SPRING 2020 Male Allyship in the Future of Work Advancing Inclusive Leadership TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................... 1-4 STUDENT RESEARCH TEAM ................................................................................................................. 5 MALE ALLY ADVISORS ....................................................................................................................... 6-7 QUESTIONNAIRE PROTOCOL ......................................................................................................... 9-14 QUALTRICS DATA ............................................................................................................................. 15-35 CURATED DATA ................................................................................................................................. 36-37 TRANSCRIBED INTERVIEWS ....................................................................................................... 38-247 Male Allyship in the Future of Work Case Studies from the University of Pennsylvania Law School “Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past.” T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets In the early months of 2014, Nitin Nohria, the dean of Harvard Business School, showcased moral courage. Speaking to an audience of 600 alumni in San Francisco, he apologized to the women at Harvard Business School. He publicly acknowledged that they were “disrespected, left out, and unloved by the school.” “I’m sorry on behalf of the business school,” he said. “The school owed you better, and I promise it will be better.” He was apologizing for offensive behavior toward female students and pledged to “work relentlessly to make the entire school more encouraging of women.” Soon after, Nohria was hailed as an ally for his fearless apology and for announcing plans to change the way leadership was taught and the way the pipeline for leadership could be made more inclusive. Nohria’s apology gave name to an unacknowledged crisis and placed the blame on those who needed to be held accountable. According to data from Fortune, today, women hold 25.5 percent of board seats of Fortune 500 companies, up from 15.7 percent. Though considerable progress has been made, in 2019, women still made up just 6.6% of CEOs at Fortune 500 companies. Women of color make up an even smaller percentage of this group. Since Ursula Burns stepped down from her role at Xerox more than two years ago, only one black woman, Mary Winston, heads a Fortune 500 company. In our class on Women, Law and Leadership in the Fall of 2019, we examined the changing landscape of women in leadership and the importance of powerful allies who could disrupt the status quo in favor of women. We also examined women’s leadership as both a fairness issue and a business imperative. In our interviews with over 55 women leaders, we heard how male sponsors had changed their careers and their lives. Fatima AlQuabesi spoke of how her mentor locked her in her office until she applied for a graduate program in law in the United States. Sandie Okoro, the General Counsel of the World Bank, told us that her mentor and then boss kept telling her that her current job was too small for her. Amy Weaver, General Counsel of Sales Force, told us, “look at men as allies, and harness that in them.” Evidence-based research notes the importance of seeking allies who go beyond interpersonal mentoring to create enduring structural change. Workplace gender initiatives focus primarily on 1 changing women — from the way they lean in, to the way they lead. Placing the onus on women to change masks systemic structural causes that disadvantage women. Growing out of our research on women who lead, we partnered with Thomson Reuters to conduct research on the future of allyship through interviews with a diverse and global group of male leaders. These are men who will lead on the global stage and will define and shape new norms in the workplace. We also wanted to find out how they responded to the changing demographics in the workplace, how would they react to women leaders and bosses and work-family policies that engage women and men on an equal basis. Most of all, we wanted to deconstruct given assumptions about men and allyship and examine what allyship looked like to men from diverse backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and other differences. A recent Harvard Business Review paper shows that when men are deliberately engaged in gender inclusion programs, 96 percent of organizations see progress — compared to only 30 percent of organizations where men are not included. The concept of men as allies is not without criticism. My students are fiercely critical about the “pedestal” on which “feminist men” are placed. The women in my class question why most women leaders who came to our class or zoomed into it, greeted the class by congratulating the few good men in the class. My students remain unimpressed and underwhelmed when male leaders share trite aphorisms to showcase their feminist credentials. However well intentioned, when men are given special treatment for claiming to be feminists, thanking their mothers, wives and daughters to embellish their leadership records, it can seem ultimately meaningless and opportunistic. In class, we watched the trailer of Honorable Helen Clark’s failed bid to become the first woman Secretary General of the United Nations. All the men running for the highest and hardest office in the world claim to be feminists, seizing a mantle of leadership, while Helen Clark, the first woman president of New Zealand, stands a silent witness. Some women are also understandably skeptical, or at best agnostic, about offering men hard-won space in their feminist conversations and conferences. These gatherings have been historically safe spaces for women to create new strategies to overcome barriers posed by male hierarchies. The achievements of male feminists can also seem modest in comparison to the grand rhetoric offered at award ceremonies for male champions of change. The Harvard Business School’s creation of the role of man ambassadors did not go without criticism. Are we thanking men for acknowledging women? At the same time, one of the reasons that women have not advanced in equal pay, parental leave, and equitable hiring and promotion is because women have lacked male allies in the workplace. Evidence reveals that gender-parity efforts are most effective when men believe they have a quiet and important role to play in leveling the playing field. Debra Meyerson of Stanford describes allies as “individuals who identify with and are committed to their organizations, and are also committed to a cause, community, or ideology that is fundamentally different from, and 2 possibly at odds with, the dominant culture of their organization[s].” These are men who stand up against gender stereotypes and gender bias, eliminate pay and promotion disparities, and advocate for policies. These allies are driven by a sense of virtue ethics. The motivation for this role is often tied to a belief in fairness and justice rather than some external reward or recognition. Our survey dug deep into current and future workplace policies that can help level the playing field and balance the laws. Recent research reveals that men experience work-family conflict at similar rates as women. This rise in work-family conflict reported by men has grown alongside newly acknowledged parenting values that see the critical role of fathers in child nurturing. Despite the rise of a new consciousness on the role of men in caregiving, there is a gendered utilization of paid family leave, with more women than men utilizing family leave and flex time. The MeToo movement has created new social norms and social change movements. In 2018, the New York Times reported that when MeToo brought down 201 powerful men, nearly half the replacements were women. On the other hand, the MeToo movement opened conversations among men and in workplaces on gender equality, bringing the issue of pay equity to the forefront. Companies have begun adopting salary transparency policies and maintaining wage gap data in an effort to even the playing field. Still, women continue to face workplace inequality, being paid 80 cents on average for every dollar a man makes – a trend that's expected to endure through the 22nd and 23rd centuries. The market does not adjust to gender inequality. Exactly a year ago, USA Today argued that based on today’s wage gap, women earn $406,760 less than men over the course of a four- decade career; Latinas earn $1,135,440 less than men; black women earn $946,120 less over the course of a same length career. Although we have moved from blaming women for their perceived shortcomings to pointing to the need for structural change, these structures are manmade, literally and figuratively. Thus, changing structures call for changing men’s mindsets and the future of work depends on this. When we started this work in January of 2020, the young leaders on the Penn Law research team looked toward a future of glaring inequality and were committed to balancing the scales. In the midst of this research, our world changed, but their equipoise, insights, and determination only grew stronger as their work on fairness, justice, and allyship became more urgent in a future of uncertainties. Black swan events, such as pandemics, can radically alter