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Broads Blogs :: Articles & News Member articles may be submitted by any Broads Circle member and will appear in the order they were received. If you are a Broads Circle member and would like to submit an article, please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and include the link to your article if it is published online. All articles are subject to approval prior to publishing on this web site. March 6, 2012 - Leading Women in HR: A Toolkit for Women Seeking a Raise Even now, when women represent half the work force, they’re still paid considerably less than men — and part of that pay gap may be a result of what happens at the salary negotiation table. That’s assuming that women make it to the table, since research shows that they are less likely to ask for raises. Even when they do, their requests may be perceived as overly demanding or less agreeable. “We have found that if a man and a woman both attempt to negotiate for higher pay, people find a woman who does this, compared to one who does not, significantly less attractive,” said Hannah Riley Bowles, an associate professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, who has conducted numerous studies on gender, negotiation and leadership. “Whereas with the guy, it doesn’t seem to matter.” So what’s a woman to do if she feels her work merits a raise? View full article reprint here. 50 Leading Women in Hedge Funds In early 2010 just 3% of global hedge fund assets of $1.5 trillion were estimated to be managed by women, according to Finalternatives, a publication itself founded by a woman, Deidre Brennan. Today we think that estimate greatly understates the true and growing extent of women’s role in hedge funds. For a start, a variety of surveys show assets up to around $2 trillion thanks to positive performance and pension fund inflows. Increasing Civic Reach Nonprofits must have influential board members By Paul Vandeventer Spring 2011 I am convinced that skill at fundraising and governance alone do not an excellent board member make. Nor do such skills alone ensure that a nonprofit organization maintains a durable, deep connection to the wider community it serves. A third skill—I call it civic reach—distinguishes a great board member from a merely adequate one, a world-class nonprofit from one that is simply functioning... Why So Few Women on Boards? Boards and investors should examine the core reasons there are few or no women on their company’s board.
Why did your board NOT add any (or more) women directors during the past proxy season? Rate each of the following answers (1 = not a significant explanation, to 5 = a significant explanation): 1. Our shareholders do not consider adding a woman director to be a priority. 2. Our nominating/governance committee did not know where to find any qualified women candidates. 3. Our executive search consultants did not present any qualified women candidates 4. We were unable to identify women candidates with experience in the skills areas our board identified for new director candidates. 5. We hesitated to bring just one woman director on board. 6. No member of our board knew or could recommend any qualified women candidates. 7. Our board is waiting to see what shareholder nominations might be under the new SEC ‘proxy access’ rulings. For those instances where a company DID consider one or more women candidates, but they were NOT nominated, companies should select one or more of the following reasons: Continue reading this article online here. Elizabeth Ghaffari is the author of “Outstanding in their Field: How Women Corporate Directors Succeed” (Praeger/ABC-Clio: 2009) and founder of Champion Boards, a service of her Santa Monica, Calif., consulting firm, Technology Place. International Women’s Day: Why the Gender Dividend
Others talk about the sticky floor or the marzipan layer preventing women from getting to the top. In the run up to the 100th International women’s day, themed “Equal Access to Education, Training and Science and Technology: Pathway to Decent Work for Women,” the discussion turns to creating a more robust pipeline of female leaders as the statistics don’t show great progress overall – as The White House Project reports, only about 16-18% of leadership roles in almost any industry are held by women. Yet women have long outpaced men in education (with almost 60% of college graduates now female), and capable, highly trained young women are flooding into the workforce. Some companies are incredibly advanced in their gender work because they take it seriously. They understand, from both a human capital and a consumer perspective, that women are the next big business opportunity. Building stronger, more effective companies means developing and utilizing all of the talent available. Read the full article online here. The Risk-Taking Edge of West Coast Women
Deborah Perry Piscione is organizing an event to help East Coast women think and invest more entrepreneurially. “Back east, my whole network was men,” she said, “but here there’s this big group of incredible, fearless women. They rise a lot more quickly in their careers, and they support each other. They’ve made their own money and they take risks. There’s such a disconnect between the two coasts.” On the West Coast, Ms. Perry Piscione made contacts through a series of influential women and, within 18 months of her arrival, raised $5 million from a single female investor to become co-founder of a production company, Desha Productions, and its accompanying Web site, BettyConfidential.com, an online magazine for women. Ms. Perry Piscione sees West Coast businesswomen opening their Rolodexes and, perhaps more important, their wallets for one another, and she says she believes their East Coast counterparts have something to learn. “There are all of these women who made tons of money and now are not doing anything with it,” she said. East Coast women may have attended top business schools and reached the apex of corporate America, but Ms. Perry Piscione said, "they’re not making their mark.” They are losing relevance, she said, in the “new economy.” Read full article online here. The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: Authors: J. McGrath Cohoon, Vivek Wadhwa, Lesa Mitchell Entrepreneurs are arguably the most important actors in our economy: the creators of new wealth and new jobs, the inventors of new products and services, and the revolutionizers of society and the economy. Yet despite their centrality, little is known about entrepreneurs: what motivates them, how they emerge, why they succeed. We know even less about who becomes an entrepreneur, and why. The value of this study is its detailed exploration of men and women entrepreneurs’ motivations, backgrounds, and experiences. The people included in this sample were all successful entrepreneurs, 59 percent of whom had founded two or more companies. The data also identify some small but potentially informative gender differences among successful entrepreneurs. Click here to read the full study. Why Are Women-Owned Firms Smaller Than Men-Owned Ones? MAY 17, 2010 The phenomenal growth of women-owned businesses has made headlines for three decades—women consistently have been launching new enterprises at twice the rate of men, and their growth rates of employment and revenue have outpaced the economy. So, it is dismaying to see that, despite all this progress, on average, women-owned business are still small compared with businesses owned by men. And while the gap has narrowed, as of 2008—the latest year for which numbers are available—the average revenues of majority women-owned businesses were still only 27% of the average of majority men-owned businesses. Click here to read the full article Broads Circle in the News: Los Angeles Business Journal Broads Circle is sharply focused on creating high quality revenue connections for its members through our networking events. Business Minded Men's networking sessions tend to be quick and useful, but Allen-Attar noticed that women tend to socialize more. "The conversation that you have as a woman in the business environment very often is not quite as direct and on point as perhaps men in the business world have," she said. "I was feeling really frustrated." So, in 2008, inspired by several groups in New York, Allen-Attar started a networking group for women where the focus is clear: It's all about money and power. Called Broads Circle, the group targets senior-level L.A.-area businesswomen with "a proven ability to drive revenue or grow capital." It has about 1,300 people on its mailing list, and 35 dues-paying members. Allen-Attar said the mailing list has grown quickly because the group is open to a mix of industries, which allows richer networking opportunities." In effect we're trying to create a group that's not overrun by one group or another," said Allen-Attar, who personally interviews all potential dues-paying members and hopes to boost their number to 100 by year's end. And what about networking results? She claimed the group has already led to a number of concrete business opportunities, including for herself. "This group has allowed me to get referrals that are very well suited to what I'm trying to do," she said.
Centered Leadership: How Talented Women Thrive - McKinsey Quarterly 9/08 One surprising thing we learned as a result of talking with female leaders was that they often fail to reciprocate and find expectations that they should do so distasteful. A senior partner at McKinsey noted that men naturally understand that you must “give before you get,” but women don’t. This tendency—which other leaders have described to us as well—combined with the sometimes awkward sexual politics, real or perceived, between senior men and younger women, makes it harder for women to find sponsors. Yet women can learn reciprocity. To start, it’s important to assess your comfort level with the people you know through work, as well as how influential they are professionally. Most women we’ve worked with typically find that the colleagues they are close to are not influential—and vice versa. Explicit planning and some risk taking are needed to change this. One approach is to provide and ask for help on a regular basis. Finding ways to forge connections through interests outside of work is another. Over and over, we heard, “Make it personal,” in the sense that others will get along with you more easily if they see your human side. You can express this in all kinds of ways at work, without inappropriately blending your professional and personal lives. The female leaders we interviewed acted on this insight both to find sponsors and to build networks. Click here to read the full article reprint |
Rather than continually examining the low percentage of women on corporate boards, perhaps it is time, in the upcoming March – June proxy season, for shareholders (women and men) to pose the following question to their companies:
“There isn’t a glass ceiling, just a thick layer of men” quipped the ever sharp Laura Liswood last week, and this is my favorite description to date of what is preventing women from advancing to executive management and the boardroom.
When Deborah Perry Piscione moved to Silicon Valley after a career in media and foreign relations on the East Coast, it wasn’t the weather or wealth that amazed her. It was the women. 
"The Maria Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything", is a study that was done by Maria Shriver and the American Center for Progress describing the dramatic shift of women in the workplace and how it has impacted every facet of our lives.