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What Women Want: Empowering Female Leaders
Gender diversity in senior positions is an important step to eradicating discrimination.
May 8, 2019 2:18 AM
By Deborah Yonick
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RAPAPORT... The movie What Women Want was on to something when it
came out nearly 20 years ago. In it, a hotshot playboy and advertising
executive wakes up from an accident with the ability to read women’s minds. At
first, he sees this as a curse, but his female psychiatrist convinces him that
his gift could help his career: “If men are from Mars and women are from Venus,
and you can speak Venusian, the world can be yours.”
This romantic comedy comes to mind as the jewelry industry
grapples with how to get women to buy fine jewelry the way they buy handbags
and shoes. “Women will think nothing of dropping $1,200 on a pair of Christian
Louboutin shoes, but not on a pair of diamond stud earrings,” says Victoria
McKay, founder and managing director of the UK-based Women’s Jewellery Network
(WJN). “We’re finding it hard to keep sales buoyant against other luxury
products.”
But the jewelry trade is still led predominantly by men, and
sadly, they can’t read our minds. McKay finds the lack of women in senior
management to be a huge problem for the industry. “I’m not saying men shouldn’t
be a part of the conversation, but women need to be a bigger part of it than
they are now. We need more women in leadership [positions] who represent the
people who buy the jewelry.”
While there’s limited data on the issues women face in the
jewelry workplace, research by the Women’s Jewelry Association (WJA) suggests
that they account for only about 30% of board positions. When industry legal
consultant Cecilia Gardner asked CEOs of trade groups why they thought there were
so few women on boards, the resounding answer was that they couldn’t find any.
So Gardner, who is working with the WJA on its Gender Equality Project to
improve gender parity in the trade, is trying to make it easier to do so.
“We are literally building a roster of women interested in
serving, and providing the names to nominating committees of boards in our
industry,” she says.
In addition to the need for greater advancement
opportunities and representation, the industry is still behind when it comes to
equal pay, stresses McKay. While the average gender pay gap declined 1.9% to
23% among 11 of the UK’s largest jewelry groups last year, seven of those
companies actually showed a greater discrepancy than in 2017, according to an
April article in Professional Jeweller.
“It’s been 100 years since women got the right to vote, and
we’re still arguing over issues like the gender pay gap, when a woman has to
work harder than a man to attain what she’s got,” laments McKay.
Perception is not reality
Despite these figures, the prevailing perception among
employers is that there are plenty of women in leadership roles, and that
problems such as pay disparity, gender discrimination, sexual harassment and
hostile work environments are not an issue in the trade. That’s what emerged
from an independent survey that MVI Marketing conducted last fall for the
Gender Equality Project, reports Gardner.
Employees painted a different picture in the study, but said
that over 50% of the time, they felt uncomfortable reporting discriminatory
incidents, citing concerns of retaliation or an impact on their future
employment.
McKay, meanwhile, points to a number of issues women face in
the workplace that she says will be everyone’s problem in the future, such as
childcare support and flexible work hours. “Millennials, the biggest consumer
block, are different than the Boomers, as they share things like childcare
responsibilities and have a gender-neutral view. Men are just as likely to be
impacted by barriers to this as women. We need [measures for] these things in
place to benefit the workforce.”
Many states have extremely worker-friendly policies,
including New York and California, where a lot of the industry is based, notes
Tiffany Stevens, president and CEO of the Jewelers Vigilance Committee (JVC).
“If someone is facing harassment, whether by a boss, coworker, or even a client
or vendor, chances are they’re protected. California and New York also have
instituted laws around parental leave, lactation and increased harassment
protection, so whether as an employee or employer, it’s worth brushing up on
those rules.”
Engendering support
“Part of the problem has been a lack of willingness by some
women to acknowledge that these issues exist,” says McKay, who believes it’s
incumbent on female business leaders to pay it forward and enable other women
to walk in behind them.
While the WJA has provided mentorship initiatives for
members over the years, the association wants to be more proactive. Phyllis
Bergman, who headed Mercury Ring Corp. for 32 years and is a management
consultant, agrees, stressing the need for a deliberate effort “to support
women at all levels of the industry in their professional development.” While
she admits that she has personally perceived things as better than the WJA
survey suggests, she can still recall a time when women weren’t even invited to
the 24K Club, a jewelry networking group in New York (she became its first
woman president in 2003). “With each woman uplifted in leadership, it gets
easier for the next,” she says.
Often, women can be their own barriers to success by not
recognizing their value, says Ayelet Lerner, director of Lerner Diamonds. She
cites the trouble she had starting a WJA chapter in Antwerp. “It was difficult to
get a group of women together here. Women here are not used to being invited
and considered in business. Women have to change that mind-set. Part of the
challenge is getting women to acknowledge their own self-worth.”
While there are more than 1,600 diamond offices in Antwerp,
very few of them are run by women, continues Lerner. She believes the situation
is worse in wholesale than in retail. “In Antwerp, it’s heavily male-dominated.
Just look at pictures from industry events, and you will get a clear picture of
the landscape.”
She is inspired by female role models like her mother, Joy
Lerner, who was one of the first women trading diamonds at the Antwerp bourse.
“Everyone knew my mom as a fierce and passionate diamond buyer. When she had to
become a member of the bourse, and this was back in the mid-’80s, she demanded
a women’s toilet, as there was none.”
Lerner is also a fan of McKay and what she’s doing with WJN.
Indeed, the group is expanding internationally, recently announcing 45 new
women ambassadors from seven countries.
Community is a strong part of McKay’s vision for the WJN.
“Women have friends for different things,” she says. “Friends to cry on, go
shopping with, volunteer, and advocate. We want to emulate that philosophy in
how we organize. By country, regionally, creating networks within networks.”
#MeToo is real
Of the eight gender-based discrimination issues addressed in
last fall’s survey by MVI Marketing and the WJA, a significant number had to do
with unwanted sexual advances and hostile work environments.
Among employee respondents, 25% of women said they had
experienced gender-based negative activity, notes Cecilia Gardner of the Gender
Equality Project. “The biggest number of complaints had to do with sexual
harassment at trade shows and events.”
Although employees aren’t the only ones who face sexual
harassment, they tend to encounter it more often: 58% of employers who had an
experience had just one, while nearly half of the female employees who cited
harassment had five or more, underscoring the role of power dynamics.
“Having spoken and written about this topic over the last
few years, even before #MeToo broke, I’ve been privy to more harassment stories
than I’d care to share,” relates Barbara Palumbo, a jewelry writer from
Atlanta, Georgia. “Many women in our industry have shared their experiences
with me, mostly privately, because they felt they had someone they could trust.
I shared my own story of a retailer sticking his hand between my legs and a
wholesaler suggesting I take my clothes off. Many of the women who suffered
similar atrocities no longer felt alone.”
One problem, she says, is that “many of these men still
think women are being too sensitive, or they just don’t understand what
harassment is.” To wit, a number of men have responded to her by saying they’re
afraid to shake a woman’s hand anymore — to which Palumbo replies: “If a guy
doesn’t know the difference between shaking a woman’s hand and sticking his
hand in her private area, then yeah…we still have a ways to go.”
Women also can be part of the problem, she adds. “There are
some women who think of these issues as ‘boys being boys,’ and that doesn’t
help anybody. There are others who, because things like this never happened to
them, can’t understand why women are talking about it publicly. The lack of
empathy and compassion by those of even our own gender hasn’t helped, nor has
the argument that the women who do come forward could be lying. Statistically,
there’s a far greater percentage of women who are honest about the harassment
or assault that has happened to them, and an even larger percentage of those
who don’t report it for fear of what they’ll be subject to. This was a problem
years ago, it’s a problem now, and it likely won’t be solved any time soon, but
at least it’s finally being talked about.”
The Gender Equality Project is looking into developing a
bystander-intervention training program, says WJA executive director Bernadette
Mack. The idea is to provide both men and women with techniques that can
interrupt behaviors to prevent sexual harassment and assault.
If a person finds themselves in a questionable situation at
work, no matter their position, they should start keeping a written record of
when and how things are happening, advises the JVC’s Tiffany Stevens. “This
applies if you are an employee facing harassment or if you are an employer
noticing questionable actions by an employee and are beginning to make a case
for termination.”
One thing that troubled Gardner in the WJA survey results
was the large number of small companies that had no policies at all. “If you,
as a company head, address issues when there are no issues, it creates a
positive atmosphere, making problems less likely,” she says. “Lawsuits related
to sexual harassment are expensive and kill company morale, and seven out of 10
employee suits win.”
Stevens stresses the importance of having “an up-to-date
employment manual to set expectations with employees, [which] can also protect
you if something goes wrong. There are certainly federal employment laws, and
also many at the state, local and city level, so we encourage jewelers to
become aware of all the regulations they need to comply with.”
This article was first published in the May 2019 issue of Rapaport Magazine.
Image: The May cover of Rapaport Magazine.
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Tags:
Deborah Yonick, diversity, female leaders, Rapaport Magazine, women
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