When entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa first wrote an article in 2010 censuring Silicon Valley for its gender problem–specifically its lack of women problem–he wasn’t expecting the hostile response he’d get. « I believed it to be the greatest meritocracy—the most open, inclusive, and diverse place on Earth. That was until I came to the Valley and attended my first TechCrunch conference. It felt as if I had entered the “Twilight Zone”—a parallel universe with strange happenings. My shock was that there were practically no women on stage. When I looked, I realized that all of Silicon Valley is like this—almost no women in leadership positions. And no blacks or Hispanics. I was just absolutely shocked at the crude, childish behavior of the boys’ club » he said. That was in 2010.

Since then, the gender ratio has yet to make any significant progress toward balancing out. There’s a small, but noticeable bright side. Wadhwa said that in recent years, the Valley has started to acknowledge the issue, and some companies have taken constructive steps toward improvement. During this time he researched the problem extensively and crowd-created a book about the challenges that women have faced and how they are surmounting them.

Today this book “Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology » is launched! Hailed by Foreign Policy Magazine as a “Top 100 Global Thinker,” professor, researcher, and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa, alongside award-winning journalist Farai Chideya, set out to collect anecdotes and essays from global leaders, sharing how their experiences in innovative industries frame the future of entrepreneurship.

With interviews and essays from hundreds of women in STEM fields, Innovating Women offers fresh perspectives on the challenges that women face, the strategies that they employ in the workplace, and how an organization can succeed or fail in its attempts to support the career advancement of women.

Read the full article published on Wall Street Journal  « Part 1 – Inside Silicon Valley’s Boys Club »

Read more about the book on http://innovatingwomen.org

Le stress, nouveau mal des cadres ? Un sentiment pointé par 94% d’entre eux. Effectuée en ligne auprès de 636 cadres français actuellement en poste ou en recherche d’emploi, l’enquête révèle que la cause principale de ce stress, serait la charge de travail.  Les autres facteurs diffèrent selon le genre du répondant.

Pour les femmes cadres, la seconde source de stress est aussi liée au rythme, et à la difficulté de tenir les délais. Elles sont aussi plus nombreuses que les hommes à citer la charge de travail comme source de stress principale. De leur côté, les hommes sont plus préoccupés par les relations avec la hiérarchie.

Ce chiffre est cependant à nuancer. En effet, seulement 12% assurent être constamment stressés, tandis que 33% assument l’être souvent, et 49% uniquement de temps en temps.

L’enquête recense également que 42% des cadres (hommes et femmes confondus) travaillent plus de 50 heures par semaine, et ils ne sont qu’un petit pourcentage à observer des horaires conformes à la législation. Tout de même 11% d’entre eux travaillent plus de 60 heures par semaine. Phénomène connu, mais de plus en plus marqué: ils ont beaucoup de mal à déconnecter de leur travail une fois rentrés chez eux, puisque 38% des cadres disent «décrocher complètement» moins d’une fois par semaine.

(*) Cette étude a été effectuée auprès de 636 cadres français actuellement en poste ou en recherche d’emploi et inscrits sur les sites Cadreo.com et RegionsJob.com.

Plus d’informations dans l’article « Rentrée des cadres : stress and the city »

A common complaint made about development programs is the concern that it will create employee turnover. As employees develop new capabilities they will be unsatisfied staying in their current roles and will begin actively seeking opportunities elsewhere. People argue that “if we develop our employees other people will hire them away.” Or as some managers put it, “Why should I develop people just so others can poach them from me?”

In general, concerns about talent poaching are misguided and extremely detrimental to long-term organizational health. Read why in the article  » Why is There Such a Misguided Concern Over Poaching Talent? » written by Steven Hunt.

In 2013, American women made 82 cents to every dollar a man made and 80 cents to every dollar made by a white male; up from 79 cents and 77 cents, respectively, in 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, white and Asian people, regardless of their gender, make more than blacks and Hispanics – regardless of their gender.

Deborah Ashton, Vice President and Chief Diversity officer at Novant Health, publishe on HBR Network Blog an interesting analysis about wage gaps, plural trying to answer to the question « Does Race or Gender Matter to your Paycheck? Her conclusion: Asian women with bachelor’s and advanced degrees are the only women who make more than one group of men–black men, who earn the least in comparison to their male counterparts at every level of education.

This chart exposes one other important myth: that companies have to pay more for talented women of color. In discussions of affirmative action cases and throughout my career, I have heard both from right-wing bloggers and middle-of-the-road human resources professionals that a premium is paid to attract and retain women and minority talent and especially, women of color. The central argument is that because there are assumed to be so few “qualified” candidates who are both female and nonwhite – and because companies can count women of color towards multiple diversity targets — competition for those candidates means they end up with significantly higher salaries. Setting aside the question of whether there is, in fact, a shortage of qualified women of color, it should by now be obvious that those women aren’t getting paid a premium. In fact, black and Hispanic women vie for last place on the earnings pyramid at every level of education, and the gender pay gap actuallyincreases with higher education for black, white, and Hispanic women.  Routinely, when pay equity analyses are done for corporations, the employees whose actual salaries are greater than two standard deviations higher than their predicted salary (based on job-related variables such as market value, time served, and performance ratings) are white men.

Read the full article written by Deborah Ashton « Does Race or Gender Matter to your Paycheck? »