© 2016 Dow Jones & Company. All Rights Reserved. THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, September 27, 2016 | R1

Women Are Leaning In...…But they face pushback, writes

Sheryl SandbergR2 >>

When More Women Hold PowerImpact is felt throughout companies

R4

Borrowing an NFL StrategyTech firms cast a wider net in hiring

R5

High Finance and Family-Friendly?

KKR adopts a slew of benefitsR6

Time for a NewGender-Equality PlaybookDominic Barton’s plan of action

R4 >>

Prep for Your Parental LeaveCoaching helps with the transition

R6

Diversity Efforts, Without FearAvoiding minefields for white men

R7

Trying to Get Pastthe ‘Mad Men’ Mentality

The ad industry confronts sexismR8

Millennial Women FindFamiliar Obstacles

Many look outside corporationsR8

For Women of Color, It’s a‘Concrete Ceiling’

More ambition, less opportunityR9

Making Pay Equity a RealityFormal policies are just a start

R9

The Case for Day Care at WorkCenters can be costly but beneficial

R10

INSIDE

BRIANST

AUFF

ER

JOURNAL REPORT

EN AND WOMEN WORKside by side, tackling the samebusiness problems, sittingthrough the same meetingsand walking the same hall-ways.

But a new study on workingwomen suggests that the com-mon ground ends there. Men

and women experience very different workplaces, onesin which the odds for advancement vary widely andcorporate careers come in two flavors: his and hers.

Data show that men win more promotions, morechallenging assignments and more access to top leadersthan women do. Men are more likely than women to feelconfident they are en route to an executive role, and feelmore strongly that their employer rewards merit.

Women, meanwhile, perceive a steeper trek to thetop. Less than half feel that promotions are awardedfairly or that the best opportunities go to the most-de-serving employees. A significant share of women saythat gender has been a factor in missed raises and pro-motions. Even more believe that their gender will makeit harder for them to advance in the future—a senti-ment most strongly felt by women at senior levels.

These are the conclusions of a major new study ofworking women conducted by LeanIn.Org and McKin-sey & Co. In one of the largest studies to date on thistopic, researchers during the first half of this yeargathered data on promotions, attrition and career out-comes at 132 global companies, and they surveyed34,000 men and women at those companies on theirexperiences at work.

The disparity begins at entry level, where men are

30% more likely than women to be promoted to man-agement roles. It continues throughout careers, as menmove up the ladder in larger numbers and make up thelion’s share of outside hires. Though their numbers aregrowing slowly, women hold less than a quarter of se-nior leadership positions and less than one-fifth of C-suite roles.

Not surprisingly, a large share of women feel invisi-ble at work, compared with male colleagues. From ordi-nary meetings to executive offices and boardrooms,many more women than men feel that they don’t getcredit for their ideas, or that their contributions aren’trecognized—slights felt even more acutely by womenof color. Away from the office, meanwhile, women beara disproportionately greater share of home and familyduties than their husbands—arrangements that maylead them to curb ambitions for higher roles.

Companies are getting creative with solutions, fromTwitter Inc.’s hiring of coaches for men and women be-fore, during and after parental leave, to American Ex-press Co.’s efforts to connect more promising womenmanagers with executive leaders.

Nonetheless, the results of the study suggest thatleaders have much work to do before men and womenboth feel fairly treated. And managers need to considerthe implications of a workplace in which the traditionalroutes to the top seem to be working, in a great manycases, for one gender only.

The sexes do see eye to eye in one area: Most em-ployers aren't doing enough to effect real change.Though most employees believe their CEO supports di-versity, just 45% think their company is doing the workthat is necessary to achieve gender parity. Even fewerreport ever having witnessed a manager challenginggender-based language or behavior, or a leader beingheld accountable for making—or not making—diversehires. About half of employees say they personally are

committed to advancing gender diversity, with highernumbers of senior employees calling it a priority.

How can it be that two people in the same meetingmight have such divergent experiences of work? Andwhat can companies do about it?

TEST OF COMMITMENTOne obvious reason is reflected in the numbers. At

most companies, according to the McKinsey and LeanIn study, women and men are represented roughlyequally at the entry level, and they lobby for promo-tions at the same rate. But women are less likely to getthose promotions. They also receive fewer challenging“stretch” assignments, less training and fewer develop-ment opportunities than men.

SAP SE is one of the few companies to set a firmtarget for increasing the presence of women managers.The global software giant, with 80,000 employees, hasmandated that women hold 25% of all manager roles bythe end of 2017; so far, its world-wide managementranks are 24.1% female, while roughly 30% of manage-ment roles in the U.S. and Canada are held by women.

Jenny Dearborn, chief learning officer at SAP, con-siders a big part of her mission to be equipping femaleemployees with the skills they need to reach the man-agement ranks. Hanging above her desk in Palo Alto,Calif., is an email from her boss, CEO Bill McDermott,which says he wants the global software company to bethe world’s best workplace for professional women.

For years, SAP employees attended one-day gender-awareness training sessions, in which there were pre-sentations on brain chemistry and the science of gen-der dynamics. “Sort of a ‘Men Are from Mars, WomenAre From Venus’ thing,” Ms. Dearborn recalls.

Employees rated the training highly. But, she says,the sessions failed to address the factors holding

Pleaseturntothenextpage

How Men and WomenSee the WorkplaceDifferently

A new reportfinds they havevastly dissimilarperspectives—andexperiences—at work.Here’s what companiescan do about it.

FollowThe ExpertsOnline atwsj.com/experts

MBY NIKKI WALLER

R2 | Tuesday, September 27, 2016 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

JOURNAL REPORT | WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

women back at SAP—including few connec-tions to senior executives and influential spon-sors. Succession plans included few women,and the same was true for shortlists that hu-man-resources leaders assembled when bigroles came open.

“It wasn’t about ‘Did we have awareness ofbrain chemistry?’ ” Ms. Dearborn says. “It wasreally about visibility, not whether [women]were competent or qualified or whether theyhad experience.”

Ms. Dearborn replaced the popular trainingsession with a new program designed to helpwomen make themselves more visible at thecompany. The initiative, the Leadership Excel-lence Acceleration Program, or LEAP, gathershigh-performing women whom managers haveidentified as promotion-ready. About 400women a year participate in the 12-month vir-tual course. They meet online monthly to hearguest speakers. They receive homework andaction assignments, such as making on-camerapresentations. And by the end of the course,the women are expected to have expandedtheir networks and increased their appetitesfor taking risks.

The results so far are encouraging, SAPsays. Of the first cohort, 23% of graduates be-came first-level managers, and 11% of existingmanagers have moved into director roles, ac-cording to the company. Many graduates havedeveloped relationships with senior leaderswho eventually become sponsors.

SAP leaders at quarterly business reviewsmust present dashboards with both businessresults and people metrics, such as the shareof women managers in their division. Leadersare called out in meetings when their numbersfall short, and a “SWAT team” now makes surethat open jobs attract robust, diverse groupsof candidates, Ms. Dearborn says, adding thatmany managers must explain why a womanisn’t on the shortlist.

At Procter & Gamble Co., women hold 45%of management roles, a byproduct of the com-pany’s promote-from-within philosophy and itscareer planning for both women and men.Famed for its market research, the companykeeps equally meticulous track of the numberof years it takes men and women to attain pro-motions, their performance ratings and theircompensation.

“We’re P&G, we measure everything,” saysCarolyn Tastad, head of the company’s NorthAmerican division.

Detailed career-development plans for eachemployee identify which types of experiencehe or she needs, along with what their next jobat the company could be, and sometimes theirnext two jobs. Employees post résumés to aninternal database to show company managersnot only what skills they are building but alsowhether they are willing to go abroad in thenext few years or take a different type of as-signment. At monthly “talent council” meet-ings for each business unit, employee careerpaths and résumés are reviewed, says TraceyGrabowski, vice president of human resourcesfor North America.

When doling out assignments that could ac-celerate a career, HR leaders urge managers toask a simple question: “Why not?” If managersare considering two men for a stretch assign-ment during a merger integration, Ms.Grabowski says, they are urged to ask, “Whynot a woman?” and to discuss specific candi-dates. Overall, attrition rates aren’t signifi-

Continuedfromthepriorpage

cantly different for men and women, Ms.Grabowski says.

INTERACTION, ACCESS, VISIBILITYIn addition to setting targets and looking

hard at promotion policies, some companiesand leaders are focused on the more subtle in-teractions in the workplace. The McKinsey andLean In researchers found, for example, thatwhile both men and women recognize that facetime with leaders and informal feedback areimportant to getting ahead, men get more suchfeedback and more chances to interact withtop leadership.

Some big businesses have rolled out execu-tive-shadow programs for women to help givethem more access to top leadership and visibil-ity within the company. These efforts are sorare that the Society for Human ResourceManagement didn’t include the practice in itslatest annual employee-benefits survey. Com-panies that have launched shadow programsfor women since 2010 include Adobe SystemsInc., Amex and Cisco Systems Inc.

Adobe’s program pairs participants with ex-ecutives in the U.S., India, Europe, the MiddleEast and Africa. At Amex, meanwhile, 30 high-potential U.S. women will have shadowed se-nior executives by the end of 2016, the pro-gram’s second year.

One of those senior Amex executives is Con-troller and Executive Vice President Linda Zu-kauckas, 54, who manages more than 1,500staffers in 35 countries. The shadow program atAmex aims to dispel myths about what seniorwomen must do to succeed, the executive says.

Ms. Zukauckas was shadowed in July by Al-lison Beer, an Amex vice president and 35-year-old mother of toddler twin boys. Ms. Beeroversees 70 employees in two countries whomanage travel partnerships with corporatecustomers. “I am focused on doing more withless time in all aspects of my life,’’ she says.

Ms. Beer was impressed by how Ms. Zu-

kauckas efficiently juggled tasks. On the day thetwo spent together, they attended six meetingsmainly focused on corporate second-quarterearnings. Ms. Beer says she also was impressedby the way Ms. Zukauckas requires her lieuten-ants to submit meeting materials the day be-fore—an approach Ms. Beer intends to adopt.

Further imitating the controller, Ms. Beervows to be more rigid “about blocking timethroughout the day to catch up on work.’’

There was a visual indication of how muchthe younger woman wants to emulate the high-level officer. At an August debriefing abouttheir shadowing experience, they faced eachother at a round table on the 30th floor ofAmex’s Manhattan headquarters. Ms. Beerwore a black dress and thick gold necklace—just like her temporary mentor.

While shadowing executives can help buildrelationships and visibility, that experiencealone is not enough to make a difference in acareer. Indeed, the lesson that some are learn-ing is careers aren’t like self-driving cars; itmakes sense to take the wheel.

As a rising talent at Google, now AlphabetInc., Stacy Brown-Philpot says her managertold her she would get promoted if she accom-plished certain objectives. Ms. Brown-Philpotdid so, then found out she wasn’t being pro-moted; when she asked why, she was told thatother people were in line first, and that shewould be promoted in the next cycle.

“I felt I deserved the opportunity,” says Ms.Brown-Philpot, now 40 and the CEO of Task-Rabbit, a website that matches freelance laborwith short-term tasks. So, rather than simplyaccept her boss’s decision that she shouldwait, Ms. Brown-Philpot sought out vice presi-dents two and three levels above her andasked whether her performance merited thepromotion she wanted. Those managers agreedthat she was ready, and she took that feedbackback to her boss. Ms. Brown-Philpot was thenpromoted to director. It was a big step, and a

reminder of “how important it was for me totake care of my career,” she says.

Meetings and negotiations often present op-portunities for greater visibility and interac-tion. These are also occasions at which manymen expect women to take a back seat. Someleaders urge women to break free of the expec-tations that they will be cooperative and waittheir turn.

Cindy Gallop, founder and former chair-woman of the U.S. branch of advertising firmBartle Bogle Hegarty, says she learned to be“very forceful” in meetings during her 30-yearcareer. “If someone cuts me off, I just keeptalking and ask them to wait until I’ve fin-ished,” she says. Ms. Gallop is an equally out-spoken negotiator who advises other womento “name the highest salary you can withoutbursting into laughter.”

HOME AND WORKOutside the office, women log plenty of

hours on the second shift—the family andhome obligations that await after work. Someleaders are modeling ways to share the loadwith partners and outside help, and big com-panies have begun coaching working moth-ers—and fathers—to find a better split.

Ms. Brown-Philpot, a mother of two, saysshe and her husband, a solutions architect,manage a 50/50 balance in sharing the respon-sibilities of family life.

They are an exception. According to theLean In and McKinsey research, women in se-nior management are seven times as likely asmen to bear the majority of home duties.

When asked why, women most commonlyresponded that they are better at those tasks,and that their partners expected them to doso. Yet when women do more than half of thehousework, ambition appears to take a backseat. Just 34% of those women said they as-pired to be a top executive.

“Practically speaking, if you’re doing moreat home, you can’t do more at work,” says Ali-son Wood Brooks, a Harvard Business Schoolprofessor who has studied how men andwomen’s life goals differ.

Bank of America Corp., Deutsche Bank AG,Twitter and Kohl’s Corp. have tapped consul-tancies such as Talking Talent to coachwomen and men through parental leave, ensur-ing that they can manage at home and returnto work without burning out.

The imbalance at home often starts duringmaternity leave, when women who take on agreater share of home and family duties con-tinue with those same tasks after returning towork. The balance improves when both partnerstake parental leave, says Karen Rubin, TalkingTalent’s managing director for North America.

“One of the surefire ways for an individualto feel overwhelmed and burned out is to takeon an overwhelming share of housework andchild-care responsibilities in addition to theirregular job,” Ms. Rubin notes.

She has observed that corporate women of-ten reach a turning point about a year after re-turning from maternity leave. By then, they havemastered the work-family juggle, but let net-working and other career advancers fall by thewayside. Feeling sidelined at work and stretchedat home, many choose a fresh start elsewhere.

Some companies are focusing on that junc-ture, and hiring coaches to find ways for thosewomen—and their managers—to keep their ca-reers on track. “When you’re feeling chal-lenged and interested at work,” says Ms. Ru-bin, “you’re more likely to stay at a companyand advance at that company.”

Ms. Waller is The Wall Street Journal’s bu-reau chief for management coverage in NewYork. Email her at nikki.waller@wsj.com.Joann S. Lublin (joann.lublin@wsj.com) andDahlia Bazzaz (dahlia.bazzaz@wsj.com) inNew York contributed to this article.

How Men and Women See the Workplace DifferentlyPipeline ProblemWomen are underrepresented at every level ofU.S. corporations. The percentage of each levelmade up of men and women, and the share of thetotal workforce represented by each level:

The First PromotionWomen are promoted more slowly than men—andthe disparity is greatest at the step up from entrylevel to manager, where the largest numbers ofemployees are involved. The percentage of men andwomen at each level who were promoted to the nextlevel in 2015:

Limited Access to LeadershipSurveyed employees rated sponsorship by a seniorleader as a top factor in corporate success, butaccess is less common for women than for men. Thepercentage of those surveyed who reported having asubstantive interaction with a senior leader abouttheir work at least once a week:

Percentageof totalworkforce

MenWomen

Men Women

28%

12%

5%

1%C-suite 81%

19%

2%Seniorvice

president

76%

24%

Vicepresident

71%

29%

Seniormanager/director

67%

33%

Manager63%

37%

Entry54%

46%53%

Men Women

C-suite

Senior vicepresident

Vice president

Senior manager/director

Manager

Entry Level

N.A.N.A.

9%

6%

6%

3%

4%

12%

7%

6%

4%

5%

Seniormanagement

Middlemanagement

Entry level

Overall

62%

45%

38%

46%

39%

36%

40%

51%

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.Source: LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co. Women in the Workplace 2016 survey of 34,000 men andwomen and 132 companies

A FREELANCE FILM director recently de-scribed walking into a negotiation. She wasready: She had armed herself with stats andevidence and had practiced her pitch. But in-stead of diving into why she deserved the proj-ect—and the money that came along with it—she began with the following: “I just want tosay up front that I’m going to negotiate, andthe research shows that you’re going to likeme less when I do.”

She could see the wheels turning in theminds of her colleagues. But she was right.When women ask for what they deserve, theyoften face social pushback—and are viewed as“bossy” or “aggressive” simply for asking. Soshe came up with a solution: Call out the biasbefore it could surface. It worked.

The “too aggressive” penalty is just one ofthe findings from Women in the Workplace2016, a study by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey &Co. being released today. Based on a survey of132 companies employing more than 4.6 mil-lion people, the study is, to our knowledge, themost comprehensive annual review of womenin corporate America.

Last year’s report concluded that we were100 years away from gender equality in the C-suite. A year later, we’re not much closer—andthat is not just bad for women, it’s bad for ourcompanies and our economy. Women are stillunderrepresented at every corporate level andhold less than 30% of roles in senior manage-ment. And women hit the glass ceiling early:They are far less likely than men to be pro-moted from entry level to manager, and theycontinue to lose ground incrementally themore senior they become. This gap in femaleleadership is not due to attrition; in fact,women and men are leaving their companiesat about the same rate.

As one might expect, these challenges aremore pronounced for women of color: Theymake up the most underrepresented group in

the corporate pipeline and experience thedeepest drop-offs in middle and senior man-agement—despite the fact that women of colorare more likely than white women to say theywant to be top executives.

There is some encouraging news. Womenare now negotiating for raises and promotionsas often as their male peers—defying the con-

ventional wisdom that women don’t ask. Per-haps not surprisingly, women who ask for apromotion are far more likely to get one thanwomen who don’t. However, women still aren’tfaring as well as men: On average, they areless likely to be promoted.

Of course, the challenge is how to breakdown the stereotypes that cause people to dis-like women when they make that ask. Womenwho negotiate are 67% more likely than womenwho don’t to receive feedback that their per-sonal style is “intimidating,” “too aggressive,”or “bossy,” and they are more likely to receivethat kind of feedback than men who negotiate.

The reason for this pushback lies in many ofthe unconscious assumptions we all hold aboutwomen and men. We expect men to be asser-tive, look out for themselves, and lobby formore—so there’s little downside when they doit. But women must be communal and collab-orative, nurturing and giving, focused on theteam and not themselves, lest they be viewedas self-absorbed. So when a woman advocatesfor herself, people often see her unfavorably.

The problem isn’t just in the asking. Womenface an uphill battle right from the start. Theyhave less access to senior-level sponsors andget less feedback on their performance, despiteasking for it as frequently as men. Women inour survey are more likely to say that theydon’t receive challenging assignments and thatthey struggle with being recognized for theirideas and contributions. So not surprisingly,women are almost three times as likely as mento think their gender will make it harder to geta raise, promotion or chance to get ahead.

These things matter—not just for women,but for us all. Research shows that genderequality is as good for business as it is for in-dividuals. Diverse teams and companies pro-duce better results and higher revenue andprofits, which lead to more opportunity for ev-eryone, not just women.

We believe that leaders want to do what’sright—and it’s heartening to see so many com-panies choosing to participate in this study.

Seventy-eight percent of them report that gen-der diversity is a top-10 priority for their CEO.But while companies are highly committed tosolving the problem, they are struggling to puttheir commitment into practice. Only half ofmanagers say they know what to do to im-prove gender diversity, and only a quarter ofemployees report that their managers fre-quently challenge biased language or behaviorwhen it happens. Although 93% of companiesreport they use clear criteria for hiring andpromotions, only 57% of employees say this istrue in practice.

This report is a reminder, yet again, of howmuch is left to do.

There are steps that companies can takeright now, starting with measuring progress.Although most companies track the genderbreakdown of their hiring and promotions,fewer than 35% set targets—and it’s harder tomake progress when you don’t have clear goalsin place.

Companies also need to make a strongercase for gender diversity, explaining why itmatters and how it benefits everyone. Theycan invest in gender-bias training—especiallyfor managers, who make many of the decisionsthat affect women’s daily work experience andcareer progression. Companies can also en-courage everyone, from entry-level employeesto leaders, to talk openly about gender stereo-types and provide women with more leader-ship opportunities, access to sponsors, andrecognition for their contributions.

And all of us can encourage women to keepnegotiating—until the day that it’s seen asperfectly normal, and even expected, forwomen to ask for more.

More women are leaning in—and we’ll allgo farther when the workplace stops pushingback.

Ms. Sandberg is the chief operatingofficer of Facebook Inc. and the founderof LeanIn.Org. Rachel Thomas, presidentof Lean In, contributed to this essay.

WOMENARELEANING IN—BUTTHEYFACEPUSHBACKBY SHERYL SANDBERG

Pushback against women who negotiatestems from our unconscious assumptionsabout women and men, Ms. Sandberg says.

FACEBO

OK

MORE ONLINEAnswer survey questions andcompare your responses with thestudy’s findings, and view videoson company day care and more, atWSJ.com/womenintheworkplace.

WSJ.COM

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, September 27, 2016 | R3

Brokerage Products: Not FDIC Insured • No Bank Guarantee • May Lose Value

To see how Schwab stands by our word, visit www.schwab.com/accountability*Charles Schwab received the highest numerical score in the J.D. Power 2016 Full-Service Investor Satisfaction Study, based on 6,006 responses from 20 firms measuring opinions of investors who usedfull-service investment institutions and were surveyed in January 2016. Your experiences may vary. Visit jdpower.com.There are eligibility requirements to work with a dedicated Financial Consultant.Wealth management refers to products and services available through the operating subsidiaries of the Charles Schwab Corporation of which there are important differences including, but not limitedto, the type of advice and assistance provided, fees charged, and the rights and obligations of the parties. It is important to understand the differences when determining which products and/orservices to select.The Charles Schwab Corporation provides a full range of brokerage, banking, and financial advisory services through its operating subsidiaries. Its broker-dealer subsidiary, Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.(“Schwab”), Member SIPC, offers investment services and products, including Schwab brokerage accounts. Its banking subsidiary, Charles Schwab Bank (member FDIC and an Equal Housing Lender),provides deposit and lending services and products. ASK QUESTIONS. BE ENGAGED. OWN YOUR TOMORROW. is a trademark of Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.©2016 The Charles Schwab Corporation. All rights reserved. (0516-FTV3) ADP77864-02

You’ve earned yourmoney, but are youowning it?

In life, you question everything. The same should be true

when it comes to managing your wealth. Do you know what

your investment recommendations are based on? Does

your financial professional stand by their word? Do you

know how much you’re paying in fees? And how those fees

affect your returns? Ask your financial professional, and if

you don’t like their answers, ask again at Schwab. We think

you’ll like what we have to say. Talk to us or one of the

thousands of independent registered investment advisors

that do businesswith Schwab. Ask questions. Be engaged.

Own your tomorrow.TM

Schwab ranked“Highest in Investor Satisfaction

with Full-Service Brokerage Firms.” *

Wealth Management at Charles SchwabPLANNING | PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

INCOME STRATEGIES | BANKING

R4 | Tuesday, September 27, 2016 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

JOURNAL REPORT | WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

executives frequently swaptips about balancing workand home demands, such asfast weeknight dinner menus.Gloria Chen says she ap-proached Donna Morris, a fel-low working mother, beforerequesting Mr. Narayen’s ap-proval to leave at 5 p.m. onceher son began middle schoolAug. 23.

“Donna was very support-ive’’ and asked whether thatdeparture would give herenough time at home, recallsMs. Chen, a vice presidentwith a four-day schedule since2010. Mr. Narayen approved.

Ms. Morris, an executivevice president in charge of hu-man resources, wrote anAdobe blog post about herearly departure for Thursday“date nights” with her sonwhen he entered high schoolseveral years ago. Their datesforced her to reschedule 8:30p.m. Thursday calls with Indiacolleagues. Many employeespraised her for carving outfamily time, she says.

The Adobe executive be-lieves that informing the en-tire company about her weeklyearly exits strongly signaled

how lower-level women cansucceed. “You have to inte-grate your work with the lifeyou have,” she says.

Similarly, Ms. Morris per-suaded Mr. Narayen to sweetenpaid parental leave for U.S.staffers last year. The improve-ment typified how “Adobe’stop executive women makesure that diversity and inclu-sion are a core part of our cor-porate mission,’’ she says.

Women and profitsCompanies with higher pro-

portions of women in uppermanagement achieve higherprofits, according to a recentstudy of 21,980 firms in 91countries by the Peterson In-stitute for International Eco-nomics. Profitable firms wherewomen represent 30% of lead-ers saw a 15% increase in onemeasure of gross profit, re-searchers estimated.

There may be less stereo-typical thinking, too. At Kim-berly-Clark, for example, Ms.Gottung says that after morewomen were in executive posi-tions, a noticeable change tookplace in some high-level dis-cussions about whether to of-

fer transfers to certain womenmanagers.

Some of the women hadbeen asked before but re-sisted, because their husbandsowned local businesses, for in-stance. This, Ms. Gottung re-calls, led some of the male ex-ecutives to ask why thosewomen would be willing toleave now. To which thewomen in the room re-sponded: “Ask again. Maybewe are stereotyping this per-son.’’

More than half of the indi-viduals whom the company as-sumed were reluctant to moveactually did relocate. “We havefound ourselves amazed,’’ Ms.Gottung reports.

In hindsight, she adds, Kim-berly-Clark executives realizedthat “women are better at say-ing, ‘Maybe we are wrong.’ ’’

Ms. Lublin is managementnews editor for The WallStreet Journal in New Yorkand the author of “EarningIt: Hard-Won Lessons fromTrailblazing Women at theTop of the Business World.”#EarningIt. Email her atjoann.lublin@wsj.com.

COMPANIES RUN differentlywhen more women holdpower.

In the management suitesof Adobe Systems Inc., BestBuy Co., Target Corp., GapInc. and Kimberly-ClarkCorp., women occupy as manyas five of eight spots on themale chief executive’s leader-ship team. These female exec-utives often serve as role mod-els for other women in thecompany. They push for betterdiversity practices and helpmen overcome hidden biases.

They also are reshaping at-titudes about how women’scareers progress, and champi-oning nontraditional ways toget ahead.

Change is coming slowly,but corner offices are lookinga bit less like exclusive boys’clubs lately. At S&P 500 com-panies with men in command,11.9% of the four other high-est-paid officers are women,up about four percentagepoints from a decade earlier,according to an analysis forThe Wall Street Journal by re-searchers Equilar Inc. Overall,19% of C-suite executives arefemale—a slight increase from

17% in 2015, according to ananalysis by LeanIn.Org andMcKinsey & Co.

The increased ranks of ex-ecutive-suite women couldportend further gains for theirfemale associates. “The morewomen who are in positions ofpower visibly, the better it isfor women lower in the organ-ization,’’ says Robin Ely, a Har-vard Business School profes-sor and gender researcher.

Companies with morewomen in senior managementtend to pay more attention totheir viewpoints and advance-ment needs. “When it’s onlyone or two women, our voicescan get lost,” says Liz Gottung,who heads human resources atKimberly-Clark. At the con-sumer-products maker, five ofCEO Tom Falk’s eight directreports are women.

The new CFOFive of 10 executives re-

porting to Best Buy CEO Hu-bert Joly are female. They in-clude Corie Barry, promotedto chief financial officer inJune. The electronics retailerchose her mainly because herpredecessor, Sharon McCol-lam, actively sponsored her.Both genders consider high-level sponsorship essential to

their corporate success, theMcKinsey analysis showed.

Ms. McCollam startedgrooming Ms. Barry, a divi-sional finance vice president,soon after joining Best Buy asits first female finance chief inlate 2012. The followingspring, Ms. Barry advanced tosenior vice president of do-mestic finance, a powerfulnew position.

“I do not believe I wouldhave ever gotten that rolewithout Sharon’s advocacy,’’Ms. Barry says. A woman posi-tioned high up “can help bringother women to her level.’’

As Ms. Barry’s new supe-rior, Ms. McCollam surprisedher in August 2013 by sayingshe could be the next CFO ifshe polished certain skills. Thefinance chief urged Ms. Barryto have the courage to takecontradictory points of viewduring crucial conversationsand to deepen her involvementin investor relations and otherkey areas.

Ms. Barry performed well.In late 2014, she says, Ms. Mc-Collam declared, “You are thefront-runner to be my replace-ment.”

Ms. Barry became chiefstrategic growth officer andMr. Joly’s fourth female lieu-tenant last October. She saysMs. McCollam continuedcoaching her, even critiquingher inadequate pushback fiveminutes after a meetingended. Ms. Barry “will be anincredible CFO,’’ Ms. McCol-lam said in Best Buy’s an-nouncement about their tran-sition. She declined tocomment further.

At Adobe, CEO ShantanuNarayen commands a man-agement team of threewomen and six men. The soft-ware maker’s highest female

When women are in top management positions,the impact is felt throughout the organization

BY JOANN S. LUBLIN

Best Buy’s CFO, Corie Barry, was actively sponsored by her predecessor, also a woman.

SARA

HST

ACK

EFO

RTH

EWALL

STRE

ETJO

URN

AL

Susan Hertzberg, 58, recentlystepped down after six yearsas the chief executive of health-care company Boston HeartDiagnostics Corp. Before becom-ing a CEO, she says,

she sometimes felt invisible in corporate meetingsand developed strategies for being heard.

Early in my career—andnot even so early, as a di-rector-level person in a For-tune 500 company—itwasn’t unusual for there tobe only one or two womenaround the table of 10 or 12people. Often, as an associ-ate or manager, I got askedto be the note-taker.

It was something thatwas noticeable, and so veryquickly I started to show upto meetings without a pen,without paper, and literallyput up my hands and say,“Sorry, can’t do it.” I’drather look unprepared.

I’d be in a meeting andI’d make a point, and it wasas if I was invisible. But theperson next to me, whomight be male, would re-phrase what I just said twominutes later, and the othermeeting attendees wouldthink that he just had in-vented water. You do thedouble-take of, “Wait aminute. I just said that.”

It was a phenomenonthat other women, we couldtalk about outside of thesemeetings. It was this levelof dismissal that women’sideas weren’t really beinglistened to.

I don’t think it was thatthe ideas weren’t beingcommunicated in a compel-ling or powerful way. I don’tknow what it was exactly,other than, not all of thepower at the table is equal.That’s true today as it wasthen.

One of my takeawayswas, I was sitting there be-cause they had to have methere, not because they ei-ther wanted me there orvalued what I brought tothe table in the same waythey did of men. It’s some-thing that women struggle

with, and we have to makesure that we’re communi-cating powerfully and de-manding—it’s the soft de-mand—to be heard throughthe way that we communi-cate.

Some of that’s changed.As a CEO in the companiesI’ve led, I’d like to believe it’sdifferent. But I just think it’ssomething that womenhave had to deal with for avery, very long time, thisnotion of invisibility in theroom. You get a seat at thetable, but somehow yourseat’s invisible.

I started to socialize myideas before the meeting. Imade sure that on thingsthat I had a particular pointof view on—especially if itwasn’t going to be statusquo—that with key peoplethat were going to be inmeetings, I went and talkedabout my ideas with them.They knew they were myideas. They knew where Istood. I knew how to notline myself up against peo-ple.

If you, behind the scenes,are there and you’re in con-trol, if the way to get itdone is to have a morepowerful person than youown the idea, then you’rejust being smart.

That’s an OK thing to do.You’re going to be hearddifferently, and you can’t beignored—and someone mayactually give you credit.

In the end, you’re gettingacknowledged for havingbrought that thinking to thetable, even if the way youbrought it to the table wasoutside of the room.

—As told to RachelFeintzeig. Ms. Hertzberg’s

comments have beencondensed and edited.

STRATEGIES

HOWTOBEHEARD

Growing PresenceThe proportion of female chief executives at S&P 500 companieshas climbed over the past decade, as has the share of top femaleofficers reporting to male CEOs

*Based on named executive officers in proxy statements.

Source: Equilar Inc. analysis for The Wall Street Journal

CEOSTOP OFFICERS*REPORTING TO MALE CEOS

Pct. female, 2006 Pct. female, 2016

2.3%

5%

7.8%

11.9%

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

lieve they have equal oppor-tunities for growth at theircompanies. Without bridgingthe gap between corporate in-tent and individual experi-ence, companies won’t breakthe stall.� People and organizationsare afraid to address biashead-on. Men and women, inall roles, shy away from callingout gender bias when it oc-curs. Less than a quarter ofemployees see their managersregularly challenge gender-bi-ased language or behavior.Less than half of all employeessee day-to-day evidence thattheir company is worriedabout creating a culture thatembraces diverse leadershipstyles. Though there has beena surge of corporate programsfocused on unconscious bias,people aren’t having the cou-rageous conversations.� Front-line managers needhelp. Change does not happenwithout the full engagement offront-line leaders. These arethe plant managers, regionalsales leaders, store managers,team coaches and general man-agers who make companiestick. Today, only 9% of employ-ees see managers recognizedfor making progress on gen-der-diversity goals. Less thanhalf of all workers see manag-ers taking advantage of the di-verse strengths of their teamsor considering a diverse lineupof candidates for open posi-tions. What this tells us is thatmanagers are either not get-ting the message or don’t knowhow to manage differently.

Faced with these chal-lenges, it’s time to rewrite ourgender playbooks so that theydo more to change the fabricof everyday work life by en-couraging relentless execution,fresh ideas and courageouspersonal actions.� Uncompromising execu-tion. Changing outcomes on ascale that will move the nee-dle requires relentless—evenradical—execution that buildson the hits and misses of thepast decade. Areas to focuson include creating fair, “firstpromotion” experiences, anddeveloping more holistic fam-ily-leave programs that incor-porate longer leave options,systematic onboarding backinto roles, and tracking ofpromotion and attrition oneto three years post-leave.

Sponsorship needs a shotin the arm, too. Instead of de-signing rifle-shot sponsorship

initiatives, as is too often thecase, we need to do more toembed sponsorship, over thelong haul, in the career devel-opment of men and women.� Fresh, bold thinking. It’ssorely needed—and there aresome promising signs. For in-stance, one industrial companyis implementing a new pro-gram called “all roles flex” thatincorporates flexibility into ev-ery role from the factory floorto the corporate center. Othercompanies are openly andtransparently addressing payequity. Still others are experi-menting with new analytictools to reduce bias in résuméscreening and improve localtalent sourcing.� Courageous leadership.Earlier this year, one of ourpartners at McKinsey madewaves by posting on our in-tranet an anecdote aboutshowing up at a meeting withan all-male team of experts,and having his client askwhether this team was suffi-ciently diverse to see all sidesof the client’s problem. Ourpartner said this was a defin-ing moment for him in con-fronting his blind spots withrespect to gender, and de-scribed how he was acting dif-ferently as a result—startingwith engaging women at thefirm whose expertise ad-vanced his thinking about theclient’s situation. When lead-ers communicate openly aboutexperiences like this, theyhelp shift the dialogue, influ-ence everyday decisions upand down the line, and changethe corporate culture.

Improving gender out-comes is extremely hard, aswe well know from the obsta-cles our own organizationscontinue to encounter in mak-ing deep and lasting progresson this front. We offer theseideas not to discourage lead-ers about the magnitude ofthe challenge, but to em-bolden us all to be persistentand creative.

As our research underscores,we need to look more carefullyat the day-to-day experiences,for better or worse, of the peo-ple in our organizations. Such alook, even if sobering, will bean invaluable step towardbreaking gender gridlock.

Mr. Barton is the globalmanaging director of McKin-sey & Co. Lareina Yee, aMcKinsey senior partner,contributed to this article.

MORE THAN 75% of CEOs in-clude gender equality in theirtop 10 business priorities, butgender outcomes across thelargest companies are notchanging. Our latest researchindicates, for example, thatcorporate America promotesmen at 30% higher rates thanwomen during their early ca-reer stages, and that entry-level women are significantlymore likely than men to havespent five or more years in thesame role.

Why is gender inequality inthe workplace so persistentdespite growing attentionfrom business leaders and themedia—and what should weall do differently? Our new re-search suggests some clues.

Where we seem to fall shortis in translating top-level com-mitment into a truly inclusivework environment. We seestrong evidence that evenwhen top executives say theright things, employees don’tthink they have a plan formaking progress toward gen-der equality, don’t see thosewords backed up with action,don’t feel confident calling outgender bias when they see it,and don’t think front-linemanagers have gotten the

message. Consider these find-ings from our survey con-ducted with LeanIn.Org, whichincluded more than 130 com-panies and over 34,000 menand women:� Employees question theplan of attack. Companieshave been trying to apply thesame playbook of programsand policies for over a decade.Nearly all companies haveflexibility, mentorship and pa-rental-leave programs. De-spite these efforts, only 45%of employees think their com-panies are doing what it takesto improve diversity out-comes. The younger genera-tion is even less confident—with only 38% of entry-levelwomen thinking their com-pany has a good handle ongender diversity.� Commitment isn’t evidentin everyday actions. There’salso a yawning gap betweenwhat companies think they doand what people experienceday-to-day. For example, morethan 70% of companies saythey are committed to diver-sity, but less than a third oftheir workers see senior lead-ers held accountable for im-proving gender outcomes.Over 90% of companies reportusing clear, objective criteriafor hiring and promotions, yetonly about half of women be-

Time for aNewGender-EqualityPlaybook

BY DOMINIC BARTON

Companies seem to fall short in translating top-level commitmentinto a truly inclusive work environment, says Dominic Barton.

NORM

BETT

S/BL

OOMBE

RGNEW

S

The More Women in Power,The More Women in Power

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, September 27, 2016 | R5

JOURNAL REPORT | WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.Source: LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co. Women in the Workplace 2016 study of 132 companies

Industry Pipeline | The share of total employees in each level who are women, by industry

Assetmanagementand institutional

investors

Banking,insurance,financialservices

Consumerpackagedgoods

Energyand basicmaterials

Health careand

pharmaceuticals

Logistics, travel,infrastructure,industrial

manufacturing

Media,entertainment,

telecom

Professionaland information

services

Retailersand

restaurants

Technology0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70%

Entry levelManagerSenior manager/director

Vice presidentSenior vice presidentC-suite

Stacy Brown-Philpot, 40, CEO of TaskRabbit, an onlinemarketplace for short-term freelance labor, says she and herhusband have always considered their careers to be equallyimportant. To that end, the two share household responsibili-ties equally, she says—just not on a daily basis.

I’ve known my husband for 21 years. We’vebeen married for 16. He works, and he’s ambi-tious, too. We’ve gone in cycles. Sometimes,he’s taken on more responsibility than me athome, and sometimes I’ve taken on more. Wethink about it like taking turns, and we knowthe other person is going to be there when itis their turn.

When I wanted to go to business school,we were living in New York and weren’t en-gaged. I got into business school at StanfordUniversity, and I said, all right. He proposedand said, “I’m going to come, too.” When Igraduated, I got a job at Google, and he wasworking at SAP. We were both going, going,going. It was just the two of us.

I took a job in India; he didn’t go with me.A few years before, he took an assignment inGermany and went on his own. He recalledhow valuable it was and said, “It’s your turn.”

When my first daughter came along, itwas like, “Whose turn is it?” It has been aconscious decision on how many hours wework, and we decide how many days we canbe home for family dinner. When someone’scareer goes into high gear, someone has tocall their turn.

He is a true 50/50 partner, wants to investin spending time with our children. We makefinancial decisions together, but somebodydoes the budget, somebody does the invest-ing. [On weekly tasks,] he likes to groceryshop. He’ll get on Instacart and make our or-der; I happen to handle all the Amazon or-

ders. We both use Munchery for dinner acouple of times a week.

One of us works out on Monday andWednesday mornings, and the other gets thechildren ready. When the other works outTuesday and Thursday morning, the othergets the children ready. On Fridays it’s a tos-sup—whoever is less tired gets to exercise.

When I took the CEO role, I said, OK, forthe next 90 days, it is my turn. I’m going totravel a lot, I’m not going to be home atnight. Right now, it is no one’s turn, so we’reback to 50/50. I had a bunch of travel, Ibrought the whole family on the weekend,then I did some more travel. I’m just lucky tobe able to have that option.

Though I’m CEO, whenever it’s his turn,it’s his turn. We’ve known each other forsuch a long time, we’ll figure out what infra-structure it takes. I am not shy about how Ideal with these things—it is important forme to be transparent and to show that it ispossible.

We have 59% women at TaskRabbit, andthey are dealing with the same issue. I waschief operating officer when I had my seconddaughter, and no one thought I was going togo on maternity leave, but I had to—anotherwoman at the company was having a babythree months later. I needed her to know shecould be gone for three months and be OK.

—As told to Nikki Waller.Ms. Brown-Philpot’s commentshave been condensed and edited.

STRATEGIES

TAKINGTURNSATHOME

THE TECHNOLOGY industry isborrowing a football tactic totry to recruit more women.

Since last year, companiesincluding Facebook Inc. andPinterest Inc. began imple-menting the Rooney Rule, de-veloped by the National Foot-ball League to get morediversity in its coaching ranks.President Barack Obama citedit last year as a tool tech com-panies such as Amazon.comInc. and Microsoft Corp. areusing.

The idea is that tech com-panies must interview at leastone woman or underrepre-sented minority for a position.The Rooney Rule is “a mecha-nism for getting people to bemore inclusive in hiring,” saysEllen Pao, a former venturecapitalist and former interim

chief executive of Reddit Inc.,who recently co-founded Proj-ect Include, a tool to bettermeasure and increase diver-sity in technology. “The cur-rent practices don’t work.”

A low showingWomen’s representation in

tech falls among the lowest ofany industry, from entry-levelpositions to the C-suite, ac-cording to LeanIn.Org andMcKinsey & Co.’s Women inthe Workplace 2016 survey.For instance, 36% of entry-level tech workers arewomen, lower than any indus-try except energy and basicmaterials.

Advocates of the RooneyRule, which has been used inother sectors such as financialservices and the legal indus-try, say it forces companies tolook for job candidates theymight not have considered.But some people question its

effectiveness because itdoesn’t focus on how manywomen are hired and then re-main at the company.

“It could perpetuate themyth that the only problem ismore diverse people aren’tconsidered,” says Joelle Emer-son, chief executive of Para-digm, a diversity consultancythat works with many SiliconValley firms.

A Harvard Business Reviewstudy published in April deter-mined that if there is only onewoman in a group of candi-dates, there is statisticallyzero chance that she will bethe one to be hired. The oddschange if there is more thanone female candidate.

The Rooney Rule is namedafter the owner of the Pitts-burgh Steelers, Dan Rooney,who pushed for the NFL to re-quire teams to interview atleast one minority candidatefor all head-coach and general-

manager positions.Since it was implemented in

2003, the number of blackhead coaches has increased.Earlier this year, the NFL saidthat it would expand theRooney Rule to include womenwhen recruiting for executivejobs.

Adapting the ruleThe tech industry caught

onto it when companies beganreleasing diversity reports twoyears ago, showing the lowrepresentation of women,blacks and Hispanics.

Pinterest started using theRooney Rule last year for ex-ecutive and leadership posi-tions.

The image-discovery sitewanted to “have decision mak-ers and role models at the topthat represent diverse back-grounds,” says Candice Mor-gan, Pinterest’s head of diver-sity.

The search for a head of en-gineering this year took fourmonths, much longer than

usual, as the company can-vassed for candidates outsideits usual networks. Of the“dozens and dozens” of peopleconsidered, one-third werewomen. “It took a huge ef-fort,” Ms. Morgan says.

But it paid off. Pinterestthis month hired Li Fan, a fe-male engineering executivewho has worked at Google andBaidu Inc. Pinterest is now us-ing the recruiting tactic forless-senior business roles.

Facebook began testing itsversion of the Rooney Rulelast year.

The social network createdthe expectation that recruiterswill consider at least one per-son from underrepresentedgroups, such as women, saysMaxine Williams, Facebook’s

global director of diversity.“Even setting the bar at onehas changed expectations, butno one was stopping at one,”Ms. Williams says.

Yet some warn that theRooney Rule may need someadjustment to fit the needs ofthe industry.

There’s a big difference be-tween the NFL and tech com-panies, says Freada KaporKlein, a venture capitalist whoco-founded Project Include.The National Football League“had racially diverse star play-ers, just not head coaches.That analogy doesn’t apply totech,” she says.

Tech companies need to usethe Rooney Rule beyond top-level positions, she says; oth-erwise, “you’re not building adeep bench.”

Ms. Passariello is deputytechnology editor in TheWall Street Journal’s SanFrancisco bureau. She can bereached at christina.passariello@wsj.com.

It Worked in Football. Can It Work for Tech Firms?The technology industry looks for ways to increase the representation of women employees

BY CHRISTINAPASSARIELLO

Pinterest began using the Rooney Rule for senior positions and has since broadened its use.

JEFF

CHIU/ASSOCIATEDPRESS

The RooneyRule broadensthe pool of jobcandidates.

R6 | Tuesday, September 27, 2016 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

High Finance and Family-Friendly? KKR Is TryingThe investment firm is experimenting with some unusual perks, but the culture isn’t easy to change

KKR & CO. IS UNDERTAKINGan experiment intended tomake high finance more fam-ily-friendly.

Last year, the New York-based investment firm beganoffering new parents an un-usually generous package ofbenefits. As one of the perks,for instance, the firm pays tofly nannies and infants onbusiness trips during thebaby’s first year.

Employees and executivessay the policy changes are awelcome start toward makingit easier for people at KKR tomanage family life with thedemands of the private-equitybusiness, where extensivetravel and workweeks of 70-plus hours are the norm. Butthe tensions of being a work-ing parent in finance are farfrom resolved, the firm ac-knowledges.

Among the company’sgoals: to attract and keepmore talented women, whomake up 18% of the firm’s 510core investment professionalsand about 31% of its personneloverall, and to encourage morefathers to take meaningful pa-rental leave. KKR says thenumber of female employeeshas increased about 4% sincethe start of the year.

Wrestling with flexibilityAt a time when companies

like Amazon.com Inc., Micro-soft Corp. and Credit SuisseGroup have expanded benefitsfor new parents, KKR’s offer-ings are notable. In addition toits flying caregivers, the firmofficially recast maternity andpaternity leave as gender-neu-tral “parental leave,” expandedpaid leave for primary caregiv-ers to 16 weeks and retainedcoaches to advise employeesgoing on and returning fromleave. The firm also pays ship-ping costs so that mothers cansend breast milk home and

BY RACHEL EMMASILVERMAN

JOURNAL REPORT | WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

include food maker Danone SA.“This kind of misguided ques-tioning can really derail newworking moms and lead themto hold back at work.”

Getting men involvedCoaching is often offered to

both men and women going onleave. At Ernst & Young, whichhas provided parental-leavecoaching since 2012 by a teamof in-house coaches, encourag-ing men to use the service andto take paternity leave hasbeen a goal from the start,says Maryella Gockel, wholeads the firm’s flexibility ini-tiatives in the Americas. Ofthe 700 people who have gonethrough the program, about25% are men, she says.

Gerald Whelan, 44, an EYtax partner in New York, re-cently became the first-timefather of twin boys. He hasbeen meeting for hourlongsessions with his coach aboutevery four weeks since Decem-ber to help prepare himself forworking fatherhood. Amongthe issues they have discussedis making it clear to colleaguesand clients that he would begoing away on paternity leave,rather than vacation. He tooka couple of weeks’ leave inApril and plans to take severalmore weeks off in the fall.

“I talked to her about theimportance of saying I’m tak-ing leave, in order to set thetone as a partner, since peoplereally look to the partners tosee what they are doing,” saysMr. Whelan.

—Rachel Emma Silverman

SOME EMPLOYERS are addinga new family-friendly benefit:helping workers prepare forparental leave.

As many companies expandparental leave from severalweeks to several months, asmall but growing number ofemployers, including retailerEtsy Inc. and professional-ser-vices firm Ernst & Young, arebeginning to offer parental-leave coaching.

Employers say the coachingis designed to help retain andadvance women as they expandtheir families, and can helpmen feel more comfortabletaking paternity leave. Paren-tal-leave coaches say they areseeing increased employer in-terest in their services, whichare mostly offered by compa-nies in the fields of technology,finance, professional servicessuch as management consult-ing and accounting, and retail.

Setting expectationsCoaches, often with a back-

ground in organizational psy-chology, typically meet withemployees for several hourlongsessions before a leave and afew times after they return.Sessions can be by phone, inperson or by videoconference,and are sometimes held ingroups, depending on the ar-rangement the employer signs.

Coaches typically includemanagers in some sessions tohelp both workers and theirbosses set clear expectationsabout communication andworkload during and afterleave, says Karen Rubin, man-aging director, North America,of Talking Talent, which pro-vides coaching on family-leavetransitions to firms such asDeutsche Bank AG, Bank ofAmerica Corp., MetLife Inc.and Twitter Inc.

Upon the workers’ return,coaches and their clients saythey talk through thorny is-sues such as fitting in nursingwith business travel, rearrang-ing schedules to get home ear-lier, asking for flexible workarrangements and how to gen-erally navigate the shift from“working person to workingparent,” says Michelle Fried-man, who provides coachingfor companies including finan-cial-services firm KKR & Co.

Navigating career paths andpromotions and boosting con-fidence after an extended leaveare often a focus of the ses-sions. For new mothers, coach-ing can help “control any inter-nal chatter that is making herquestion her value,” says AmyBeacom, chief executive of theCenter for Parental LeaveLeadership, a coaching andconsulting firm, whose clients

TransitionPlanningParental-leave coaching helps women rise—and makes fathers more comfortable

even offers unlimited coveragefor fertility treatments, aspokeswoman says.

“These are important build-ing blocks, but they are not thebe all and end all,” says RobertGottlieb, human-resourceschief at KKR, which has about1,200 employees world-wide.“The fact is, we still have adistance to go on a lot ofthings, but we’ve come a greatdistance from where we were.”

He’s not aiming to softenthe workload, but the firm isstarting to explore ways tomake jobs more manageablefor workers with families, likeallowing some employees towork more from home, reallo-cating staffing on certain proj-ects and developing alterna-tive career paths for thosewho may not want to pursuethe partner track.

KKR’s driven work environ-ment is “frankly a competitiveadvantage,” says Mr. Gottlieb.“I don’t know if we are lookingto be less intense. We can cer-tainly be more flexible. I thinkwe need to wrestle with thatmore.”

When his wife wanted to

accelerate her career, Mr.Gottlieb spent two years as acarpool-driving, stay-at-homefather after leaving a top hu-man-resources position atGoldman Sachs. He drew onthat experience when inter-viewing for the job at KKR,and told superiors he wantedto find ways to make the firmmore family-friendly.

Tweaking the cultureTypical of KKR’s hard-driv-

ing employees is Angela John-son, who was a principal atthe firm when she went intolabor during a conference callin the spring of last year.

Ms. Johnson, 35 years old,was on maternity leave whenher boss called to tell her thatKKR had extended its paidleave, making her eligible forfour additional weeks of leave.

She wrestled with the op-tion at first. Ms. Johnson saysshe had already coordinatedher return with colleagues andhad practiced leaving herdaughter with her nanny dur-ing the day to prepare them.Four co-workers were cover-ing her position for her in her

absence, and she didn’t wantto stress her colleagues fur-ther, Ms. Johnson recalls. Shedid agree to the extra time off,but spread the extra weeksthroughout the rest of theyear. She was promoted to adirector role soon after she re-turned to work.

A few years ago, KKR’sleaders realized the firm waslosing younger female associ-ates who didn’t yet have chil-dren but who had concernsthe company wouldn’t be ame-nable to their family needs.

An outside consultant’s re-search several years ago foundthat some women at KKR whodid have children felt uncom-fortable taking all their mater-nity leave, and that “there wasa tacit expectation that theysort of had to work while onmaternity leave, not becauseanyone told them to, but be-cause they felt they neededto,” says Mr. Gottlieb.

KKR’s employees are “superdedicated and driven,” saysMichelle Friedman, the consul-tant who uncovered those sen-timents. “While the employeeslove that part of the culture, it

had resulted in a tough placeto be an active parent in,” butthat’s changing, she says.

Mr. Gottlieb says the chal-lenges of working parenthoodare far from solved. But cul-tural shifts, some subtle, areunder way. Until recently, em-ployees rarely turned on out-of-office email notificationswhen on vacation or parentalleave; now workers regularlydo so. “Small victories,” Mr.Gottlieb says, “but there isdefinitely a palpable differ-ence.”

He expects more changes atthe firm, but adds that anyoneinterested in working in fi-nance must “absolutely beprepared to juggle and balancein ways that other 9-to-5 ca-reers don’t require.”

Infants on the roadBrittany Bagley, a KKR di-

rector based in Menlo Park,Calif., took her nanny and in-fant son with her for out-of-town board meetings. Bondingwith her son after a day ofmeetings was really nice, re-calls Ms. Bagley, 33. Butthings like comforting a cry-ing baby at night and travel-ing with baby gear instead ofjust a personal carry-on addedto her workload. “Sometimesit’s nice to go to a hotel andjust be able to sleep for thewhole night,” she says with alaugh.

Ms. Bagley’s load remains

heavy—she typically worksabout 70 hours a week, thoughher hours vary widely—butshe has made adjustments soshe can spend more time withher family. She participated inKKR’s pilot program to use aparental-leave transition coachwhen she returned to work. Inseveral phone and in-personsessions, she and her coachdiscussed how to restructureher workdays so she could gethome for her son’s early-eve-ning bedtime. She tries to ar-rive at work by 7:30 a.m. tobeat Bay Area traffic and logsin more from home at nightnow, she says.

Ms. Johnson, who took hernanny and infant daughteralong on several trips, foundthat traveling with a babybrought unexpected dividends.At a real-estate investing con-ference in San Francisco lastfall, Ms. Johnson had tried tonetwork with some potentialinvestors during the daytimesessions but found it difficultto get their attention.

At cocktail hour that eve-ning, those same prospectsmade a beeline toward her, be-cause she was carrying 6-month-old Madison. As Ms.Johnson puts it, “She’s a greatmarketer.”

Ms. Silverman is a WallStreet Journal reporter inAustin, Texas. Email her atrachel.silverman@wsj.com.

Angela Johnson was on maternity leave when she learned KKR had extended its paid leave.

BESS

ADLE

RFO

RTH

EWALL

STRE

ETJO

URN

AL

Gerald Whelan of EY with his twins. He began meeting with a coach in December to prepare.

CAITLINOCH

SFO

RTH

EWALL

STRE

ETJO

URN

AL

Learning to Be Flexible

Average weeks of paid parental leave among surveyed companies

˜10 weeksPaid maternity leave

˜4 weeksPaid paternity leave

Extended maternity leave (exceeds legal requirements) 53%

Extended paternity leave (exceeds legal requirements) 45%

Emergency backup child-care services 38%

Subsidies for child care 31%

The percentage of companies surveyed offering

Source: LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co. Women in the Workplace 2016 study of 132 companies

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

For more information please visit womenin.wsj.com.

© 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 3DJ4288

The Wall Street Journal would like to thank the sponsors for their

generous support of tonight’s Women in the Workplace event.

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, September 27, 2016 | R7

JOURNAL REPORT | WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

Christa Quarles, 42, is the CEO ofrestaurant booking site OpenTableInc. Earlier she worked on WallStreet, which helped define hermanagement style and taught herthe value of negotiation.

When I graduated fromcollege in 1995, I went towork at the analyst programat the Merrill Lynch bonddesk. Some of the charactersfrom “Liar’s Poker” [MichaelLewis’s account of his timeas a Wall Street bond sales-man in the 1980s] were stillthere on the trading floor. Itwas an intensely aggressiveenvironment. I watched atrader on the floor spoutingexpletives into a phone. Thenhe broke the phone in half, atwhich point he opened adrawer full of new phonesand plugged in a new phoneand continued the conversa-tion. It was one of thosethings like, “Oh, I am offi-cially in the real world.”

There was definitely anelement of rolling with it.There’s a little bit of harden-ing, for good and for bad,that that Wall Street envi-ronment provided me. Beingyelled at, sworn at, just theverbal assault—you startrecognizing on some levelit’s not personal.

One of the things aboutWall Street is that it’s veryobjective: Here’s what we’retrying to achieve. I went toThomas Weisel Partners asan internet analyst. Therewas the objectivity of: Didyou put up the number ornot? In some ways, it was areal benefit because itwasn’t some wishy-washy,“Oh, I think this person isassertive enough.” You ei-ther got the stock call rightor you didn’t.

Then I found out I wasbeing paid less despite myperformance. I had a veryexplosive response to myboss. I was feeling frus-trated that there I was driv-

ing value for the companyand I wasn’t getting recog-nized for it. [A spokesmanfor Stifel Financial Corp.,which purchased ThomasWeisel Partners in 2010, de-clined to comment.]

The episode itself was ir-ritating and frustrating. Thegift it gave me, though, wasit forever erased the musclememory of being afraid tonegotiate for myself. Itcaused me to forever be su-per-comfortable with askingfor what I thought I wasvalued at. Now I don’t mindnegotiating. It’s just busi-ness. A lot of women havethat fear factor. In hindsight,despite it being painful, itturned out to be a gift forme. You learn that I’m notgoing to get anything unlessI speak up.

It’s valuable to be incredi-bly direct and very candid,getting to the point veryquickly and saying, here’swhat needs to happen. Be-ing forceful, but not inhu-mane either. I could see thata fear-based culture was noteffective. I think that’s beena shift of my style.

Early on, I suppressedmy femininity. I suppressedwhat it meant to be a morenurturing individual. As I’veaged, I’ve blended the twopieces together, recognizingI can be strong, I can bepowerful, while still beinghumane and nurturing tothe people around me.

You play the rules of thegame you’re in. Once youget to the top of the game,you can change the rules.

—As told to RachelFeintzeig. Ms. Quarles’scomments have beencondensed and edited.

STRATEGIES

ONNEGOTIATING

sions, and some women saidthey believed they couldn’t getahead at the company.

Mr. Gesing, who is based inAustin, Texas, thought thestrains were preventing his di-vision from reaching its poten-tial, but he wanted an ap-proach that differed fromtraditional diversity and inclu-sion training, which he saysfocuses too much on “compli-ance and numbers” and makeswhite men feel guarded.

A study, published last Oc-tober in the Journal of Experi-mental Social Psychology,found that white men are morelikely to feel threatened whentheir employers trumpet gen-der-equity and racial-diversitypolicies. There’s also evidencethose feelings can lead to poorjob performance by whitemales, says the paper’s leadauthor, Tessa Dover, psychol-ogy professor at the Universityof California, Santa Barbara.

Bill Proudman, CEO and co-founder of White Men as FullDiversity Partners, is one ofmany consultants trying to getbeyond the angst by havingmen confront assumptions in asetting where they don’t feel“beaten and humiliated.”

Part of what puts his partic-ipants at ease, he says, is thatwhite men like themselves are

leading the discussion. As a re-sult, he gets men to engagewith “fewer folded arms andgasps.”

Recognizing privilegeThat’s beneficial, because

Mr. Proudman’s workshop en-courages men to address some-thing that might cause eventhe most well-intentioned man-ager to roll his eyes: privilege.He often gives a few examplesto start them off, including: “Ican make mistakes, fail misera-bly on a project or be firedfrom a job without anyone at-tributing it to my gender,” or “Iam generally part of the gendermajority in most higher-levelworkplace meetings I attend.”

The central aim of his workis to get men to “notice theirprivilege and learn to use ithonorably,” he says.

Applied Materials has wit-nessed changes in its culture.More men at the company arethere to “help me lead thechange” to make the divisionfeel like more of a hospitableplace for women and minori-ties, Mr. Gesing says.

Stephen Caulfield attended aWhite Men as Full DiversityPartners seminar in 2014 withsome 16 colleagues from Dell.Mr. Caulfield, now a vice presi-dent of Dell Services, says the

program made him aware, forinstance, that some of his divi-sion’s more-ambitious womenweren’t progressing at thesame rate as equally qualifiedmen in part because the womenweren’t applying for roles withgreater responsibility.

That phenomenon is re-vealed in LeanIn.Org andMcKinsey & Co.’s Women inthe Workplace 2016 study.Women at every corporatelevel are less likely than mento want the next promotionand aspire to be a top execu-tive. Some 42% of women saythey are uninterested in mov-ing up because they fear theywon’t be able to balance familyand work commitments, ac-cording to the survey.

After attending the work-shop, Mr. Caulfield says, hehas been more successful inrecent years in getting womento pursue higher positions.“You can’t just post the roleand hope that women will ap-ply,” he says. “You have to pro-actively go to [promisingwomen candidates] and say,‘You should apply for this.’”

Mr. Simons is deputymanagement bureau chieffor The Wall Street Journalin New York. Email him atjohn.simons@wsj.com.

RICK GESING knew therewould be resistance to themeeting he had planned, so hekept the details secret.

As the vice president ofmanufacturing at Applied Ma-terials Inc., he wrote an emailinvitation to 10 of his directreports that described the off-site gathering as a four-day“leadership” meeting.

Not until the invitees—allwhite and male—arrived didthey learn they were about totake part in a gender and di-versity workshop called “TheWhite Man’s Caucus,” run byconsulting firm White Men asFull Diversity Partners.

Fears of re-educationThe initial reaction was less

than encouraging. The menfeared they were in for a typi-cal diversity-training course—amini re-education camp withdo’s and don’ts on the treat-ment of women and minorities.

“It was: ‘Oh my goodness,Rick. Are you really going toput us through this?’ It wasterrifying for many people,”says Mr. Gesing, now vicepresident of operations at theSanta Clara, Calif., company.

The pushback Mr. Gesingwitnessed isn’t uncommon.Gender-inclusion and racial-di-versity initiatives can be aminefield. No matter howcarefully companies roll themout, the programs tend toalienate white men and leavethem feeling attacked. Now awave of companies is trying tosoften the process by remov-ing the emphasis on rules andpenalties and having otherwhite men lead the sessions.

Mr. Gesing was facing a setof thorny racial and gender-eq-uity problems at the semicon-ductor-equipment maker’smanufacturing facilities. Em-ployee surveys suggested therewere simmering racial ten-

Diversity Workshops—Without the FearFirms say race andgender initiativescan be a minefieldfor white men

BY JOHN SIMONS

Rick Gesing didn’t tell his employees in advance they were going to a diversity workshop.

ILANAPA

NICH-LINSM

ANFO

RTH

EWALL

STRE

ETJO

URN

AL

Introducing the WSJ/THE College Rankings.

Navigate the decision ahead with rankings that

put the most critical factors into perspective.

Exclusively in The Wall Street Journal tomorrow.

2017

© 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 6DJ4326.

R8 | Tuesday, September 27, 2016 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

JOURNAL REPORT | WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

The Very Hard Task of Leaving ‘Mad Men’ BehindMadison Avenue is being forced to confront a past—and present—of racism and sexism

bear syndrome”—when, de-spite being assigned more re-sponsibility, a young employeestill isn’t given a proportionalraise or promotion. Afterworking and freelancing formore than 20 companies, Ms.Ayres says, she grew exhaustedof workplaces where she hadto come up “with four argu-ments for one idea.” When herlast contract job ended last De-cember, she transitioned intofreelance work, but soon real-ized she was charging a signif-icantly lower hourly rate thanher male peers.

Earlier this month, Ms. Ay-res launched a design studioin New York with some col-leagues. This way, she says,she can have more say overhow and where she works.

It took a number of yearsfor Megan Hellerer, 32, toleave her six-figure job atGoogle Inc., where she went towork shortly after graduatingfrom Stanford in 2006.

She says she knew for awhile that “the way corporatelife is set up is not alignedwell with how I interact orcommunicate as a woman,”but she told herself her dissat-isfaction was her own fault. “Ithought to myself, ‘On paper,your life is perfect. What iswrong with you that you’renot happy?’ ”

Ms. Hellerer started anew

last year as a life coach in NewYork, hoping to share lessonsfrom her experience withother women. Going rogue is aprivilege that this generationof women has, she says.

Patty McCord, former chieftalent officer at Netflix Inc.,says testing out nontraditionalemployment is a smart movefor young women seeking toadvance their careers. “Whenwomen get older,” career over-hauls become harder, she says.

Reconfiguring careersExpectations for women

clash with reality when itcomes to parenting, too. In a2015 survey of HarvardM.B.A.s, roughly a third of mil-lennial men said they expectedto take an egalitarian approachto parenthood, but only about11% said they divided child careequally with their partners.What’s more men still outearnwomen, which means workingmothers are more likely to bethe ones to reconfigure theircareers when a baby arrives.

J.J. El-Far, 31, and her hus-band, Dan Hirschhorn, 32, saypart of the problem is pater-nity leave. Ms. El-Far, who ison a five-month maternityleave, does about 80% of thechild care for their 2-monthold son, Henry. She expectsmore parity once Henry isolder, but says Mr.

Hirschhorn’s two-week pater-nity leave has “set a precedentfor the rest of the baby’s life.”

One mechanism of advance-ment for women that hasstood the test of time is thecounsel of other women.

A few months ago, ClaireWasserman, 29, decided tostart a professional develop-ment organization for women,called Ladies Get Paid, afterworking in the marketing andadvertising industry.

On a balmy evening in lateAugust, her company held itsthird town hall, where attend-ees were asked for a $5 dona-tion. The 100 women, most intheir 20s and 30s, gathered ina downtown Manhattan officeand passed around a micro-phone.

Several recounted how theyquit their jobs—some in thewake of sexual harassment,others after being called “tooaggressive” by superiors.

“We all think we can be theboss, that’s not the problem,”says Ms. Wasserman. Millen-nial women are just “experi-encing sexism in small ways,on a day-to-day basis. It cor-rodes your self esteem, andyour confidence.”

Ms. Bazzaz is a Wall StreetJournal reporter in NewYork. She can be reached atdahlia.bazzaz@wsj.com.

THE GENERATION of womenthat hums Beyoncé’s “Run theWorld (Girls)” was supposed tousher in a new era of genderparity. Instead, these womendescribe a corporate world thatsounds a lot like the one theirmothers faced: largely inflexi-ble to motherhood, and corneroffices filled with men.

Millennials—the generationborn from 1980 to 1994—make

up the largest share of theworkforce, and have forcednumerous companies to adjustthe way they recruit, hire andmanage their workers. But ac-cording to a survey of 34,000workers by LeanIn.Org andMcKinsey & Co., millennialwomen aren’t finding a bravenew world at work.

The survey found that 23%of millennial women believetheir gender has preventedthem from getting ahead atwork, only slightly lower than

what older generations ofwomen reported. Still retainingsome of the optimism of youth,this generation of women ex-presses more ambition thanolder women. But the ambitiongap—the difference betweenthe share of men and womensaying they want to be a topexecutive—is nearly as largefor millennials, at 14 percent-age points, as for older em-ployees, at 17 points

It doesn’t end at work. Mil-lennial couples at home ap-pear much like their parents,with 36% of millennial andnonmillennial women sayingthey handle the majority offamily responsibilities.

Those dynamics haveprompted some young womento forge a different path, un-willing to wait for companiesto change, while others arejoining with peers to swapworkplace tips and terrors.

Going rogueMillennial women are

hardly naive about the barri-ers they’ve inherited. About75% of young women thinkchanges are needed to achieveequality in the workplace, ac-cording to a 2013 study by thePew Research Center.

They “have read all the stud-ies and watched all the videos,”says Jessica Bennett, author of“Feminist Fight Club,” a sur-vival guide for women in themodern workplace. “We’reforming groups on our own be-cause we can’t wait for the sys-tem to fix itself.”

Overall, women in theMcKinsey and Lean In surveysaid stress and pressure ruintheir appetite for top roles.But some argue that for thisgeneration, a C-suite positionisn’t the only route to success.

While working as a designerand copywriter for New York-based technology startups, 25-year-old Carly Ayres says, shewould often encounter “baby

male creative talent from 16% to 30%by the end of the year, but it leavesthe agency “20% short” of where itneeds to be, says CEO Andrew Rob-ertson.

The agency held a focus group tofind out why there weren’t as manywomen in senior creative roles asmen, and learned from conversa-tions in the group that participantsthought women often weren’t giventhe same opportunities as men.BBDO this year will implement itsown “unconscious bias” trainingprogram.

Smaller agencies are coming togrips with the issue, too. Work &Co., a three-year-old digital shop of160 people, is pushing for a 50/50gender split. It now mandates thatits recruiters find two strong femalecandidates for every male candidate,and has tests for software program-mers that don’t ask candidates fortheir gender or ethnicity until theyhave gone through a blind test on-line. There’s still a way to go: Thecompany is now 34% female.

Skeptics wonder whether some ofthe initiatives being undertaken, likethe antibias training, are more ashow of action than sincere effortsat change.

“I think that’s a fascinating semi-nar and the effect is going last abouttwo days,” said Work & Co. foundingpartner Gene Liebel. “Companies in-vesting in doing [only] that are notreally looking at how their hiringprocess and recruiting approach ispart of the broader problem.”

Getting to an even gender split isa tall order, especially for the bigshops grappling with large, male-dominated creative departments.

“I would see the women who weredoing well and think of them as mycompetition” because there weren’tmany roles for women like her at toplevels, says Jaime Robinson, co-founder and chief creative officer ofcreative agency upstart Joan and aformer executive creative director atWieden & Kennedy. When it came tocompetition for senior jobs, “it’s like,air is getting tight up here. It’s likeclimbing Mount Everest. I’m so em-barrassed about it now, but think it’shealthy to talk about because it wasthe wrong way to look at it.”

Ms. Bruell is a Wall Street Journalreporter in New York. Email her atalexandra.bruell@wsj.com.

WHEN THE ADVERTISING worldwas rocked this year by allegationsof sexism and racism in its upperranks, the industry was united in itscondemnation of discrimination. Thefallout was swift, considering theglacial pace of change in addressingthese issues in many other indus-tries.

Several high-ranking executives attop firms resigned after being ac-cused of discriminatory behavior orof making sexist comments. And anumber of firms—Omnicom’sGoodby Silverstein & Partners andBBDO, Interpublic’s FCB and WPPmedia agency Maxus—appointedwomen in newly created or existingtop creative posts.

Despite the quick progress, aharder task awaits, say many observ-ers and people in the industry. IfMadison Avenue wants to leave the“Mad Men” culture in the past, theysay, it must change the compositionof ad agencies’ workforces and rootout discriminatory thinking at alllevels of the business.

“I don’t think hiring is enough,”says Susan Credle, global chief cre-ative officer at Interpublic Group’sFCB. “We need to create cultureswhere underrepresented people canfind their voice. We need to continueto educate people on unconsciousbias and what it feels like to be inthe minority.”

Agencies such as Omnicom’s DDBand BBDO are slotting in “uncon-scious bias” training—seminarsmeant to instruct employees on howprejudices can creep into their deci-sion making without their knowingit. Internal recruiting targets forwomen and minorities are becomingmore common.

A sense of exclusionThe creative area of the busi-

ness—where campaigns are dreamedup—is of particular concern toagency leaders now looking at theirstaff breakdowns by gender. Womenaccounted for just 11.5% of creativedirectors in communications arts,according to research released in2014 by the 3% Conference, a groupchampioning the advancement of fe-male creative talent in the industry.

“If we only recruit from a narrow,homogenous part of society and ad

BY ALEXANDRA BRUELL

schools, that’s crazy,” says WendyClark, chief executive of DDB World-wide, North America.

According to the 3% Conference’srecent “Elephant on Madison Ave-nue” report, which aimed to showhow pervasive sexual harassmentand gender bias is in the advertisingindustry, 58% of the nearly 600 re-spondents said they felt excludedfrom important business meetings,while 54% said they had been sub-jected to unwanted sexual advancesin the course of their career. (Out ofthe 584 respondents, 17 were men.)

Many in the industry believe it isclients, whose spending powersprofits on Madison Avenue, thathave the power to force change. HPInc. asked its agencies to come upwith a plan to diversify their rankswithin the next 12 months. HP re-quested that each agency submit aplan that lays out how the firm willsignificantly increase the number ofwomen and minorities in key cre-ative and strategic roles.

In a letter to HP’s advertising andpublic-relations agencies, AntonioLucio, the company’s chief market-ing officer, wrote, “Including womenand people of color in key roles is

not only a values issue, but a signifi-cant business imperative.” If agen-cies don’t comply, Mr. Lucio wrote,“anything is on the table,” includingremoval from HP’s roster.

General Mills recently announcedthat creative agencies competing forthe food giant’s business must bestaffed with at least 50% women andat least 20% people of color in thecreative department. The companysaid, “Agencies don’t need to be atthat level today, but we will havemeaningful conversations with ourpartners to ensure they understandthe importance of this shared com-mitment.”

DDB, known for like McDonald’s“I’m Lovin It” and State Farm’s “Likea Good Neighbor,” hired the Neuro-Leadership Institute to train its2,000 employees in North Americaon unconscious bias by the end ofthe year, according to Ms. Clark, wholeft Coca-Cola to become CEO ofDDB Worldwide, North America, inJanuary.

In an August session that lastedall afternoon, attendees heard a pop-ular example—the tale of a symphonythat tried to rectify gender bias in itsaudition process by blindfolding jury

members. There was a glitch—somewomen wore high heels—so the or-chestra asked auditioners to removetheir shoes. Various DDB depart-ments were asked to share scenariosin which biases might have affectedtheir own decisions, and then thegroup debated them.

DDB also hired gender-equity cer-tification firm Edge to audit and an-alyze gender equality across thebusiness, including pay, promotionsand hiring practices.

A different perspectiveMs. Clark says there are practical

business reasons to staff morewomen on creative work, especiallyfor brands whose primary consum-ers are women. “It’s the age-old‘blue water on a maxi pad thing,’ ”she says, referring to old TV com-mercials using that image. Such adsare jarring to women, who see themand think, “That doesn’t actuallyrepresent my period at all,” she says.

Teams that include women, shesays, can potentially get to “moreenlightenment and more empathy”for feminine brands.

DDB’s sister agency BBDO set agoal to roughly double its senior fe-

Wendy Clark (center), who in January became CEO of DDB Worldwide, North America, says there are practicalreasons for ad agencies to have more women in creative roles.

DDBSA

NFR

ANCISC

O

MillennialWomenFaceFamiliar Obstacles atWorkUnwilling to wait for the corporate world tochange, many women are forging a different path

BY DAHLIA BAZZAZ

Claire Wasserman, with microphone, at a Ladies Get Paid town hall. She started the group toprovide support to working women—and make herself her own boss.

CLAIRELO

RENZO

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.Source: LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co. Women in theWorkplace 2016 survey of 34,000 men and women

Unlevel Playing FieldMillennials aren’t driving orexperiencing dramatic changefrom previous generations ingender issues and workplaceequity. They are about as likely asolder generations to say genderhas cost them at work.The percentage surveyedwho saygender has played a role in theirmissing out on a raise, promotion,or chance to get ahead:

The Ambition GapThe ambition gap betweengenders is similar for millennials(14 percentage points) andnonmillennials (17 points).The percentage saying theywant to be a top executive:

Millennial women

Nonmillennial women

Millennial men

Nonmillennial men

The Second ShiftMillennials report similar divisions of household labor as older colleagues.The percentage who say they do more housework and/or child carethan their spouse or partner:

26%

4%

7%

23%

Millennials

Nonmillennials 17-pointgap

14-point gap

58%72%

32%49%

MenWomen

Overall Entry level Middlemanagement

Seniormanagement

0

10

20

30

40

50% Millennial womenNonmillennial women

Millennial menNonmillennial men

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, September 27, 2016 | R9

For Women of Color, It’s a ‘Concrete Ceiling’Black, Hispanic and Asian women have lots of ambition. But that isn’t getting them into the C-suite.

JOURNAL REPORT | WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

Emilio Castilla, a professorat the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology’s Sloan Schoolof Management, also foundmanager bias to be an issuewhen he worked with an em-ployer that had discoveredsmall but statistically signifi-cant gaps in compensationbased on race, gender and na-tionality, even for employeeswith the same performancescores, the same managers,and equivalent backgroundsand experience.

The gaps typically emergedin the second stage of the com-pany’s pay-for-performanceprocess, when senior managersrecommended merit raises andbonuses based on direct super-visors’ evaluations.

The employer, which Mr.Castilla declined to identify,let him design an interventionin 2004 that increased trans-parency and accountability formanagers’ merit-pay deci-sions. For instance, seniormanagers had to submit aform listing every employee intheir unit and justifying bonusallocations. The forms werereviewed by a new committeecreated to monitor the payrecommendations.

Mr. Castilla tested the re-sults approximately five yearslater. The gaps had almost en-tirely disappeared.

In at least one instance at adifferent company, managerdiscretion actually did reduceinequality—when the manag-ers were women.

Mabel Abraham, a manage-ment professor at ColumbiaBusiness School, examined therecords of a retail bank andfound that gender-pay dispari-ties among bank tellers werelower in branches managed bywomen. “They were payingmen slightly less and payingwomen slightly more” than atbranches managed by men,she says. The findings suggest“we can’t just assume formal-ization is the answer to in-equality,” she says. The bestcourse is to first create equita-ble processes, she says, andthen formalize those.

Ms. Weber is a reporterfor The Wall Street Journalin New York. Email her atlauren.weber@wsj.com.

PAY EQUITY HAS been an im-portant issue for the Obamaadministration since DayOne—literally, since the firstbill the president signed intolaw was the Lilly LedbetterFair Pay Act, giving workersmore time to file pay-discrimi-nation lawsuits.

But it wasn’t until Sales-force.com Inc. announced lastyear that it would spend $3million adjusting salaries toensure its female and maleemployees received equal payfor equal work that U.S. com-panies seemed to start payingattention. Since then, largeemployers such as Apple Inc.,Staples Inc., eBay Inc., WallStreet Journal owner DowJones, a unit of News Corp,and others have declared theircommitment to rooting outgender-pay disparities—albeitsometimes under pressure.

Pay equity is a laudablegoal, but hardly a simple one,say lawyers and managementexperts. Making pay structureseven for men and women re-quires going beyond formalpolicies to zoom in on the deci-sive moments when managersallocate pay and promotions.

The human-resources teamat Alphabet Inc.’s Google re-cently urged their counterpartsin other firms to develop struc-tured salary guidelines to reinin the influence of bosses andincrease chances that equalwork will beget equal pay. Re-searchers, too, have focused onmanager discretion as a crackthrough which bias can sneakinto pay decisions. The moreinfluence individual managershave on compensation, goesthe thinking, the more chancethat conscious or unconsciousbiases will affect outcomes.

Broader viewBut, as Google’s team noted,

even heavily prescribed sys-tems can’t fully prevent paydisparities. That requires abroader approach of reviewingdecisions that go beyond pay,such as job classifications andpromotion practices, and hold-ing managers accountable forthe results.

Consider the gender-pay

BY LAUREN WEBER

MANY WOMEN of color whohave made it to the executivesuite describe the process asbreaking through not a glassceiling, but a concrete one.

Research from LeanIn.Organd McKinsey & Co. suggeststhat women of color are themost underrepresented groupin the senior and upper ranksof companies, and their num-bers drop steeply at the mid-dle and senior levels. Womenof color make up 12% of first-level managers, comparedwith 45% for their white malepeers. At the C-suite level,women of color make up just3% of the workforce, comparedwith 71% for white men.

It isn’t for a lack of ambi-tion. Black, Hispanic and Asianwomen are eager to reachhigh-level positions, evenmore so than their white fe-male peers, according to thestudy. Of the women surveyed,48% of women of color saidthey aspired to be a top execu-tive, compared with 37% ofwhite women.

Difficult conversationsYet according to the survey,

women of color, and especiallyblack women, are the leastlikely to call their company aninclusive place to work andmore likely to express frustra-tion at their inability to “bethemselves at work.” Minorityfemale senior executivesacross a variety of industriesreport frustration with a cor-porate environment wheresuccess is often predicated onfinding mentors and sponsorswho come from similar back-grounds.

Discussing race with theirwhite male peers is difficult,they say, and finding a way toincrease the pipeline forwomen from diverse back-grounds can be challenging.

“When I hear ‘glass ceiling,’I think that’s great, you canbreak through glass. When itis concrete, you need a doorand there need to be peopleon the other side of thatdoor,” says Annalisa Adams-Qualtiere, a longtime leader inhuman-resources departmentsfor organizations such as JabilCircuit Inc. and the AAA.

Ms. Adams-Qualtiere, whohas built African-Americannetworks across various in-dustries, says there is a needfor more advocates and men-tors to give the next genera-tion of women the opportuni-ties to prove themselves. “Partof the reason we don’t seemore women of color is a fearof stepping up when all thesignals show that the companyisn’t willing to invest in youand the opportunities aren’tthere for you,” says Ms. Ad-ams-Qualtiere, 57 years old.

While conversations aboutgender equality at work arebecoming more common, con-versations about race, oppor-

tunity and fairness remain dif-ficult at best. Last December,Rosalind Brewer, the presidentand chief executive of Sam’sClub, spoke out about her ef-forts to build a diverse teamand the difficulty of often be-ing the only minority and theonly woman in the room. Shewas accused on social mediaof bias against white men.

Women of color serving incorporate diversity roles saythey are working to makemanagers at all levels of theircompanies take responsibilityfor diversity in hiring, promot-ing and mentoring, but it canbe a tricky topic to broach.

Cecily Joseph says she wasinitially reluctant to take onthe role of diversity chief atSymantec Corp. in addition toher position as vice presidentof corporate responsibility. “Ikept thinking, ‘Why does theone black woman have to bethe head of diversity?’ Then Irealized, if I wasn’t going toown it, then who would?”

Ms. Joseph, 52, and other

black women executives saythat starting a frank conversa-tion about race with theirwhite male colleagues oftenleads to blanket responsessuch as, “I don’t see color,” or“We just want to hire thebest,” a comment that impliesthat diverse candidates aren’tamong the top tier of hires. Sothey proceed carefully.

“If someone feels forced toembrace diversity, the conver-sation goes nowhere, or worse,they become defensive,” saysMs. Joseph, a former corpo-rate attorney. These conversa-tions get easier when theother person can somehow re-late to the issue, she says.

Professional obligationWithout a doubt, the pro-

cess of enacting widespreadinstitutional change that getsmore minority women into se-nior positions in Americancorporations has been slow.And the onus is often on thefew minority women alreadyin leadership positions to beboth sponsors and mentors.

When three young womenof color approached SpringLacy, vice president of corpo-rate and community engage-ment at Prudential Financial,following a conference shespoke at last year, they had anunusual question. They askedMs. Lacy, who usually wearsher dark brown hair naturallycurly, whether she felt pressureto straighten her hair to speakat an event in front of so manycorporate stakeholders.

“I said, ‘No.’ It just hap-pened to be that way becauseI’d gotten a trim.” After that

day, Ms. Lacy made sure tochange her LinkedIn profilepicture to one that includedher natural hair. “I don’t wantwomen who look at me as arole model feeling like theyhave to straighten their hair tobe successful,” Ms. Lacy says,adding that she does every-thing she can to have an open-door policy for any youngwoman who wants to comeand ask her questions.

This open-door policy is acommon refrain among thefew women of color who havemade it through the concreteceiling. Many see providing aroad map for women like themas a professional obligation.

“When you have the oppor-tunity to get more women ofcolor promoted and morewomen of color in the pipe-line, you take that opportu-nity,” says Keisha Senter, 36, asenior associate director forthe Rockefeller Foundation.“We want a seat at the table.We want an opportunity to begiven that voice and to buildthat pipeline so there aremore individuals who comethrough just like us.”

Ms. Piazza is a writer inSan Francisco. Email her atreports@wsj.com.

BY JO PIAZZA

Spring Lacy, a Prudential Financial VP, has an open-door policy for young women with questions.

JOVEL

LETA

MAY

OFO

RTH

EWALL

STRE

ETJO

URN

AL

More AmbitionWomen of color are morelikely than white women towant to be a top executive.Percentage by group:

Less OpportunityWomen of color, especially black women, generally say they have lesschance for career development than white women.The percentage of each group saying that in the past two years they:

Source: LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co. Women in the Workplace 2016 survey of 34,000 men and women THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

White Black Asian Hispanic

Got a promotion 29% 22% 28% 31%

Got a better job title 29 22 27 31

Got a challengingassignment/project

64 51 65 56

Participated in an importantdevelopment/training opportunity

49 43 44 44

White

37%

Asian

53%Hispanic

53%

Black

39%

MakingPay Equity aRealityFormal policies can help, but they are only part of the equation

Melanie Whelan, 39, is thechief executive officer of Soul-Cycle, the New York-based in-door-cycling chain that has 65locations. It is majority-ownedby Equinox Holdings Inc.

When I was vice presi-dent of business develop-ment at Equinox, my rolewas looking for new oppor-tunities for the business toexpand. I remember veryclearly sitting in our board-room with six or so otherson our team. I was one oftwo women, and the youn-gest in the room. It was thewinter of 2010, and we weredeciding whether Equinoxshould invest in SoulCycle.

We debated whether itwould be competitive towhat we were already doing,and if we were going tospend that amount ofmoney acquiring a business,why not just start it our-selves? The Equinox CEO,Harvey Spevak, and I werealigned that this would be agreat opportunity, but oth-ers on the managementteam didn’t think it was agood idea.

I tried to understand be-fore I got into the room theobjections I would be facing.There were valid concerns,and I let them inform how Ipresented what I saw as anincredible opportunity. Soul-Cycle had created a lifestyleout of a workout experience,and it only had a handful ofstudios at the time. Mean-while Equinox had provenexpertise with real-estateacquisition, developmentand operations.

Together the two couldbe so powerful, but thosepoints of overlap were goingto be critical to our success.Understanding everyone’sobjections, but being clearon precisely why the oppor-tunity was a powerful one,was important.

I had spent a lot of timein the SoulCycle studios,knew the founders person-ally and professionally, and Ihad tried to understand notjust the SoulCycle business

but others in the boutiquefitness space.

You have to know yourbusiness and know yourfacts so that when you getinto challenging conversa-tions or healthy debates,you’re coming at them fullyarmed. I’m a big believer inkeeping conversationsaround business as objec-tive as possible. Let’s makea decision based on whatwe know rather than what Ifeel or what I think. Espe-cially for women, who oftendo have great feelings or in-tuition around business,grounding that on facts andobjectivity makes you astrong participant in anydebate.

If I had just walked inand said, “Everybody’s go-ing to SoulCycle and every-body’s talking about it,”that’s not going to garnerrespect in a board-level con-versation.

Instead I said, “SoulCyclehas this many bikes, thismuch square footage, thismany press hits, and I be-lieve that if we get behindthis, we can take it to thewhole next level.” Whenpeople hear facts coupledwith passion, they are goingto believe.

Garnering support alsocame from relationshipbuilding. I had a very pro-ductive working relationshipwith Harvey, and we hadopen conversations as amanagement team. I hadworked with them for fouryears.

By building relationshipswhen the stakes were a lit-tle lower, it’s a lot easierwhen you get to the pointwhere you say “I really needyou to support me here.”—As told to Ellen Byron.Ms. Whelan’s commentshave been condensed

and edited.

STRATEGIES

FACTS+PASSION

lawsuit that Farmers GroupInc. settled this year. LynneCoates, then an attorney in theinsurance firm’s San Jose, Ca-lif., office, sued the companyafter she discovered in 2014that a male colleague doingvery similar work earned al-most twice as much as she did.

“As I learned more andmore, I guess I became bolder,”Ms. Coates said in an inter-view. “I flat-out asked an attor-ney who was moving on abouthis salary. It was his last dayand I asked him to share hisstarting salary. He told me andthen he said, ‘Do you want toknow what I’m making now?’And he told me. That was theday I went to my manager. Itjust wasn’t right.” Ms. Coatesfiled her lawsuit after manage-ment reviewed her compensa-tion and told her they found noproblems with it, she says.

Farmers uses a rigid com-pensation structure, assigningattorneys in its claims depart-ment to one of six salarygrades that correspond withexperience and responsibili-ties. A pay range is attached toeach grade.

While this suggests the firmhad an objective salary scaleby which to classify and com-pensate employees, Ms. Coatesand other female attorneys(four other women joined asplaintiffs and the case was con-ditionally certified as a classaction in December 2015) saidthey were put in lower salarygrades than male counterparts,and received fewer raises, pro-motions and high-profile as-signments, all resulting in

lower pay. “In general, Farmersadvances the careers of itsmale attorneys more quickly,while treating its female attor-neys more like support staff,”the complaint alleged.

Farmers denied the allega-tions, saying in a court filingthat it had “exercised reason-able care to prevent and cor-rect any alleged discrimina-tory…behavior.” The companydeclined to comment further.

More transparencyIn April, Farmers agreed to

pay $4 million to approxi-mately 300 female attorneys,as well as conduct annual anal-yses of its pay practices, in-crease salary transparency andaim for new benchmarks to in-crease the representation ofwomen in higher salary gradesover the next three years. Thesettlement is awaiting final ap-proval from a federal judge.Farmers didn’t admit wrong-doing. Ms. Coates left Farmersin 2014 and is now practicinglaw at a firm in Rocklin, Calif.

“The [compensation] struc-ture should be transparentfrom the get-go so [women]know where they fit in amongtheir colleagues,” says LoriAndrus, the attorney who rep-resented Ms. Coates.

In August, 50 large employ-ers signed a White Housepledge in which they agreed toaudit their pay practices annu-ally, review hiring and promo-tion policies, and actively seekto eliminate pay gaps. Apple,Facebook Inc., Coca-Cola Co.,Nike Inc., and Delta Air LinesInc. were among the signers.

Lynne Coates sued Farmers Group in a case that produced apending $4 million settlement for about 300 female attorneys.

GABR

IELLELU

RIEFO

RTH

EWALL

STRE

ETJO

URN

AL

R10 | Tuesday, September 27, 2016 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

JOURNAL REPORT | WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

human resources. But Patago-nia estimates it recovers 91%of costs annually, because oftax credits, increased em-ployee engagement and lowstaff turnover. Parents withchildren in the program havebeen 25% less likely than theaverage Patagonia employee toleave over the past five years.And 100% of mothers have re-turned to work after maternityleave over the same period.

Help in the workplaceChild care has long been a

critical issue for working moth-ers. Women shoulder more ofthe burden at home, accordingto data from LeanIn.Org andMcKinsey & Co. More than athird of women surveyed saidthey do more when it comes tohousework and child care thantheir spouses, while only 7% ofmen said their share wasgreater.

Ken Matos, the vice presi-dent of research for consult-ing, coaching and researchfirm Life Meets Work, sayswomen face pressure to beboth ideal workers and idealmothers. On-site child care isone way to “bridge those iden-tities without stigma,” he says.

To be sure, child care isn’t a

single-gender issue. On-sitecenters can be a powerful ben-efit for fathers, too, say execu-tives and researchers.

“More and more dads areintimately involved in thesedecisions [around child care]and struggling with them aswell,” says Erin Kelly, a pro-fessor at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology’s SloanSchool of Management whohas studied employers’ familypolicies and benefits.

Yet the struggle to balancework and home remains morepronounced for many women,and sometimes leads mothersto leave the workforce. AtBurns & McDonnell, an engi-neering, construction, archi-tecture and consulting firmbased in Kansas City, Mo.,women make up about 25% ofthe 5,400-person workforce.Chief Executive Greg Gravessays that the company founditself losing mothers whowanted to stay home withtheir children.

“We need to work harder toconvince these moms thatthey can have both,” Mr.Graves says. “They can havegreat careers and still be ter-rific parents.”

The company in May

opened a 20,000-square-footchild-care center featuring anearly 8-foot-long Lite-Brite-like picture-building toy, labcoats for children to don dur-ing science-themed activitiesand a nearby peanut-freekitchen. Prices aren’t subsi-dized—full-time care for an in-fant costs parents nearly$1,400 a month. But Mr.Graves hopes the center—which cost the company morethan $2 million to build—willhelp the company reach itsgoal of a workforce that’s one-third female. Currently, justunder half of the 144 spots inthe center are filled.

The corporate hurdlesLots of hurdles have kept

on-site care from becomingwidespread. Executives say itcan be challenging to predictenrollment in corporate child-care centers. Many worryabout children’s safety andcompliance issues. Upfrontcosts and real-estate con-straints also deter many com-panies. Plus, researchers notethat employer-sponsored childcare isn’t always the answer totalent issues facing a com-pany—often simpler, cheaperfixes like flexible work options

can do just as well to attractand retain parents.

Bright Horizons Family So-lutions, a provider of child-careservices based in Watertown,Mass., operates 464 company-sponsored centers, includingBurns’s, up from 389 in 2011.But the company’s less-expen-sive offerings, like backup care,are growing more rapidly, ac-cording to CEO Dave Lissy.

“There are costs associatedwith it,” Mr. Lissy says of on-site care. Companies “have tobecome believers that there’sa good return on investment,and that’s a process for manycompanies.”

The benefit can be “reallysticky” for companies lookingto increase retention, Mr.Lissy says. At Clif Bar, 98% ofemployee parents whose chil-dren attend the company daycare said they were morelikely to stay working for thefirm because of the center, ac-cording to a survey conductedby the company that runs thechild-care center.

“It was a huge relief,” KateTorgersen, a Clif Bar seniorcommunications manager, saysof the chance to enroll herchildren in the 6,700-square-foot center. Ms. Torgersen es-timates that she has trimmedtwo hours from her day by nothaving to do a separate child-care drop-off for two of herchildren—a third recentlymoved on to kindergarten—leaving more time for work.

Home Depot, which cur-rently has 264 children en-rolled in its program, believeson-site child care is a “compet-itive advantage,” says ArletteGuthrie, a vice president forhuman resources at the com-pany. Candidates ask about itduring interviews, and parentswho join the company and signup gain “peace of mind” thatleads to better performance.

“Our associates can only dotheir best work when theirhome life is taken care of,” shesays.

Ms. Feintzeig is a WallStreet Journal reporter inNew York. Email her atrachel.feintzeig@wsj.com.

When Take Your Child to Work Day Is Every DayOn-site day-care centers arecostly and complex. But bossessay the payoff can be worth it.

Kate Torgersen, with two of her children, calls Clif Bar’s on-site child-care center “a huge relief.”

TIM

HUSS

INFO

RTH

EWALL

STRE

ETJO

URN

AL

WE HAVE AN EDUCATED, TALENTED AND DIVERSE WORKFORCE EAGER TOCHANGE THE WORLD. IMAGINE WHAT THEY’LL DO FOR YOUR BUSINESS.

The only thing as impressive as our current workforce of 9.7+ million is our future one. Our colleges and universities are among thenation’s top performers of R&D and commercialization of technologies. So while we’re helping you succeed with today’s talent, we’re also

preparing tomorrow’s. Discover what a future in Florida means for your business at floridathefutureishere.com or call 877-YES-FLORIDA.

of the reason only 4% of em-ployers offer a child-care cen-ter near or on-site, accordingto the Society for Human Re-source Management. Butbosses say the investmentpays off and keeps women inthe workforce.

At Patagonia, of Ventura,Calif., parents eat lunch withtheir preschoolers and breast-feed infants during meetings.Eighty-one children, from 8weeks to 8 years of age, attendprograms at the company’sheadquarters, and 10 spendtheir days in classrooms thatopened in the company’s Reno,Nev., facilities in January. Pat-agonia runs the program itself,a task that required hiring a28-person staff and spendingabout $1 million a year.

“It’s a line item that wouldbe really easy to cut if you justsaw it on a single Excelspreadsheet,” says DeanCarter, the company’s head of

ONE OF THE LARGEST day-care centers in Atlanta hasmore than 66,000 square feetof outdoor and indoor space,including three playgrounds,basketball courts and a waterplay area.

To enroll their children,parents must meet one big re-quirement: work for Home De-pot Inc.

The retail giant reasonedthat putting a child-care facil-ity on its corporate campus—where working parents can besteps away from their chil-dren—would ease the strain ofjuggling work and family. AndHome Depot isn’t alone: Com-panies like outdoor outfitterPatagonia Inc. and energy-barmaker Clif Bar & Co. have alsoinvested in on-site child care.

The programs can be com-plicated and costly to run, part

BY RACHEL FEINTZEIG

THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.Source: LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co. Women in theWorkplace 2016 survey of 34,000 men and women

0 10 20 30 40 50 60%

The Family FactorAmong those surveyed who said they didn’t want to be a top executive,the top reasons were:

Men (parents)Women (parents)

Men (nonparents)Women (nonparents)

Not enough benefits forthe personal costs

I don’t want the pressure

I’m not interested inthat type of work

Too much politics

I wouldn’t be able tobalance work and

family commitments