Hiring Employees

招聘员工

Gender bias can creep into the selection process in numerous ways. The résumés of equally or better-qualified women be set aside in favor of men’s.

性别偏见会以多种方式悄然进入选拔过程。同样合格甚至更具资格的女性的简历可能被搁置一边，而男性的简历却受到青睐。

One way to help with these problems is to ensure gender diversity among the people reviewing résumés and conducting interviews. One woman of color we spoke to explained that her identity spurs her to bring a heightened awareness to evaluating candidates. “When I’m looking at a selection where we get a list of names for jobs,” she told us, “I look at it very differently than someone else does.” Interviewer diversity also sends a message to prospective employees, as one health care executive noted when describing his global company’s efforts to boost gender equity. “Women were attracted,” he said, “because they saw more women interviewing them; you build a reputation of being a good and fair employer.”

帮助解决这些问题的方法之一是确保审查简历和进行面试的人中存在性别多元化。我们采访过的一位有色人种女性解释说，她的身份促使她评价应聘者的意识提高了。“当我手持求职者名单审视某个选择时，”她向我们表示，“我的看法与其他一些人截然不同。”正如一位医疗保健高管在描述其全球公司为促进性别平等所做的努力时指出的那样，面试官的多元化也向未来的员工传达了一条信息。“女性产生了兴趣，”他表示，“因为她们看到有更多女性在面试她们；你树立了自己身为正派公平雇主的声誉。”

It’s also important to create a formal process that focuses reviewers’ attention specifically on job criteria. The less clarity interviewers have about how to assess candidates, the more likely they are to view potential employees through the lens of gender (and other) stereotypes.

同样重要的是，要建立一个正规的流程，将评审人员的注意力集中在具体的工作标准上。面试官在如何评估应聘者的问题上思路越不清晰，他们就越有可能透过性别（以及其他）成见的镜头来审视潜在员工。

Integrating Newcomers

融入职场

Women who are poorly integrated into the workplace may fail to build and benefit from relationships with their colleagues.Interactions with colleagues in these environments combine work with leisure, fostering deeper feelings of connection that can lead to greater trust, cooperation, and mutual support in the professional realm. Women board members and executives have told us about being instructed to take up golf, lest they find themselves left out of the real power structure. 

不能充分融入职场的女性可能无法与同事建立关系并从中受益。职场中，同事的互动可以将工作与休闲结合起来，培养更深的关系和感情，从而在专业领域中产生更多的信任、合作与相互支持。女董事会成员和高管告诉我们，她们受人教导要去打高尔夫球，以免发现自己被排除在真正的权力架构之外。

There’s good news, though: Research shows that when companies implement collaborative work approaches—creating cross-training programs, for instance, or assembling self-directed teams with members based in different functions—the percentage of women in management rises. Creating the conditions, and the expectation, for employees to build positive working relationships can help ensure that women are truly part of the team.

不过，也有好消息：研究表明，当企业实施协作性的工作方式时，比如创建交叉培训项目，或者组建由不同职能部门的员工组成的自主团队，管理层中女性的比例就会上升。为员工创造可以建立积极工作关系的条件和预期，有助于确保女性真正成为团队的一部分。

Developing Employees

培养员工

Career growth requires taking on stretch assignments, but those are often most accessible to white men. In academia, women are less likely than men to be invited to give talks—important résumé boosters. In a study conducted at a pharmaceutical company, researchers found that senior managers funneled challenging projects to men more than women, even when controlling for workers’ age, education, job tenure, performance, and perceived ambition. Another study across multiple industries likewise found that challenging assignments went disproportionately to men, even though women expressed equal desire for them.

职业发展需要承担艰巨的任务，但这些任务通常最容易落在白人男性手中。在学术界，女性受邀发表谈话的可能性不及男性。在某制药公司进行的一项研究中，研究人员发现，高级管理人员将具有挑战性的项目更多地交给男性而非女性，哪怕是在对员工的年龄、教育程度、工作任期、业绩和感知抱负进行了限定的时候。另一项跨多个行业的研究同样发现，挑战性的任务不成比例地更多分配给了男性，即使女性表达了同样的愿望。

When women and men don’t have equal opportunities to shine and grow, work itself becomes gendered, with lower-status projects and roles seen as the province of female employees. Even within jobs, “task segregation” occurs, with women expected to handle less-rewarding work. 

当女性和男性没有平等的机会闪光和成长时，工作本身就性别化了，地位较低的项目和职位被视为女性员工的领地。即使在工作内部，“任务隔离”也在发生，女性被认为就该从事报酬较低的工作。

The women who move up into senior management tend to be those who have had mentors and sponsors earlier in their careers. They had allies in leadership positions who played a defining role, steering key assignments to them, including them in high-level meetings, and keeping their names in the mix for promotions. 

晋升到高级管理层的女性通常是那些在职业生涯早期就有导师和保荐人的女性。她们有身居领导职位且能发挥决定性作用的盟友，这些人把关键任务交予她们，让她们参加高层会议，并将她们的名字列入升职的名单。

Assessing Performance

评估表现

Regular performance assessments shape the paths of most professionals. Women’s performance on tasks is often held to a more stringent standard than men’s, with women having to accomplish more to earn the same rating. A study conducted at a law firm documented this phenomenon: Although men and women lawyers received equally positive comments in their performance evaluations, the men received higher numerical scores. 

定期的绩效评估会决定多数专业人士的发展道路。而在这一过程中，衡量女性工作表现的标准通常比男性更严格，女性必须完成更多的工作才能获得同样的评级。在一家律师事务所进行的一项研究证明了这一现象：尽管男女律师在绩效评估中得到了同样积极的评价，但男性的得分更高一些。

Companies can “de-bias” the performance evaluation process by training attention on objectively measurable qualities. Recent research has found that women tend to promote their accomplishments to a lesser extent than men who perform at the same level, which means that relying on employees’ self-assessments to inform performance ratings will favor men.

公司可以通过训练员工关注可以客观衡量的素质来消除绩效评估过程中的偏见。最近的研究发现，女性宣扬自己成就的程度通常低于同等表现水平的男性，这意味着依靠员工的自我评估来了解表现等级会对男性有利。

Another problem: Researchers looking at technology and professional services firms found that the performance feedback given to women, compared with that given to men, was less tied to specific business outcomes, regardless of whether the feedback was praise or constructive criticism. That lack of specificity meant that women had less clarity about the factors contributing to strong performance and less insight into what they needed to do to advance. 

另一个问题是：研究人员在调查科技和专业服务公司时发现，相较男性，女性获得的表现反馈较少与具体的业务成果挂钩，不管这种反馈是表扬还是建设性的批评。缺乏具体性意味着，女性不太清楚促成出色表现的因素有哪些，也不太了解自己需要做些什么才能取得进步。

Managing Compensation and Promotion

管理薪酬和升职

Gender-based compensation disparities often start before an employee is actually hired. When the terms and parameters of a salary negotiation are vague, women consistently end up with lower starting pay than men, even when controlling for other relevant factors. 

性别方面的薪酬差距通常在员工真正被录用之前就开始了。当薪资谈判的条款和参数含混不清时，即使在控制了其他相关因素的情况下，女性的起薪也始终低于男性。

Companies can level the playing field by providing clear information. An online recruiting platform for engineers completely eliminated the gender salary gap for new hires simply by listing the median salary for every position. 

企业可以通过提供清晰的信息来营造公平竞争的环境。一个工程师在线招聘平台仅通过列出每个职位的中位工资就完全消除了新雇员工性别间的薪资差距。

Promotion practices are another area of concern. Many companies encourage or require employees to nominate themselves for internal openings, but gendered social norms can disadvantage women in these situations. That’s because women, unlike men, often generate a backlash if they appear ambitious, so they may be reluctant to put themselves forward. More importantly for managers, self-nomination processes assume that the most vocal employees are the best candidates—an assumption that can prevent managers from accurately gauging those employees’ qualifications or considering the potential of others.

升职制度是另一个令人关注的领域。许多企业鼓励或者要求员工提名自己填补内部的职位空缺，但在这些情况下，性别化的社会规范可能对女性不利。因为不同于男性，如果女性表现得雄心勃勃，她们通常会引发强烈的抵触情绪，因此她们可能不愿意毛遂自荐。对于管理者而言，更重要的是，自我提名的方式会假定最能发声的员工就是最佳人选——这一假设可能会妨碍管理者准确衡量这些员工的资格或考虑其他人的潜力。 

Retaining Good Performers

保留优秀员工

“We don’t have trouble attracting women,” the head of the women’s initiative at a large professional services firm said some years ago. “What is hard is retaining them.”

“吸引女性并不困难，”一家大型专业服务公司的女性项目负责人数年前表示，“难的是留住她们。”

So what drives turnover among women? Their chief concern is lack of advancement or the perception that they won’t be able to keep growing at their current employer. One study found that women in both public- and private-sector jobs were significantly less satisfied with their promotion opportunities than men were, which prompted them to leave at a higher rate. 

是什么导致了女性的离职呢？她们最担心的是缺乏进步空间，或者认为自己无法在目前的雇主那里继续成长。一项研究发现，无论在公共还是私营部门工作，女性对升职机会的满意度明显低于男性，这导致她们的离职率更高。

Many women also leave their jobs after realizing that they’re paying the “motherhood penalty”—they get fewer opportunities and lower wages than childless women or men (even those who are fathers) because they are presumed to be less committed to work. 

许多女性在意识到自己在付出“母职惩罚”后也离开了工作岗位——她们得到的机会和工资比没有孩子的女性或男性（甚至是那些为人父的男性）要少，因为她们被认为对工作不那么投入。

All of us have a stake in fostering equality in the workplace.Narrowing the gender gap should be a deliberate, ongoing process. With a systematic approach, you can finally shatter the barriers that keep women, and your company, from thriving.

促进职场平等与我们所有人的利益息息相关。缩小性别差距也应该是一个小心谨慎、持续不断的过程。而通过系统性的手段，你最终可以打破阻碍女性和公司向上发展的障碍。