have It All. Talk about backlash.

Cut to today. Marissa Mayer doesn’t identify as a feminist and is, I think, just trying to do her job. But she has been repeatedly criticized for not being a role model for real women, especially the working kind. Then we have Sheryl Sandberg a self-defined feminist starting a deliberate movement.

The criticism of Sandberg has been severe. She doesn’t understand real women. She’s judging us for not working hard enough. She doesn’t get what it takes to make it when you’re not the COO of Facebook (though I would argue that getting to that point in her own career means that she most certainly does get it). We’re picking her apart.

These new voices in mainstream conversations about feminism have a lot in common, which they talk openly about: they are wealthy, straight, attractive, white women. This is the same problem Gloria Steinem faced in the ’70s. Despite the progress Steinem made, she was accused of not understanding the plight of everyone else, of creating an elitist, exclusive movement dedicated to the advancement of a few. Sounds a lot like what people are saying about Sandberg’s book and social campaign, Lean In. Have we not progressed at all?

Once again, we are undermining ourselves because we don’t see ourselves directly reflected in Sandberg’s mirror. But, while our finances might look different, Sandberg argues that we all face the same struggle. In her recent 60 Minutes interview, she says that as women we all learned to downplay our accomplishments from a young age (hell, some of us were even encouraged to celebrate our alleged failures in song). Girls who displayed leadership skills were deemed bossy; as we get older bossy becomes bitchy. She notes that women hold themselves back to avoid these negative stereotypes. While we hold ourselves back, we also take down those women who don’t.

Sandberg is not saying, “Lean in and be me,” but she only has her own life experience to draw from. She’s saying, lean into your own life and ask for whatever it is that you want or need. And yes, it will be easier for women with supportive partners and good jobs. The best response, I think, to her advice about work is Jody Greenstone Miller’s piece in the Wall Street Journal: It’s about changing the structure of the American workday so that all people—parents and singles alike—can have a fulfilling life outside of work. Figure out a way to let people who don’t have Sandberg’s advantages leave work at 5:30, too.

There are many women (and men) just struggling to get by who might look at all of this and say, this isn’t about me. But it is. Feminism has long been about giving a voice to those who are silenced, and Sandberg has the stage. She acknowledges her status and said during the 60 Minutes interview, “Yes, it’s easier for me to say this, and that’s why I am saying it.”

It’s time we stop shooting the messenger and listen to her message. It’s time to stop saying, “I’m not a feminist, but of course I believe I deserve to have a place at whatever table I’m sitting at. I’m not a feminist, but I should be paid as much as my male counterpart. I’m not a feminist, but I think women are equal to men.” It’s long-past time to remove the stigma around feminism, stop creating barriers between each other, and get down to the real conversations about equality at work and at home. As long as we separate ourselves because of a word, we’re not going to achieve equality no matter how far in we may lean.

Image: Lean In

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Don’t make this about working mothers – we need a workplace change for everyone.

When Anne-Marie Slaughter’s The Atlantic cover story appeared, it sparked a firestorm of criticism ranging from accusations of setting women in business back by telling her story of leaving her dream job in the high ranks of government to step back in her career to be there for her children; to stomping on feminism; to boohooing about her elitist stature and the choices she’s made when many women have none. Although it’s not surprising that her story caused so much backlash, thankfully it has also generated great discussion around some important issues. And, despite the furor, they aren’t just about working mothers, or even just women – but the need for our work culture to change for everyone.

The story, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” is poorly titled, but still spoke to many who appreciated that Slaughter had the courage to tell her story of stepping back and wanting to be home for her children. Many women are used to feeling inadequate after reading stories of other women who made it to the top of their demanding professions, raised exceptional children and saved the world.

A Focus on Women
I first saw Sheryl Sandberg speak at the 2011 Women in the World Summit and she wowed the audience. We are contemporaries, and she is clearly a superwoman. Afterward I followed many of her talks and speeches and while I admired her mission to motivate and support women in business in their quest to be leaders, she also made me feel a bit resentful (something Slaughter alludes to in her article). As she motivates, she also expresses disappointment in our (hers and mine) generation in our failure to become leaders and places the blame squarely on our shoulders.

I was not alone in wishing she also championed the large number of women who occupy the middle ground – who don’t necessarily want to lead multinational corporations but want to sit at the table, who want to be heard, be recognized, and be equally compensated, but who still think it’s important to spend a significant amount of time with their families or pursue interests outside the office. These are the women, and a growing number of men, who are leaning back or on the fence about opting out of the workforce or into another career (if they have that choice) because that situation is so hard to find.

Does much of the blame falls on our American work culture? To hear Slaughter put exactly those feelings into words is tremendously satisfying. Can women be both leaders and great moms? Absolutely, but as Sandberg points out, you don’t see many of them, and it’s not completely due to a lack of ambition, but some very real workplace barriers.

Since Slaughter’s article came out, a large body of work has sprung up debating the issues that she raised. You might say that she isn’t covering any new ground as a “we all need balance” piece, but she has started an important discussion. Framing her argument around working mothers got many people’s backs up, but once you step back from that (as she does late in the article and in subsequent discussions), her argument and proposed changes should apply to everyone – meaning fathers, single parents and childfree women and men.

Toxic environment
It’s no secret that our work culture is, frankly, unsustainable and unhealthy. The U.S. has been a workaholic society for years, but the recession has exacerbated the weaknesses in our work culture. CNN calls the U.S. the no-vacation nation, highlighting the fact that most companies give employees only a few weeks off a year, and most expect employees to keep in touch with the office while on vacation. The U.S. lags far behind many European nations that employ liberal vacation policies and encourage their employees to use their time off.

Mother Jones reported that many businesses are posting double-digit profit growth while continuing the current employee workload and declining to hire more workers. “Americans now put in an average of 122 more hours per year than Brits, and 378 hours (nearly 10 weeks!) more than Germans.”

A full-time job used to require around 50 hours a week (allowing for lunch and a moderate commute). Now, for most, that number is low since we put more hours in at the office and can, and do, remain connected to the office nearly every waking moment with mobile technology. As our work culture continues to wring more and more work out of us, is there really time for much else?

In Glass Ceilings and 100 Hour Couples – What the Opt-Out Phenomenon Can Teach Us About Work and Family, authors Karine Moe and Dianna Shandy dissect the growing trend of highly educated women who are turning their backs on leadership and leaving the workplace – the same trend that Sandberg is lobbying against. Moe and Shandy report that dual-income families (the 100+ hour couples), show the most stress and damage from our current work climate. They conclude that an ideal arrangement involves one parent working part-time, yet meaningful part-time work is extremely hard to find.

However, concessions just for working parents can breed resentment in childfree women and men who might have their own, less recognized commitments outside of work like elder care, volunteering, hobbies or a sick spouse. That’s why change should apply to all employees, beginning with a fundamental shift in our work culture veering away from constant work obsession.

Flexibility Plays a Role
Slaughter admits that her regular full-time job as a professor is flexible and it was a shock when she entered government service to have to be on someone else’s timetable. This is where many who have spent their entire professional lives at someone else’s beck and call booed and hissed at her “complaining” which really came off more like a realization of what other professionals deal with. She quotes Mary Matalin, who spent two years as an assistant to Bush and the counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney before stepping down to spend more time with her daughters, as saying, “Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work.” I would amend that to say that flexibility is the only way to accommodate the myriad of personal situations people have outside of work, and children is just one of them.

Slaughter talks about being open about being a parent and having to tend to parental duties outside of work – not to bore her co-workers, but to set the tone of her work environment as family-flexible. Many women know this to be a potential minefield. When I worked in corporate America, I saw family commitments and subsequent time away from work used as a club in both salary raise negotiations and promotion discussions for several coworkers. Supervisors couched it as the employee being “not available” and “missing meetings,” and so on. It’s easy to point to other employees who have not missed work for these reasons as examples of promotion, so there is a reason many parents feel penalized when trying to balance both. It’s also something Sandberg fails to realize when telling women it’s entirely within their control to become leaders, despite having children.

What About the Men?
Slaughter writes, “Men are still socialized to believe that their primary family obligation is to be the breadwinner; women, to believe that their primary family obligation is to be the caregiver.” Men believe they have to be the primary breadwinner, because most workplaces refuse to see them as anything else. When men leave work or miss a meeting to tend to one of their children, more often than not, they feel the need to offer up an explanation, because the underlying thought is, “Why doesn’t their mother go?” (This is not necessarily true for single dads, of course.)

In this work climate, job stability often hinges on a worker appearing to be constantly available for every meeting and task. Where women bend or step back in their careers to care for children, men become more rigid to ensure their job security. I know a man who lost his job of seven years last week, one where he worked partly at home and commuted a long distance to work since his wife worked in another town, because the company terminated all flexible work arrangements. Other employees had asked to also have flex arrangements, and rather than accommodate them, they told all current flex workers they had to be in the office daily or find another job.

All Talk and No Change?
Now that a high-profile figure has raised the issue in such a public forum and it has clearly struck a chord – will anything change? Immediately and on a large scale, probably not. But companies that are ripe to consider flexible work arrangements might be persuaded by this discussion, and those that already offer it can see how important it is for employee attraction, retention and overall happiness. And, as long as we keep the discussion open, we might make progress not just for parents, but for everyone.

Images: Victor1558, Victor1558, Ed Yourdon, Mirimcfly

The post Not a Mommy War – This is About Our Unsustainable Workaholic Culture appeared first on EcoSalon.

Hard work and long(er) hours alone won’t get you there. Sponsors are crucial if you want to move up the ladder.

You are one of the majority of women graduating from college and graduate schools, and you know that women comprise more than half the workforce and make more than 80 percent of household buying decisions. You’ve landed a good job and your hard work has led to some recognition and added responsibilities, but your upward trajectory has stalled. You want to lead and your goal is to make it all the way to the top. If you think that even longer hours and more hard work is the path to leadership, you’re in good company – but you’d be wrong.

Many say women are achieving parity and the CEO of Coca Cola says this century should go to women, yet still, few women have made it to the upper echelons of management. Theories for the dearth of women at the top range from a lack of ambition, to the interference of family obligations to gender bias.

Two recent studies (The Sponsor Effect: Breaking Through the Last Glass Ceiling, by the Center for Work-Life Policy and Catalyst’s Sponsoring Women to Success) claim that hard work alone won’t get you to the top, but who you know will. Catalyst reports that 77 percent of women believe that hard work and long hours alone will pay off, but most men know better. Sponsorship is crucial for both men and women to move into leadership positions, but it is especially important for women, and they are the ones who receive it the least.

Sponsors vs. Mentors

Many women have mentors, but while mentors are a valuable part of navigating the workplace landscape, a mentor’s role is usually that of a passive advice-giver. A sponsor takes an active role in your career. According to the Catalyst report, a sponsor’s role is predicated on power. A highly placed sponsor champions you in leadership meetings that you can’t attend, recommends you for high-profile assignments and highlights your accomplishments to the other leaders in your organization.

Many times it’s women themselves who sabotage their own advancement by a lack of assertiveness or inability to negotiate for themselves. Women actually learn at an early age not to champion themselves. Having someone else endorse a woman applicant lends them credibility and makes a much bigger statement than if the woman does it herself. It happens all the time in politics, but isn’t as formal in business.

Everyone Who Enjoys Success Gets a Helping Hand From Someone

Sheryl Sandberg’s excellence in her economics class at Harvard caught the attention of her professor, Larry Summers. When Summers became U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, he appointed her as his chief of staff. From there, her career only rocketed upward to Google and finally to COO of Facebook. Mika Brzezinski’s Morning Joe co-host, Joe Scarborough, went to bat for her at NBC over the disparity in their salaries (he was making fourteen times what she was), even paying her out of his own compensation until they finally offered her a better contract.

Colleen Plimpton, a garden columnist, described how another garden writer, Lorraine Ballato, took an interest in her career. Ballato opened up her personal contact list to Plimpton in order for her to contact people who might hire her as a speaker or writer, and gave her the names of garden radio show hosts who had interviewed her and might interview Plimpton. Ballato even went the extra mile and drove Plimpton to trade shows, and demonstrated how to sell a book and create an effective presentation. “Every time I get to a sticky wicket in my career, I have but to ask Lorraine, and she comes through for me,” Plimpton said.

When Susan Bender Phelps switched careers to marketing, the first company she called granted her an interview. After that initial meeting, they asked her to come back in a week and pitch them on how she would market their company. Phelps had no idea how to go about pitching a plan, so she called her friend Bob, who had volunteered at her former organization. Bob opened up his own firm’s marketing plans to her, taught her what comprised a successful proposal and discussed local market conditions and the roles of different well-known players.

Bob then introduced her to his colleague Tina, who took Phelps to a two-hour lunch and briefed her on the personalities of all the members of the firm where she would be pitching. Both she and Bob offered to be references for Phelps. Phelps got that job and went on to do marketing for several engineering firms. In three years, she helped them bring in more than fifty million dollars in construction projects, and more than 130 employees kept their jobs and saw their careers grow. “Bob and Tina remained friends and resources over the following five years. They continuously shared their networks with me, and introduced me to people and organizations that could help me,” Phelps said.

Workplace Fairy Godmothers

So where can you find such a person that will take hours out of his or her own schedule to help you in your career? Good question. Unfortunately, sponsors are hard to come by these days. A tough job market and the current competitive work climate we’re presently in doesn’t help, although sponsorships are valuable relationships for organizations. Companies who rely on an existing, overworked workforce are making the problem worse.

Mean boys and girls make more money, but it’s a short-sighted tactic. Networking and building relationships is extremely important. If you step on the wrong person in your haste to climb the ladder, that just might be the person who later becomes an important client or works at a company you want to move to. Burning bridges can have consequences.

Let’s be clear – It’s a Partnership

Sponsors put their own reputations on the line when vouching for sponsorees, but the payoff can also be significant. Sponsors put a large amount of trust in the people they help and recommend, so it’s imperative that if you are fortunate enough to be sponsored, you reciprocate by living up to that faith and working hard. However, sponsors also gain insight into the organization and look good by recognizing and promoting talented individuals, and many report feeling good about helping other employees achieve their goals. Retaining workers is becoming more and more important, especially if the economy ever bounces back and employees feel more empowered to switch jobs. Employees who had sponsors reported feeling supported and valued,  and stayed with their companies longer.

Generosity and Diversity Required

While women and men can move up on the lower rungs of the ladder, the higher level jobs are fewer and farther between, so having someone champion you for these positions helps you have an edge. The reason that men have had this advantage until now, is that men tended to sponsor other men like themselves, and with many more men in power sponsoring men, women were at a disadvantage. Several companies like American Express, Cisco, Citi, Deloitte, and Time Warner are putting formal sponsorship programs in place, and for many the first criteria is: you must sponsor someone different from you (whether by gender or race or both).

Many sponsors in the Catalyst study said that they unconsciously gravitated toward sponsoring people like themselves, but when it became a mandate to start looking at other employees with fresh eyes, they discovered a lot about colleagues they had never been in contact with before.

Previously men in power were (understandably) leery of sponsoring a younger woman inside their organization for fear of being accused of a sexual relationship. And, in some cases, women who fought their way up aren’t as willing to help other women advance, especially past their own position. Since there is such a shortage of top spots awarded to women, there can be a feeling that there isn’t enough to go around. But with the rise of women’s business groups and networking, that feeling is subsiding. Women who worked hard to climb the ladder certainly can be an infinite help to other women on their way up, but the key is for more men to advocate for women to move into higher positions.

Repeated studies have shown that having multiple women on corporate boards and in leadership positions result in a better financial performance for organizations. And to get women, women of color, and minorities into leadership positions requires sponsors and advocates who have already walked the challenging road.

image: Alvaro Canivell, mnsc, lumaxart, BinaryApe, vokakvklim and Nicholas_T via Flickr cc (some rights reserved)

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Ten women who are role models for perseverance, courage, creativity and leadership.

We live in a time where there are many women who are achieving amazing goals and impacting the lives of women and girls around the world. Here are 10 who have impacted and inspired more than they can count.

Judy Blume
She scandalized parents with Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret and other forthright novels about teenage sexuality. For teenagers in the 1970s, Blume’s books were a validation of all that young women felt and questioned. Girls could instantly identify with Margaret and Deenie, characters that alleviated feelings of personal alienation in a time when sex was not as openly discussed and dissected.

Madonna
Who wasn’t captivated by her Borderline video? When Madonna came out gyrating in ruffled ankle socks on the MTV scene, she was flamboyant and expressive and larger than life. She was the original Lady Gaga who pushed sexual, fashion as well as personal boundaries, and offered (to a young generation of women) freedom of expression that many ran with – neon, mini skirts, lace and all.

Oprah Winfrey
Oprah was the first woman to show us that you didn’t have to be white, thin or generically beautiful to be successful in front of the camera. Oprah’s personality, perseverance and business-savvy garnered her a multimedia empire and proved to girls and women everywhere that heart and smarts are what’s important.

Hillary Clinton
After Hillary Clinton spent eight years serving as First Lady, she went on to serve in the U.S. Senate, ran for president, and then became the U.S. Secretary of State. In no matter what capacity she was serving, the former first lady used her political platform and global presence to champion women’s rights. In 1995, she stood up at the World Conference on Women in Beijing and denounced the mistreatment of women around the world, from female infanticide, to forced abortion, to rape used as a military tactic. She famously proclaimed, “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”

JK Rowling
JK Rowling created the most well-known trio in young adult literary history and enchanted children around the globe, all the while living a real life rags-to-incredible-riches story. With the Harry Potter series, Rowling made reading a fantastic journey that no one wanted to miss so even kids that had no interest in reading were spellbound. Watching children gobble up these giant 600+ page tomes is truly amazing. From the midnight bookstore parties to unprecedented numbers of first print runs, it was a publishing phenomenon that we will probably never see again in our lifetime.

Mia Hamm
When Mia Hamm and the other players on the U.S. Women’s World Cup team came onto the scene, they made girl’s soccer popular and cool. Their World Cup triumph made the world notice female athletes. Mia Hamm posters graced millions of girl’s bedroom walls, and girls saw that sports equal teamwork, friendship and solidarity.

Sheryl Sandberg
Sheryl Sandberg is an engaging speaker and her passion for women in business is infectious. She is known for telling women to “lean in” to their careers and keep climbing the ladder, no matter what, because it is possible for women to lead and have a family. As COO of Facebook, the most popular and well-known company on the planet, we have to wonder how much higher her star can rise. Perhaps she’ll show us that the sky really isn’t the limit.

Kirsten Gillibrand
U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand replaced Hillary Clinton as the junior democratic senator for New York in 2009 – a good fit since Gillibrand also has a passion for women’s rights and leadership, and tirelessly campaigns for more women to get involved in politics. A mother of two small children, she makes balancing a family and helping to run the country look easy. She represents women in a forum where there aren’t many women’s voices or perspective, reminding those in government what challenges half the workers in the U.S. and the majority of consumer decision makers face. Gillibrand, and the small number of other women in government, show girls that women can have an impact on how our country is run.

Annie Leonard
EcoSalon just interviewed Annie Leonard a month ago, and anyone who spends twenty years trotting the globe to find out where our trash goes earns the label of saint. In her Story of Stuff videos, Leonard boils complex topics down into simple examples using straightforward language that everyone can understand. Leonard also wants people to understand how empty materialism is and how much it harms the planet and walks the talk wherever she goes.

Melissa McCarthy
Finally the best friend character – the underdog – gets the glory. For once, it’s not the glamour girl, but the girl next door who is being recognized for her talent, her humor and her hard work. McCarthy, who stars on the sitcom Mike and Molly, spent years as the Gilmore Girls sidekick and broke out recently because of her show and women-centered comedy hit, Bridesmaids. Humor and personality should always win.

image credits: NJ State Library, David Shankbone, Alan Light, Marc Nozell, Beacon Radio, Global Sports Forum, JD Lasica, Freedom to Marry, The Story of Stuff, Audi USA, Kara Allyson

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ExclusiveFollow the money – If you’re trying to understand why things happen the way they do, it’s as good a hint as you’re ever going to get. In the business investment world, where ideas are funded and smart minds turned loose, you can follow dollar trails upstream to venture capitalists and angel investors – and the values and ways of thinking that critically impact the American business landscape. What follows is the first in a series of articles examining equity investment’s relationship with businesses that have traditionally been out of its mainstream, including women-owned, green and long-term-growth-oriented.

Facts are indisputably facts. And the facts are that women make up a minute fraction of the venture capital and angel investment community, and that women entrepreneurs receive a tiny percentage of that community’s investment dollars. And while there are a lot of ways you can look at, explain or explain away these facts, one thing is certain: When you take half the population out of the give and take of this economic equation, society, the economy and yes, investors themselves, are going to lose out.

The numbers are truly staggering in a backwards-thinking kind of way. As of about two years ago, 10.1 million U.S. firms were owned by women (that’s more than half), employing more than 13 million people and generating $1.9 trillion in sales, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research. Moreover, research has shown time and again that businesses with women at the helm, or at least with significant representation at the highest levels, consistently outperform significantly male-dominated organizations.

Now put on your cognitive dissonance hat and get this: According to Babson College research, only about 5 percent of all equity capital investments in the country go to businesses headed by women and just 3 percent get investments from venture capital.

While we do seem to live in era where working (and voting) against one’s own interest is as much of a rule and as an exception, investment communities have always done a pretty good job of watching (or at least scratching) their own backs.  So why are they shooting themselves and all the rest of us, while they’re at it, in the wallet?

Sharon Vosmek is the CEO of Astia. Founded in 1999 in Silicon Valley, the group is a not-for-profit organization that connects female entrepreneurs to investors, industry leaders, advisors and service providers. Despite Astia’s commitment to women, Vosmek points out that the role of the VC isn’t necessarily to support female entrepreneurs in the first place.

“I don’t see this as the work of VCs,” she says. “Their job is to make investments that return the best IRR [internal rate of return] to their LPs [limited partners].”

That said, however, she points out the business case for making such investments a priority: “What we know … is that companies that have women in executive leadership, outperform those that do not. Therefore, what we expect to see is a greater number and percentage of investments going into companies with women in those roles. Not because they need support, but because they outperform the market.”

So the question is begged: Why would a profit-oriented capital investment industry ignore such data? Is it about male bias against women? After all, 95 percent of VCs and 85 percent of angels are men.

Vosmek says there’s a problem with such a straightforward explanation: There just isn’t enough data to support the claim. Beyond the anecdotal, there’s just no information from “the inside” that shows a systemic anti-female approach to investment.

Fear, Not Loathing

There is, however, clear data about the power and impact of hidden bias and the fear of “the other” in the business world. The Level Playing Field Institute defines hidden biases as “perceptions, preferences, stereotyping of individuals or groups that often occur at the subconscious level… they may adversely impact our judgments and interactions with others and result in unfair behaviors. They become established and systemic in organizations and distort the playing field by conferring advantage for some and disadvantage for others.”

In a largely homogeneous world such as the VC and angel community and especially one dedicated to mitigating perceived risk though working with “known” quantities, the impact of this bias is bound to play itself out. So, in the end, what we might be seeing is less of a male versus female issue as much as one of same-sex cronyism and our preference for what Vosmek calls “all things like ourselves.”

“In our society, men and women are still by-and-large in separate business networks,” she explains. “VC and angel investment relies heavily on trusted business relationships; often for early stage investors, the only risk that can be mitigated is that of the individuals involved and if they are known to the investor. Trusted business relationships are always going to win in this scenario.

“You can see how within the high-growth space, groups who are not naturally in each others’ networks, will suffer as a result. Entrepreneurs will suffer because they will lack access to capital. Investors will suffer because they will lack access to the full complement of deals. [But] this is a societal issue, not one of VC or angel [investors], per se.”

Girl vs. Boy

There are some who, while agreeing with impact of the preference for same (or fear of other), say there are other forces impacting how women are perceived and behave as both entrepreneurs and business risk-takers. And some see it more simply than others.

Writes three-time start-upper, Brazen Careerist CEO and even brazener stereotyper Penelope Trunk in TechCrunch under the headline “Women Don’t Want To Run Startups Because They’d Rather Have Children”: “… you could tell that story [why women don’t get funding for startups] on one page: Startups move at break-neck pace, under a lot of pressure to succeed bigger and faster than any normal company. And women don’t want to give up their personal life in exchange for the chance to be the next Google. Or even the next Feedburner. Which is why the number of women who pitch is so small, and, therefore, the number of women who get funding is small.”

A more nuanced take, perhaps, comes from Cyan Banister, who is an investor, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Zivity, an artist/fan interaction platform that features comedy, music, animation and nude performance art. She has been named by Fast Company as one of the “The Most Influential Women in Web 2.0,” and is no stranger to the Silicon Valley investment scene and the fabled investment offices of Sand Hill Road. While her focus is primarily on the tech sector, she’s not afraid to make some broad brush strokes when looking at women in the entrepreneurial business world.

Banister agrees with Vosmek that “networking is largely at play” in the misfire between venture and angel investors and women entrepreneurs, but does say that gender differences are indeed another important element to consider: “In a world where taking risks is key,” she says, “women are more risk averse then men.”

This she attributes to “wiring” that goes back to our most ancient ancestors.

“People forget we’re animals,” she says. “We [women] are built to protect and nurture families while men play the role of risking their lives to bring back food. Just go to any poker room in a casino. How many women do you see? I’m not saying this is the case across the board, but men are largely more ready to assume risk than women.”

Banister acknowledges that these views may be controversial, but insists that they’re critical in understanding the dynamic behind why there are so few women investors and notable Google and Facebook-like stories involving female founders.

“When it comes to both playing the role of investor and that of the business person seeking investment, men and women are different,” she says. “Male investors traditionally seek big pay-off opportunities while women, me included, focus on slow growth over time. My husband [prominent investor and entrepreneur Scott Banister] is always looking for a 20-times return, while I look for two- or three- times return over time. I’m seldom wrong and he’s wrong a lot – but when he’s right, he’s right big-time.”

It’s true, of course, that “there are several prominent women who have launched their own startups and received VC funding  including Amanda Steinberg of DailyWorth,  Rashmi Sinah, co-founder of SlideShare, Robin Chase, founder of ZipCar, Caterina Fake who co-founded Flickr and spearheaded Hunch.com,” points out Meghan Casserly in Forbes.  But if Banister is right about these proclivities, it’s easy to see how a community populated by men is investing in men, and how those investees are making more noise than women when it comes to media-hypeable stories.  Banister, who says that women bring to bear their own brand of profit-making value to the workplace, notes “there are hundreds of female success stories – you just don’t hear about a female Mark Zuckerberg.”

Stepping Up and In

High-risk or not, are women showing up to seek investment in the first place? Babson College research points out that “women appear more reluctant to apply for loans – more than 10 percent of men seek external equity financing, but less than two percent of women do the same.

“It is my opinion that this has to do with exposure to the opportunity of raising venture capital – and it is not unique to women,” says Vosmek. “The reality is that for most people, if you do not have role models who have gone before you, you are less likely to pursue an opportunity. We need more female high-growth role models.”

She adds that women are not pursuing high-growth entrepreneurship commensurate with their representation in fields that should lead to high-growth entrepreneurship. Women, Vosmek says, represent 30 percent of MBAs, 50.4 percent of PhDs, and over half of all college graduates.

The very-visible-these-days Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recently gave a talk at TED where she addressed this issue. “Women systematically underestimate their own abilities,” she said, adding that studies show that women don’t negotiate on their own behalf. Moreover, “Men attribute their success to themselves and women attribute it to other external factors. If you ask men why they did a good job they’ll say, ‘Because I’m awesome.’ … If you ask women, what they’ll say is that someone helped them, they got lucky [or] they worked really hard… It matters a lot, because no one gets to the corner office by sitting on the side, not at the table.”

Both visibility (like that of Sandberg, Banister, Trunk and others like them) and encouragement can be enhanced, says Vosmek, by groups such as her own Astia, as well as others like Women 2.0, Golden Seeds and Girls in Tech.

“These organizations work to expose and inspire women to high-growth entrepreneurship – and then once they get there, ensure they succeed by giving them access to the networks that lead to capital and expertise,” she says, adding that groups like the OpEd Project, which are set up to address the dearth of female voices in the media, can also play a positive role.

A Note on Ethics

The bottom line here is that there’s a prominent convergence between ethics and values, and plain old good business sense when it comes to investing in women. This is quite notable, as it’s not always the case that doing the right thing means doing the profitable thing (though the point might be argued that in the long run this is always the sustainable case).

Says Vosmek: “I think the best investors clearly articulate their values and entrepreneurs would be wise to make sure they choose investors whose values align with their own. I believe that a commitment to building inclusive teams is a value that also happens to be smart business.”

Indeed, both Vosmek and Banister present as extremely smart businesspeople as much as they do female role models. For both, the issue isn’t so much about sexism as it is about the missed value proposition of bringing women to bear on profit-making.

There’s also a tragedy here that transcends opinions regarding the “why” of the situation. Consider our job-strapped society and try this on (also from Babson College): In the United States, “Women are starting businesses at nearly twice the rate of men – if these women entrepreneurs started with the same capital as men, they would add 6 million jobs to the economy in 5 years.”

“For those of us seeking a jobs recovery – there you have it,” says Vosmek. “Solving this could be the competitive advantage the U.S. seeks.”

Image: kevindooley

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