[Applause]
my name is Maureen Fitzgerald and I am a
recovering lawyer about ten years ago I
went to an event almost exactly like
this one
I remember the auditorium and seeing a
sea of black and gray suits and crisp
white blouses it was 200 women lawyers
and I felt like I had arrived that this
was my tribe I didn’t know that that
event would change the course of my life
but before I go on I have to come clean
although my talk today is about removing
the barriers that hold women back I was
not always interested in gender
inequality in fact I was one of those
lawyers who had her nose firmly to the
grindstone
I worked absurd hours and I didn’t care
that I wasn’t invited to the golf games
or client lunches I did what I had to do
to succeed but on that night my eyes
were opened I remember settling into my
seat and looking up at the stage and I
saw this young guy in jeans and a
t-shirt and I thought oh technical
problems
but then he began to approach the podium
and this was his first slide the seven
fatal mistakes that women make and this
young man for the next 45 minutes told
all of these women and me in the room
precisely what we were doing wrong we
were wearing the wrong clothes we were
saying the wrong things
we weren’t assertive enough we weren’t
aggressive enough and worst of all is
that we were doing a disservice to our
clients I remember going home that night
in a bit of a fog and it wasn’t until
the next morning when I woke up and I
had this aha what if women aren’t the
problem
what if the way we think about women is
the problem so I spent the next eight
years researching the topic I pursued a
doctoral degree and wrote three books on
the topic and I have to tell you I am
completely delighted to be here tonight
to tell you what I know so let me start
by stating the obvious
although women have been graduating in
equal numbers for about 20 years from
universities and colleges across North
America they remain grossly
underrepresented at the top today women
represent about 5 percent of the CEOs of
the big corporations about 20 percent of
our elected representatives and about 25
percent of the highest level academic
positions in fact of the top 1,500
organizations in the United States there
are more CEOs with the name John then
there are women but there’s also some
really good news and the good news is
this there’s a huge amount of growing
research on the benefits of women we
know that including women and full
participation of women today can
accelerate the global economy could an
increase corporate profits and can even
improve all of our standard of living
a small known fact is that during the
Icelandic financial meltdown there’s
only one financial firm that survived
and that was a firm of four women
another small known fact is that when
micro lenders lend money to women they
not only end up with more money
themselves and the women end up with
more money but so too do families and
communities
study after study has said repeatedly
that including women is not just the
right thing to do it’s the economic
thing to do so if we know the
women are so amazing why is there still
such a huge gender gap so some of you
might recall the well-over watched TED
talk by Sheryl Sandberg the CEO of
Facebook she’ll start Sandberg not only
did a TED talk but she also followed it
up by a best-selling book called lean in
and in that book she did an amazing job
of describing all of the barriers or
many of the barriers that held women
back for everything from subtle
discrimination to sexual harassment but
Sheryl did something very interesting
instead of focusing on those barriers
she decided to focus on women and so her
message initially at least was raise
your hands more sit at the table be more
courageous and although these are
probably very good pieces of advice for
individual women there’s a couple of
problems with this focus on women the
first is that it places the full burden
of the change on women we expect women
to attend courses read more books and
work even harder to bridge the gender
gap the second is that those women who
act just a bit too assertive end up
suffering a backlash these subtle
penalties for asking acting acting for
acting in a way that’s just a bit too
masculine and the third problem is a
crisis of confidence that I actually
personally suffered after 10 years of
law practice it should come as no
surprise after wearing black stiff grey
suits gray gray and black suits wearing
ugly black shoes and even blow-drying my
hair straight for 10 years that I didn’t
know who I was and it’s no surprise that
I suffered from the so-called
imposter syndrome
but the biggest problem of all of urging
women to lean in and focusing
exclusively in on women is this every
single one of you who’s not a woman
climbing the corporate ladder gets off
the hook and not only that but we can
comfortably ignore all of the research
that points to very specific barriers
that continue to hold women back so let
me tell you a story a little while ago
our father and his son were in a car
accident
and the father walked away but the son
was badly injured so he called an
ambulance drove the son to the hospital
and the son was being wheeled into the
surgery when the surgeon came in and
looked at the boy and said I can’t
operate on that boy he’s my son so the
question for you is who is the surgeon
now I see a few of you scratching your
heads and I want to tell you this
the surgeons a mother but the reason we
don’t often see the surgeon as the
mother and it kind of messes us up is
because of this thing in our heads
called implicit bias we don’t see women
as surgeons and implicit bias is the
main cause of the gender gap today
what’s implicit bias some of you already
know it’s basically unconscious ideas in
your head that are going around and
around and some of them are really
written some of them not so good but for
women there are three particular types
of implicit bias that are deeply
troublesome the first is male preference
now you may not know this but the
research is quite clear both men and
women prefer males not only do we prefer
males but we actually prefer masculine
characteristics there’s a very
well-known research study called the
Heidi and Howard study and this is
fantastic it’s just simply a professor
deciding one day to hand out one resume
to their
her whole group of students unbeknownst
to the students she decided to put Heidi
at the top of one and Howard at the top
of the other resume and then she asked
him to give her feedback and what she
discovered is this although all the
students agreed that Heidi Heidi and
Howard had the same credentials and
confidence level they rarely selected
Heidi and what the students said is this
they didn’t like Heidi and they didn’t
trust Heidi the second type of bias that
it’s particularly troublesome for women
is called in-group favoritism now we all
know this because it just simply means
we’d like to be around people who look
and act like us there’s only one problem
and that is if all of the Corporations
all of the elected officials and all of
the top-level academic positions are
occupied by men they tend to only invite
in those men and women who look and act
like them the third barrier is what the
researchers called the maternal wall and
it’s a whole bundle of barriers but it’s
particularly bad for women it’s simply
this idea that somehow women in
childbearing ages are incompetent
they’re too sensitive
they’re too emotional they’re too caring
they’re – a lot of things we just assume
this about women but worse is that
they’re not committed to their jobs the
minute you have a child you’re less
committed to your job which ironically
is the opposite that we feel for men
because as soon as men have children we
all assume that he’s going to be more
committed to his job but what I found
interesting about this is these
particular three groups of biases have
one common root and what surprised me
when I looked at them all and step back
is something very interesting that I had
discovered or heard about for the first
time 30 years ago
I was in an economics class in
first-year University why I signed up
for economics I don’t know
and a substitute professor came in and
she said oh dear economics I don’t know
anything about economics but I want to
tell you about my most amazing pink and
blue dye for research so she said what
we did is we brought in these twenty
babies
boy and girl babies but we dressed them
at random and pink and blue diapers and
then we invited parents in to hold the
babies and then we videotaped the whole
thing and she said the most amazing
thing happened the parents held the pink
diaper babies very close to their bodies
and spoke to them and very soft tones
like isn’t she so sweet and the blue
diaper babies the big the parents held
the babies away from their bodies and
spoke them in somewhat louder tones like
oh you’re a tough guy so what’s
interesting to me is this is just five
minutes of parental implicit bias so
imagine a lifetime and then my friends
stay to me now yeah the Tinker dude took
like the diapers whatever morning
Maureen pink and blue diapers what on
earth does that have to do with the
gender gap and this is what I tell them
in our society we take a pink box and we
label it as feminine and then we squeeze
in all of our girls and women squeeze
them squeeze them cui’s them in and tell
them they have to be certain things like
nice and kind and sweet and all of these
things and many more and then we take a
blue box and we label it as masculine
and we squeeze all our men and boys into
this box and we tell me how to be tough
and aggressive and and unemotional and
many many more things and that’s not
very good but here’s the interesting
thing
in our society we take this blue box and
we elevate it we’ve raised it up and we
say this blue box meals and masculine
traits and masculine roles are more
important to our society and then we
take this pink box and we lower it down
and we say females and female roles and
feminine characteristics are less
valuable to our society and that is what
I call pink and blue bias and that is
the top root of all gender inequality in
the world and before I get to solutions
because that’s the fun part of the talk
I want to ask you this one question who
invented these boxes so there’s a number
of solutions I’m just going to tell you
about two of them the most obvious is
socialization the first thing we have to
do is get rid of the pink and blue boxes
we have to raise our children outside
the box we have to raise them in a way
where they’re truly equals then we have
to define masculine and feminine much
differently and then we have to get rid
of the stereotypes that we carry around
every single day but this is really hard
work and it’s because implicit biases
not just invisible it’s deeply imprinted
in us almost like DNA so it would take a
very long time to change those biases as
well we are all swimming in a culture
filled with media messages and TVs and
magazines that reinforce this pink and
blue bias all the time but the good news
is there’s a more emerging body of
science and it’s called designing for
equality and I just want to share a few
ideas with you around this the best
example of designing for equality is the
Boston Symphony Orchestra and what the
Boston Symphony Orchestra realized one
day is they couldn’t attract women they
didn’t know why what it was they were
doing wrong so one day they decided to
put a huge curtain between the musicians
who were being interviewed for the
orchestra and
the selection panel and before long they
had hired a huge number of women the
other one I love to talk about is with
just simply blind resumes which means
you take a resume and you just black out
the name of the person on the top so
they couldn’t be discriminated against
but I have three more I want to share
with you really quickly and that is
quotas it just simply means holding a
seat at the table for women leaving a
place open so that they can join the
second is actually my secret I think
this is the solution to gender
inequality if you if I were going to put
my money there it’s flexible work it
just simply means working anywhere
anytime but the great thing for women is
women are the ones who typically do the
housework and raise the children so when
they leave the workplace and come back
and they suffer severe penalties so
flexible work would solve that problem
very quickly and another one is
transparent pay which I think by just
disclosing what you earn we could end
the gender pay gap tomorrow not only
that but would really help us understand
why we pay certain jumps more than
others so I often think back of that
fateful night when that young man walked
across the stage and told me and 200
other women that we were doing
everything wrong in fact I’m standing
here today because of him because I
don’t want my daughters I don’t want
your daughters I don’t want any woman in
the world to feel like she’s not quite
good enough so what can you do today
number one we must stop asking women to
lean in we must instead focus on the
very real barriers identified in the
research number two we must all admit
that we are biased and challenge those
biases every single day and third men
and women if you really want an equal
society not just gender equality if you
really want that you have to come
together we have to come together step
outside of our boxes put down our
differences because we are all
casualties of our limited thing
King and the next time you get the
delight and honor and privilege to hold
a baby in your arms they whether it’s a
boy or a girl
you just simply have to say you are
amazing thank you very much
[Applause]
you
[Applause]
my name is Maureen Fitzgerald and I am a
recovering lawyer about ten years ago I
went to an event almost exactly like
this one
I remember the auditorium and seeing a
sea of black and gray suits and crisp
white blouses it was 200 women lawyers
and I felt like I had arrived that this
was my tribe I didn’t know that that
event would change the course of my life
but before I go on I have to come clean
although my talk today is about removing
the barriers that hold women back I was
not always interested in gender
inequality in fact I was one of those
lawyers who had her nose firmly to the
grindstone
I worked absurd hours and I didn’t care
that I wasn’t invited to the golf games
or client lunches I did what I had to do
to succeed but on that night my eyes
were opened I remember settling into my
seat and looking up at the stage and I
saw this young guy in jeans and a
t-shirt and I thought oh technical
problems
but then he began to approach the podium
and this was his first slide the seven
fatal mistakes that women make and this
young man for the next 45 minutes told
all of these women and me in the room
precisely what we were doing wrong we
were wearing the wrong clothes we were
saying the wrong things
we weren’t assertive enough we weren’t
aggressive enough and worst of all is
that we were doing a disservice to our
clients I remember going home that night
in a bit of a fog and it wasn’t until
the next morning when I woke up and I
had this aha what if women aren’t the
problem
what if the way we think about women is
the problem so I spent the next eight
years researching the topic I pursued a
doctoral degree and wrote three books on
the topic and I have to tell you I am
completely delighted to be here tonight
to tell you what I know so let me start
by stating the obvious
although women have been graduating in
equal numbers for about 20 years from
universities and colleges across North
America they remain grossly
underrepresented at the top today women
represent about 5 percent of the CEOs of
the big corporations about 20 percent of
our elected representatives and about 25
percent of the highest level academic
positions in fact of the top 1,500
organizations in the United States there
are more CEOs with the name John then
there are women but there’s also some
really good news and the good news is
this there’s a huge amount of growing
research on the benefits of women we
know that including women and full
participation of women today can
accelerate the global economy could an
increase corporate profits and can even
improve all of our standard of living
a small known fact is that during the
Icelandic financial meltdown there’s
only one financial firm that survived
and that was a firm of four women
another small known fact is that when
micro lenders lend money to women they
not only end up with more money
themselves and the women end up with
more money but so too do families and
communities
study after study has said repeatedly
that including women is not just the
right thing to do it’s the economic
thing to do so if we know the
women are so amazing why is there still
such a huge gender gap so some of you
might recall the well-over watched TED
talk by Sheryl Sandberg the CEO of
Facebook she’ll start Sandberg not only
did a TED talk but she also followed it
up by a best-selling book called lean in
and in that book she did an amazing job
of describing all of the barriers or
many of the barriers that held women
back for everything from subtle
discrimination to sexual harassment but
Sheryl did something very interesting
instead of focusing on those barriers
she decided to focus on women and so her
message initially at least was raise
your hands more sit at the table be more
courageous and although these are
probably very good pieces of advice for
individual women there’s a couple of
problems with this focus on women the
first is that it places the full burden
of the change on women we expect women
to attend courses read more books and
work even harder to bridge the gender
gap the second is that those women who
act just a bit too assertive end up
suffering a backlash these subtle
penalties for asking acting acting for
acting in a way that’s just a bit too
masculine and the third problem is a
crisis of confidence that I actually
personally suffered after 10 years of
law practice it should come as no
surprise after wearing black stiff grey
suits gray gray and black suits wearing
ugly black shoes and even blow-drying my
hair straight for 10 years that I didn’t
know who I was and it’s no surprise that
I suffered from the so-called
imposter syndrome
but the biggest problem of all of urging
women to lean in and focusing
exclusively in on women is this every
single one of you who’s not a woman
climbing the corporate ladder gets off
the hook and not only that but we can
comfortably ignore all of the research
that points to very specific barriers
that continue to hold women back so let
me tell you a story a little while ago
our father and his son were in a car
accident
and the father walked away but the son
was badly injured so he called an
ambulance drove the son to the hospital
and the son was being wheeled into the
surgery when the surgeon came in and
looked at the boy and said I can’t
operate on that boy he’s my son so the
question for you is who is the surgeon
now I see a few of you scratching your
heads and I want to tell you this
the surgeons a mother but the reason we
don’t often see the surgeon as the
mother and it kind of messes us up is
because of this thing in our heads
called implicit bias we don’t see women
as surgeons and implicit bias is the
main cause of the gender gap today
what’s implicit bias some of you already
know it’s basically unconscious ideas in
your head that are going around and
around and some of them are really
written some of them not so good but for
women there are three particular types
of implicit bias that are deeply
troublesome the first is male preference
now you may not know this but the
research is quite clear both men and
women prefer males not only do we prefer
males but we actually prefer masculine
characteristics there’s a very
well-known research study called the
Heidi and Howard study and this is
fantastic it’s just simply a professor
deciding one day to hand out one resume
to their
her whole group of students unbeknownst
to the students she decided to put Heidi
at the top of one and Howard at the top
of the other resume and then she asked
him to give her feedback and what she
discovered is this although all the
students agreed that Heidi Heidi and
Howard had the same credentials and
confidence level they rarely selected
Heidi and what the students said is this
they didn’t like Heidi and they didn’t
trust Heidi the second type of bias that
it’s particularly troublesome for women
is called in-group favoritism now we all
know this because it just simply means
we’d like to be around people who look
and act like us there’s only one problem
and that is if all of the Corporations
all of the elected officials and all of
the top-level academic positions are
occupied by men they tend to only invite
in those men and women who look and act
like them the third barrier is what the
researchers called the maternal wall and
it’s a whole bundle of barriers but it’s
particularly bad for women it’s simply
this idea that somehow women in
childbearing ages are incompetent
they’re too sensitive
they’re too emotional they’re too caring
they’re – a lot of things we just assume
this about women but worse is that
they’re not committed to their jobs the
minute you have a child you’re less
committed to your job which ironically
is the opposite that we feel for men
because as soon as men have children we
all assume that he’s going to be more
committed to his job but what I found
interesting about this is these
particular three groups of biases have
one common root and what surprised me
when I looked at them all and step back
is something very interesting that I had
discovered or heard about for the first
time 30 years ago
I was in an economics class in
first-year University why I signed up
for economics I don’t know
and a substitute professor came in and
she said oh dear economics I don’t know
anything about economics but I want to
tell you about my most amazing pink and
blue dye for research so she said what
we did is we brought in these twenty
babies
boy and girl babies but we dressed them
at random and pink and blue diapers and
then we invited parents in to hold the
babies and then we videotaped the whole
thing and she said the most amazing
thing happened the parents held the pink
diaper babies very close to their bodies
and spoke to them and very soft tones
like isn’t she so sweet and the blue
diaper babies the big the parents held
the babies away from their bodies and
spoke them in somewhat louder tones like
oh you’re a tough guy so what’s
interesting to me is this is just five
minutes of parental implicit bias so
imagine a lifetime and then my friends
stay to me now yeah the Tinker dude took
like the diapers whatever morning
Maureen pink and blue diapers what on
earth does that have to do with the
gender gap and this is what I tell them
in our society we take a pink box and we
label it as feminine and then we squeeze
in all of our girls and women squeeze
them squeeze them cui’s them in and tell
them they have to be certain things like
nice and kind and sweet and all of these
things and many more and then we take a
blue box and we label it as masculine
and we squeeze all our men and boys into
this box and we tell me how to be tough
and aggressive and and unemotional and
many many more things and that’s not
very good but here’s the interesting
thing
in our society we take this blue box and
we elevate it we’ve raised it up and we
say this blue box meals and masculine
traits and masculine roles are more
important to our society and then we
take this pink box and we lower it down
and we say females and female roles and
feminine characteristics are less
valuable to our society and that is what
I call pink and blue bias and that is
the top root of all gender inequality in
the world and before I get to solutions
because that’s the fun part of the talk
I want to ask you this one question who
invented these boxes so there’s a number
of solutions I’m just going to tell you
about two of them the most obvious is
socialization the first thing we have to
do is get rid of the pink and blue boxes
we have to raise our children outside
the box we have to raise them in a way
where they’re truly equals then we have
to define masculine and feminine much
differently and then we have to get rid
of the stereotypes that we carry around
every single day but this is really hard
work and it’s because implicit biases
not just invisible it’s deeply imprinted
in us almost like DNA so it would take a
very long time to change those biases as
well we are all swimming in a culture
filled with media messages and TVs and
magazines that reinforce this pink and
blue bias all the time but the good news
is there’s a more emerging body of
science and it’s called designing for
equality and I just want to share a few
ideas with you around this the best
example of designing for equality is the
Boston Symphony Orchestra and what the
Boston Symphony Orchestra realized one
day is they couldn’t attract women they
didn’t know why what it was they were
doing wrong so one day they decided to
put a huge curtain between the musicians
who were being interviewed for the
orchestra and
the selection panel and before long they
had hired a huge number of women the
other one I love to talk about is with
just simply blind resumes which means
you take a resume and you just black out
the name of the person on the top so
they couldn’t be discriminated against
but I have three more I want to share
with you really quickly and that is
quotas it just simply means holding a
seat at the table for women leaving a
place open so that they can join the
second is actually my secret I think
this is the solution to gender
inequality if you if I were going to put
my money there it’s flexible work it
just simply means working anywhere
anytime but the great thing for women is
women are the ones who typically do the
housework and raise the children so when
they leave the workplace and come back
and they suffer severe penalties so
flexible work would solve that problem
very quickly and another one is
transparent pay which I think by just
disclosing what you earn we could end
the gender pay gap tomorrow not only
that but would really help us understand
why we pay certain jumps more than
others so I often think back of that
fateful night when that young man walked
across the stage and told me and 200
other women that we were doing
everything wrong in fact I’m standing
here today because of him because I
don’t want my daughters I don’t want
your daughters I don’t want any woman in
the world to feel like she’s not quite
good enough so what can you do today
number one we must stop asking women to
lean in we must instead focus on the
very real barriers identified in the
research number two we must all admit
that we are biased and challenge those
biases every single day and third men
and women if you really want an equal
society not just gender equality if you
really want that you have to come
together we have to come together step
outside of our boxes put down our
differences because we are all
casualties of our limited thing
King and the next time you get the
delight and honor and privilege to hold
a baby in your arms they whether it’s a
boy or a girl
you just simply have to say you are
amazing thank you very much
[Applause]
you
[Applause]
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