Archive for 'Culture'

Mademoiselle, Non. Ms, Yes

The days of Mademoiselle are over.

At the beginning of January the French town Cesson-Sévigné banned the use of ‘Mademoiselle’ in official documents. Residents only have a choice of Madame or Monsieur and women are no longer defined by their marital status. There is a wider campaign to ban Mademoiselle all over France.

Reading about this I learned that Germany officially banned the use of Fräulein in 1972. When I first went to Germany for a work experience placement at the age of 17 I was surprised to be addressed as Frau but I was more concerned that the Schwäbisch dialect everyone spoke bore no resemblance to the German I’d learned at school.

I later worked in Germany for a decade and appreciated that I wasn’t pigeon-holed by my marital status. Frau didn’t always translate well. Airlines insisted on calling me Mrs and colleagues at my English-speaking workplace would occasionally address me as Mrs Foden. I momentarily wondered why they were emailing my dead grandmother.

Why do you need to ask?

According to the BBC report of Cesson-Sévigné’s decision, Miss and Mrs are used less frequently than their French equivalents. This is not my experience since moving back to the UK. I am always being asked by officialdom and customer services, “Is it Miss or Mrs?”

I’m always tempted to reply, “None of your business,” but I manage a more tactful, “It’s Ms.”

This is often greeted with raised eyebrows. There seems to be a lot of judgement when I insist on Ms. Am I being seen as a bitter divorcée? A miserable singleton? A (gasp!) feminist?

When there is no Ms option on forms I entertain the idea of promoting myself to Dr but I’m scared I’ll be asked to perform an emergency tracheotomy on a plane.

Surely in the 21^st century it’s time we followed the townsfolk of Cesson-Sévigné and the Germans and stuck to just Ms or Mr? Apart from the inherent sexism of Mrs and Miss, the latter also infantilises women. When I hear or see Miss I think of Little Miss Muffet sitting on her tuffet.

So call me Ms, please. At least until I become a Dame.

Anna Foden is a freelance journalist. You can connect with her on twitter @anna_foden or LinkedIn.

How George Clooney gave me indigestion

I went to see The Ides of March last night, the new movie directed, co-scripted and starring the ever easy on the eye, with of course his hallmark Nespresso smooth voice, George Clooney.  Supported by a stellar cast of Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood and Maria Tomei, it seemed full of promise.

Despite covering a rather hackneyed theme,  the movie still manages to be a successfully suspenseful drama,  with all the intrigue and back stabbing that the title alone would suggest.  The Ides of March,  is the date associated  with the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C , stabbed (23 times) in the Roman Senate by a group of conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, with (according to Plutarch) 60 other co-conspirators.

So grateful was I to see an intelligent and engaging drama, with tension levels created without mass bloody carnage and a profusion of foul-mouthed expletives, I left the theatre feeling that many of my movie boxes had been ticked. It was only as I was driving home that I reflected more thoroughly. Sort of like thinking you’ve just enjoyed a good dinner and then slowly getting indigestion.

The plot, set against the Presidential primaries in Ohio,charts the journey to disillusionment of Stephen Meyers (Gosling), chief assistant to Democratic candidate, Mike Morris’s (Clooney) campaign director, Paul Zara (Hoffman). Starting as a liberal idealist,  he transitions to hardnosed cut throat deal maker, as he responds to events unfolding around him, where no belief is sacred if it interferes with the achievement of the end goal.  The twists and turns to the storyline are provided by the usual doses of sexual exploitation, bribery and blackmail, which one has come to expect in any movie about politics, anywhere in the world , but still seem relatively fresh in Cooney’s capable directional hands.

So where does the indigestion kick in?

Despite there being many strong women in American politics today, the female roles in the movies are sadly disappointing.  True,  Tomei plays a tough journo who foreshadows the eventual selling out of principles, very early on in the movie.  The other two characters are played to stereotype: adoring wife (played by Jennifer Ehle) in a support role seen literally in the wings and snuggling up on the back seat of a limo (not a Hillary type therefore.) The second, a sexually precocious intern (Molly, played by Wood, a Monica type)  provides photocopying and other support “services” and eventually becomes pivotal to the denouement of all the characters.  As the protagonists scramble to protect their careers and ambitions, they descend into the murky pool of compromise and the jettisoning of principles, where the end comes to justify the means.

Strong performances are delivered in an understated way by all,  although Gosling is more convincing as the slick, back-protecting, deal-maker Meyers, than the gullible hero-worshipping idealist. The character of the predatory 20 year old intern is also not totally credible as a “victim” who would act so extremely,  although that has nothing to do with Wood’s performance. Hoffman and Giametti are superb as the jaded spin doctors, cynically calculating the odds. Clooney – just seems to play himself!

Why this one?

Why pick out this movie as one which doesn’t make any effort to protray any sort of gender balance or even  show politics as it is? There are hundreds of other films you are going to say and you would be right.  Much screen time is given to the liberal break- through policies of Morris et al (presumably reflecting many of Clooney’s  views ) while his own political machine runs true to conservative, gender based stereotypes. It was simply because I expected better from the man billed as Hollywood’s critical, liberal ambassador George Clooney. The last scene of the movie shows another young female intern serving coffee and flirting with a male campaign manager. Are there no male interns, flawed women politicians or campaign managers to be found in Ohio or surrounding areas?

The subliminal message is one of our times:  no lessons learned and business and usual.

Spain and the Brain Drain

Opportunities for Spanish youth

In the early 2000s a study was carried out in the Political Science and Sociology Faculty of the Universidad Complutense in Madrid. They found that 5 years after graduation 60% of graduates worked on temporary contracts. They were, of course, privileged, as over 90% of new contracts signed every year were temporary. The other aspect of this situation is what we call “mileurismo” – university graduates who never get to earn more than 1000€ to 1500€. Why is that?

Martin Varsavsky has explained it well. In an international networked society the companies and jobs that create most value are those at the hubs. Spain is only a second degree hub at best. There are few Spanish multinationals, and even fewer who are global players (9 in the Global 500). And those few highly successful global companies benefit from a labour market where an engineer graduate will earn 16000€ in her or his first few years. The economic crisis has meant the situation has deteriorated even further, with youth unemployment reaching over 40%. Is it a wonder that Spanish graduates who speak English are choosing to go abroad to kick-start or further their careers?

What about women specifically ?

Spain is deeply Mediterranean in many of its values and tendencies. The family is a cornerstone of society in a way that is hardly understandable in Northern Europe and the English-speaking world. The welfare state is based on the idea that the family will provide first and the state will only intervene when it is insufficient. We call this phenomenon “familism”. It means that women in Spain face the burden of caring for children, the elderly and acting as the glue that keeps family together. The extended family, with a pyramid power structure and communitarian values, remains very important and women’s responsibilities extend to include it. Companies also expect extended working hours from all workers – usually 9 to 7 – and part-time work is much lower than in the rest of the EU.  The superwoman is far from dead in Spain. But younger women are wising up. Those who are highly qualified and who speak English and other languages are fleeing the country in droves. It is not just the economy, work prospects and conditions, but also stifling family and social expectations.

One cannot help but wonder – who will be left to continue social change and to use feminine values to get the country out of the recession? The sad reality is that it will be those who cannot leave due to their situation, obligations, or simply because they only speak Spanish, as well as the few who are part of the elite. In other words, those who stay are those less able to help the country move forward. The brain drain affecting many Third World countries is now fully-fledged in Spain.

Victoria Rosa Sturley is a Learning and Development Consultant passionate about diversity, learning and talent. She studied Sociology in Spain and Gender Studies in the UK. Originally from Madrid, Spain, she currently lives in London. Follow her on twitter: @VictoriaSturley

Gender at the crossroads

Numbers fatigue

Yes, I’m getting tired of the constant drop of statistics showing that we are far from gender equality in the workplace. I have to confess that I don’t pay attention to them anymore. We invest much time and effort to obsessively measure female representation again and again but results are basically telling the same story. I have to admit though that the latest trend of showing how many years it will take to achieve gender equality at the current pace is a good one: 50 years in the European Union. This helps to visualize the gap but it is clearly optimistic as it assumes the current progress rate is sustainable. We have historical series showing that in some countries numbers can fall back and we also have new evidence that women even in emerging markets women are turning their eyes towards alternative careers, like public sector jobs. Progress is not a given.

Solved mysteries

I move from fatigue to smile when it comes to those well intentioned people who wonder why we don’t have more women at the top, as it there was something magical going on, a hard mystery to be solved. Well… we have more research than ever regarding women in the workplace. We have meta-analysis showing pervasive leadership stereotypes, we know the impact of motherhood and even how many kids does it take to derail a career, and of course we also know everything about women’s psyche and all that stuff about their internal barriers, the bad mother complex and so on. We now have an answer to every mystery and yet we lack the actions to change reality.

Reframing

Maybe it is time to rethink our strategies. The real challenge of our time is economic growth and performance. Current focus of business is to reinvent itself and survive the recession but gender equality and economic reinvention shouldn’t be seen as separate issues. They are indeed the same issue. Any sustainable solution to our current crisis has to come from a different model, and a different leadership. Recovering trust in the system is essential and data show that women are well positioned to be part of the solution in public eyes.

It is true that we all have some sort of gender fatigue and that’s natural because clearly it is no longer about women who don’t fit in the corporate world. It is becoming humans in general who don’t fit. We don’t fit with the current schedules and workloads as it is shown by the increasing number of working fathers who struggle to balance it all and we don’t fit with the current lack of meaningful jobs which is decreasing engagement levels to a minimum. Definitely is no longer about female representation but economic and society reinvention, and we’d better be all part of the solution.

by Uxio Malvido

Uxio  was born in Spain and lives in Paris. He is currently in charge of Diversity and Inclusion for Europe Canada in a Pharmaceuticals company. He has education in Psychology and Chemistry and has developed his career as a Change Management consultant and Human Resources professional. He is interested in the intersection of Talent Management and Corporate Responsibility strategies. Twitter: @UxioMalvido Blog: Diversidad Corporativa (Spanish) / Corporate Diversity (English)

 

Beat graduate unemployment! Head to China

I recently left Britain to try my luck in China, knowing that my homeland will only benefit from having one unemployed graduate fewer. Three weeks ago, I came to Jinan, a city of 5million about 200 miles south of Beijing, to begin a teaching job. Before moving here, I was told by one expat that, “You cannot describe the Chinese way of doing business. You can only experience it.” It has certainly been an experience.

We Need Most of You

I work at a privately-owned chain of language schools, all run by a single manager. Companies here are very hierarchical: there are strict divisions between the staff and the management, and between the Chinese and foreign employees. Good manners are considered hugely important. There are days when I feel physically drained by the effort of being polite to so many people. My boss is very friendly, but there is no doubt that the business is his own personal fiefdom. At the first meeting of the semester, he gave a short speech about the code of conduct, ending with a rather downbeat pep talk for the teachers: ‘I hope you will be very happy here, because we need all of you…well, most of you’.

The Head of the Table

It was probably an empty threat, but in theory he has the power to withdraw all our work permits and force us out of the country. However, he seems quite fond of me, and refers to me as ‘beautiful Alice’ when introducing me to colleagues. He doesn’t mean anything inappropriate by it, but it makes me feel as if I have failed some sort of feminist initiative test. At work dinners, which are common and quite formal, I am summoned (not invited) to sit near him at the head of the table – a sort of decorative prop, as the youngest white woman on the team. I believe it is considered an honour.

Guanxi

The success of a Chinese business depends on the owner’s guanxi (pronounced gwan-see), a term which could be loosely translated as ‘connections’. It’s perhaps best described as a mild form of corruption: backscratching rather than bribery. It’s about having friends in high places, and treating them to expensive meals until they owe you a favour: my boss seems to have quite a talent for it. Guanxi is the mysterious voodoo by which the entire Chinese bureaucracy is powered. Foreigners in China know it exists, but we can’t accurately judge its strength. The guanxi is exercised on our behalf by our employers, and so the exact workings of it remain a mystery. If a visa application comes through unusually quickly, we believe it is thanks to the guanxi of our new boss; if an application is delayed, it may be due to a hex laid by a disgruntled former employer. The most useful thing I have learned during my three-week crash course in in local labour relations: the guanxi can be thanked or blamed for anything which happens.

by Alice Bell

How women are smart, funny and witty!

Stand up and be counted

I recently did my maiden stand up comedy gig.  The world of comedy is a difficult world for women since a lot of men still believe that women can’t be funny. Watch the Christopher Hitchens YouTube video on this subject! The women of my world have always been smart, funny and witty.

Don’t save the best till last

The men in my life have a word budget -somewhere around 1000 words a day. After that it doesn’t matter what you say they will swear you never said that. That’s why they never know about your mother’s birthday party, or take the rubbish out.

Women tend to use words like sonar – using sound to let people know we’re there. We often all talk at once and nobody takes offense.  It’s more of a ‘ping’ are you there ‘ping’ I am here.

• I once had a male client who told me “I hope we are paying you by the hour and not by the word, since we couldn’t possibly afford you”.

Men have traditionally told set piece jokes and dominated comedy. They hold the floor and everyone else listens. There is a format and everyone knows when to laugh even if the joke is not funny. It’s a bit like a board room really – there are set pieces and rituals and expected ways of doing things.

Women can be really funny but we tend to be less structured. That works fine when we are having a laugh with our friends, but not so well if we want to do stand up comedy.

You have to:

• signal it
• say it
• pause let them appreciate it
• then move on

The same is true when managing men.  I have worked with women who could not get them to do what they wanted and it turned out the instructions they gave were always after the word budget was exceeded.

Speak truth to power

Down through the ages men have despised ‘feminine chatter’.  I suspect it is because they zone out once their word budget is reached.  In my house that can be less than an hour after breakfast!

So, should we have some simple one liners about our success ready to fire at colleagues at appropriate moments?

Should we have little three minute slots for socialising with business colleagues who don’t really know us that give a hook line into the successes we want to be known for?

Should we use the silence to grow in power rather than fill it up with ‘pings’?

Last laugh?

It was a really great experience to watch my fellow comedy virgins go through a process.  The women who felt they had nothing to say about themselves or their lives slowly changed into women with a message and a focus along with a big increase in confidence for some.

I may have got the comedy bug – it was such fun working with these wonderful women. Wouldn’t it be nice if we women had the last laugh? Who’s with me?

by Annabel Kaye

Annabel Kaye is co-founder of and Director of Irenicon, a specialist employment law and HR consultancy dealing with the dark side of HR. She did her comedy challenge with Funny Women. She is a member of Sister Snog. She has a blog and writes for the Financial Mail Women’s Forum on “Balancing the Bump”. She loves to dance argentine tango or Savoy swing. She can be found on Twitter and LinkedIn 

Are Expats More Resilient?

“Resilience” is the positive capacity of people to  survive and “bounce back” after failures and adversity. I think it is a pretty complex topic. In addition, what makes you thrive and happy, may be stressful for somebody else. However, no matter what the nature of the stress, resilience can be developed by learning adaptive coping strategies.

I am just now in the middle of move #12, going back to New Jersey, USA, after two years in Brussels, Belgium. The fact that I have been a serial expat for 20 years, between Europe, Japan and USA does not make the packing and the administrative work easier but psychologically, I feel more confident to ride the emotional roller coaster or “culture shock” most people experience when moving to an unknown city. By living and working abroad I got exposed to a wide range of unusual stressful experiences, sometimes even life-threatening, allowing me to develop specific coping strategies.

The impact of external changes on individuals such as moving to a new country, facing unemployment, switching to a new career can create stress, fear, anger, depression, feeling like a victim, confusion, decrease in performance, ineffective problem solving or poor decision making.

Are long term expats better equipped to adapt to economic turmoil, disruptions, changes, transitions and stress ?

Coping skills are very personal and usually developed by way of past experiences, which is why long term expats who have gone through many transitions develop healthy habits that add to their resilience.

What are the Key Characteristics of Resilient people?

• Ability to “bounce back” and “recover from almost anything”
• Tendency to see problems as opportunities
• Deep-rooted faith in a system of meaning
• Healthy social support network
• Being helpful in their communities
• Are prepared for the worst
• Have a balanced life
• Are confident and develop strengths to take new challenges
• Able to recover from experiences in the panic or trauma zone

How To Develop Resilience ?

1-Awareness : Identify your hot buttons. Who are toxic people in your life? What stresses you, under what circumstances and what are your emotional responses? Do you have negative self-talk? What coping strategies do you use? What activities give meaning to your life? What positive emotions do you experience when you do something your really love?

2-Be in Control: When things go out of your control, focus on part of you life you can control, such as changing your perception and perspective, exercising, journaling, talking with friends, stopping the blame game.

3-Create a support network: Deepen your relationships with people in your network, share a hobby with friends, help other people, write a blog, create your support group, use social networks.

Conclusion: Resilience grows from overcoming setbacks. It is a mind-set that induces positive attitudes and behaviors, thereby enlarging your vision of your life.

Anne Egros is a serial expat  and holistic coach who has moved 11 times around the globe working at management levels for various industries . After a 20-year international career in Fortune 500 Companies in USA , Japan and Europe, Anne has a deep knowledge of business management.

4 women, 4 continents, 1 man, 1 tweet

Foreword by Dorothy: One of the lessons I’ve learned from social media is to let go a lot of things that raise the proverbial eyebrows. Truthfully, there’s a lot of nonsense out there. However when a tweet from Grant Mason floated into my stream suggesting “MBA’s are done by blokes in their 30s and 40′s while women are doing career and mothering”  my eyebrows remained up. I felt that it would be absolutely negligent not to comment. I was soon joined by Lynne Barbour in South Africa, Kathy Korman Frey in the US and Cheyanne Ainsworth in Australia. 4 women, on 4 Continents, the topic all covered in guess – probably 4 minutes. The poor chap didn’t stand a chance!  The exchange was constructive, educational and supportive. Grant very graciously conceded that he had things to think about. He thought. He wrote… and dedicated the post to the 4 of us. The lesson? Confront one stereotypical thought at a time. Thank YOU Grant!

Hot mommas – from Grant Mason

I don’t normally stay up late tweeting hot mommas but the other night I did. It started with a typical male comment to a tweet about why there are less women MBAs. It was a warm exchange and included a great comment by @DorothyDalton that more than 3 women at any level changes the dynamic. With encouragement from @ChiefHotMomma and @lynnbarbour I started to think about the rise of women’s networks and social business. I think the two forces are ready to converge.

The next decade is a decade of social. The capability that organizations build in the next number of years will be the cultural infrastructure for the next phase of commerce and organizational development. Infrastructure in companies will not be about concrete or buildings or servers but about culture and capability of people.

With that in mind there is an untapped potential in organizations. Potential evolving from a strong vision and immense dedication that will soon transfer wonderfully into business success in the next decade. The Women’s Network.

For some the Women’s network began as a not so secret club that the male dominated workforce gave a cynical wink at. Imagining a work style Tupperware party where women plotted against the glass ceiling at times made it hard to gather the momentum and credibility needed to go mainstream. In spite of this core skills and capability have been developed that will be critical for the social business era. Consider:

1. The ability to reach out cross boundaries. Inside and outside of the organization. Women’s networks are great at this and have set a new standard of connecting across the silos.
2. Focusing on non technical development. The skills that women’s networks build are non technical. Typically the focus is on building influence, resilience and leadership not how to do a narrow technical job. These skills are fundamental to the fast changing world we are facing.
3. The ability to engage with senior leaders. Many organizations have taken seriously the development of women. While there is a long way to go, women in male dominated industries often have great exposure to senior leaders. The ability to relate and influence senior leaders is often intuitive in women. In an era where leadership will be more about influence than control this capability will also be important.

Social business will define the next decade. Leaders who can network across traditional boundaries, develop leadership in people, and influence others will be the leaders who succeed.

By Grant Mason founder of Yackstar

Book Groups: A female preserve?

Reading and gender stereotyping

I’ve always been an avid reader and have also been book club member for over 20 years. The statistics for this explosion are hard to pin down, but apparently there are over 50,000 book groups in the UK and 500,000 in the US. Book clubs are now so popular,  that celebrity endorsements by Oprah or Richard and Judy can propel even obscure titles into the best selling orbit. Many book sellers such as Amazon, even issue book club lists and  guideline questions.

I confess to being  able to devour the latest best seller as enthusiastically as the most highly regarded and critically acclaimed opus. So not unsurprisingly, the first group I joined  when I lived in Luxembourg  was called “ Books & Booze,” with perhaps not the right level of  literary focus as one might imagine, after a couple of glasses of the local Riesling. When I’m in Spain I’m a member of another appropriately named group,  “Books on the Beach.”  This is also  a relaxed affair, as titles, stained with various sunscreen factors  are passed amongst  a rather flexible membership,  which ebbs and flows according to different travel schedules of the group.  A few of us even tried to set one up via Twitter, but we were sadly let down by an erratic Skype connection.  Sixteen years ago when I move to Brussels I joined a book club and am still a member.

A female phenomenon?

One thing that has struck me, especially after talking to my friends,  is that these clubs seem to be a peculiarly female phenomenon, with the very occasional, perhaps brave, male stalwarts as members. When I explained to my son what a book group does, he looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.  Whether this is because girls are more advanced early readers than boys and this trend perpetuates into adulthood, I can’t say.  The group I’m in actually reads the books (many don’t I’m reliably informed),  although we did dispatch the latest translation of  Beowulf, which has dedicated university courses, in a mere two hours. Being in such a group obliges me to persevere with titles and authors that I may well have ignored or given up. As a multi- national group it’s great to hear the input of people from different cultures and backgrounds.  In short it stretches me and my thinking which is  always greatly appreciated and needed.

Women and fiction

So why are  book groups associated, somewhat derisively with women of a certain age reading  chic lit and Jane Austen?   The battering of  Jane Austen started with Mark Twain ” Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it” and  she continues  even today, to be caught in the crossfire of the sexes in literature, perpetuated  recently by V.S. Naipaul, who suggested that women writers are inferior to men. This is such an outrageously arrogant and ignorant statement that I’m not even going to waste time putting up a case. I will leave that to others! Happily,  we all know that there are many excellent women authors – Jennifer Egan, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, has also  just won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her book “A Visit from the Goon Squad.” I will be recommending this to my group for its next read.

Title choice

In my group,  title choice is eclectic, driven by font size and the number of pages, as we become older and busier, rather than by gender. Research suggests that women apparently read more than men with a preference for  fiction, while men  seemingly prefer non fiction. Based on anecdotal personal experience, I think that sounds about right and my group does indeed tends to veer towards fiction, simply because I personally read so much non fiction professionally .

Male book groups

However, I was delighted to read in the Telegraph that book clubs are now becoming increasingly popular with men. Perhaps we are seeing the reversal of another gender bias. Jason Pinter suggests  in the Huffington Post that publishing houses’ editorial committees, “overpopulated by women,” believe that ” men don’t read.” This leaves the male reader “alienated and out out in the cold with little title choice.” Whether that’s true, or whether men simply prefer to do other things it’s hard to tell.

I am happy, however, when any situation associated with gender stereotyping is being examined!

So who else is in a book group? What titles would you recommend?

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