Issue link: https://industrialmanagement.epubxp.com/i/656209
march/april 2016 25 truly can do it all. The truth is that everybody, women or men, has limits, and everybody makes choices along the path to success. The 10th tip, "Let's start talking about it," is a call to openly discuss sexism in the workplace. Sandberg's 11th and final suggestion is a call to all women, nonworking mothers along with working mothers, to work together toward equality. True equality requires collaboration among men and women, those working outside of the home and those working inside the home. It requires that all be engaged in working together toward the common goal of equality at work, which will open up a greater number of career and life options to all groups. Valerio's recommendations. Likewise, organizations can do a lot to assist with women's career progress. In What Companies Need to Develop Women Leaders, Anna Marie Valerio suggested that the top leadership team needs to commit to diversity and to commu- nicate this commitment to the entire organization. In addition, companies can seek to find seats for women on boards (both their own boards as well as recommending women to sit on the board of directors of other companies). She called for organizations to make a commitment to hiring the best-qualified candidates by broadening the search to include gender-diverse nominations. In addition, organizations need to allocate resources for leadership development initiatives for all groups of employees. To address the underinvestment in social capital, companies can develop women's networks, encourage mentoring and provide opportunities for mentoring relationships to develop through both formal and informal mentoring programs. Valerio also recommended that women's career progress can be enhanced through the provision of external coaches for high-potential women so that they gain valuable feedback to assist in their leadership development, by ensuring that coveted assignments are distributed equitably throughout the organization, holding The evaluators penalized a female candidate more than a male candidate for initiating negotiations for more money. decision-makers accountable and by providing external development programs that provide learning experi- ences not available within the organi- zation. Developmental opportunities also can come through international programs where men and women can work overseas for three- to six-month periods to learn and develop as leaders with less disruption to their personal lives than longer periods abroad. Access to workplace advancement also can come with greater work flexibility, such as flextime, telecommuting, reduced/ compressed hours and job sharing. In short, career progress comes when organizations commit to valuing diversity at all levels of the hierarchy and when they have policies and practices that support this commitment. Experiments by Bowles, Babcock and Lai. What can be done in the greater social environment to assist with women's career progress? One of the themes of inequality surrounds conscious and unconscious beliefs we may hold about women at work. While prejudice against women may appear to be a thing of the past, there is evidence of bias that works against women. In a series of experiments designed to explore gender differences in initiating negotiations for higher compensation, Hannah R. Bowles, Linda Babcock and Lei Lai concluded that in the case of women, "Sometimes it does hurt to ask." The four experiments, reported in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, examined the differ- ential impact for men and women of initiating negotiations. In the first experiment, 119 university students (66 men and 53 women) evaluated a job candidate based on a resumé and interview notes. The interview notes indicated whether the candidate was male or female and whether the candidate had attempted to negotiate for extra compensation and job benefits. They found that the evalu- ators penalized a female candidate more than a male candidate for initiating negotiations for more money. In experiment two, 299 adults with a college education (152 men and 147 women) were recruited by a market research firm to participate in an online survey. Participants were asked to imagine that they were senior managers in an organization and they were to evaluate an internal candidate who had graduated from a top school and performed well in training for a management position in the department. The candidate needed to be a team player and work well with other people. This experiment revealed a higher social cost for women who attempted to negotiate higher compensation. Evaluators indicated that they were less willing to work with a female candidate who attempted to negotiate, but there was no decline in willingness to work with a male candidate who negotiated for higher compensation. Experiment three involved 285 adults (107 men and 178 women) who watched a short video of an interview before answering questions about the interviewee. They found that when the evaluator was male, trying to negotiate for higher compensation had no effect on men's willingness to work with men but a significantly negative effect on men's willingness to work with women. The fourth experiment in the series involved 367 adult participants (184 men and 183 women) who were asked to review a job interview scenario and respond to questions about how they would prepare for the interview. This experiment showed that female partici- pants were more reluctant to attempt to negotiate for higher compensation when the evaluator was male, but they were as inclined as men to attempt to negotiate for higher compensation when the evaluator was female. Female participants indicated a higher degree of nervousness around initiating a negoti- ation with a male evaluator. These experiments show that there are a complex set of beliefs and behaviors, both self-directed and other- directed, that work against women in the workplace.