By Melissa J. Anderson

In many companies, efforts to convince management to dedicate resources toward the advancement and retention of women continue to fall on deaf ears. Decades of effort have gone into conveying the point that women are just as valuable as men – yet a misunderstanding of “value” often causes people to miss the point of gender diversity.

To many people, “equal value” means “sameness.” They think, if men and women are the same, then why should we expend so much effort increasing our numbers of women when they will contribute in the same way as men?

Men and women are of equal value, but whether by social conditioning or biological construction, they aren’t the same. Studies show that, on average, women think through problems differently than men, are motivated differently than men, and build relationships differently than men.

Gender diversity means that companies have the benefit of a multitude of viewpoints and ways of solving problems and a wealth of critical insight to draw from as they approach 21^st century complexity in a diverse, global marketplace.

But this is the problem that diversity advocates face – a misunderstanding of the value of diversity that leads many to believe that diversity is nothing more than a numbers game designed to annoy people with more important work to do. And this is why Barbara Annis developed the concept of Gender Intelligence two decades ago.

“I was really looking at the concept of gender equality, and how to advance and retain women – but that mindset is really a numbers game. I didn’t approach how men change their mindset for equality.”

She continued, “Especially in finance and technology, companies were saying ‘we’ve got one women or we’ve got five women,’ but they weren’t saying ‘we need their perspective.’”

By Melissa J. Anderson

In a ForbesWoman article earlier this month, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founding president of the Center for Talent Innovation (formerly Center for Work-Life Policy), wrote that while there are 144 boards with no women in the Fortune 1000 and women make up only 15 percent of all Fortune 1000 directors, there is also some good news when it comes to the effort to achieve board parity.

The good news, Hewlett says, is that over 1,100 directors on Fortune 1000 boards are over 70 years old.

If we only wait just a bit longer, she suggests, soon qualified women can rush into the seats vacated by retiring males. She concludes:

“The time may finally be arriving for women to fulfill B.C. Forbes’ predication. As more women pry open the boardroom door and assume a seat at the table, they can not only serve as a powerful voice for change within each company but can proactively broaden the pipeline of female candidates to ensure that even more women advance.”

Hewlett’s message about being rigorously prepared to assume board service when elected is valuable. But her suggestion that women simply wait their turn to be chosen for board service when the old guys are out of the way is disappointing. Women have been waiting for decades to get to the top, and – as Catalyst data on the percentage of women making it into the boardroom shows – playing the waiting game isn’t getting women anywhere fast.

By Melissa J. Anderson

The Financial Times recently reported that the number of female executive directors on FTSE 350 boards has slipped in the past year – all this after significant work to raise awareness of the benefits of board diversity in the UK following the release of the Lord Davies Report.

In fact, wrote Elizabeth Rigsby, the FT’s Chief Political Correspondent, “89 per cent of FTSE 350 companies have no female executives on their boards.”

Prospective female directors in the US are faring better – but not by much. According to Catalyst research released late last year, women occupy only 16.1 percent of Fortune 500 board directorships. That means over four out of five board seats belong to men. And, the report said, about one in ten Fortune 500 companies had no women on their boards.

Why is it that, despite all the research pointing to the business value of boardroom diversity, companies still stubbornly refuse to open the boardroom door to diverse candidates? Here are three convenient non-excuses that boards make for their lack of business-building diversity – and to counter them.

By Robin Madell

There’s only so much that individuals can do on their own to try to catapult their careers. One finding of Catalyst’s Myth of the Ideal Worker report is that even when women tried all the strategies they had been told will help them get ahead—using the same tactics as men—they still advanced less than their male counterparts and had slower pay growth. Therefore, as with latticing, it’s up to the companies themselves to meet women halfway.

DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2011 found that some organizations are doing a better job than others of getting women into leadership positions—and those organizations have more formal processes in place for talent management.

But how can change agents encourage their organizations to make these changes?

By Melissa J. Anderson

In her new book, Half A Wife: The Working Family’s Guide To Getting A Life Back, Gaby Hinsliff explains that the challenges that mothers and fathers face in the workplace, as they pertain to work/life balance, aren’t the same. Much of the work/life discussion revolves around time – having the time to build a career one is proud of, as well as manage family responsibilities in a way one is also proud of.

But there’s more to it than that. When it comes to compromise in this area, men and women are judged differently in the workplace, and likely perceive their own sacrifices differently. She writes:

“A successful woman who compromises her career for the children will often be praised for doing so, because she is conforming to a sentimental idea of what ‘good’ women do. A man doing the same, however, is challenging the idea of what it means to be a man: competitive, ambitious and a successful provider. The idea that mothers are ‘necessary’ to children but fathers more dispensable is ingrained in most men from childhood, not least by their own fathers.”

But a recent study shows that this attitude is changing amongst fathers – and there is a desire for corporations to change as well. The Boston College Center for Work and Family’s survey of almost 1,000 “white collar” fathers at large corporations revealed that while men considered themselves career driven, the majority wished they could spend more time at home.

Brad Harrington, Executive Director of BC’s Center for Work & Family, said “We see that fathers, too, need a family-supportive work environment when it comes to aligning work and family, and this has tangible benefits for their jobs and careers, and in turn for their organizations.”

By Melissa Anderson

Recently More Magazine released the results of a survey on ambition, work/life issues, and other topics. According to the survey of 500 college educated women over 35, 43% of respondents said they were less ambitious now than they were ten years ago.

The headline that many news outlets and websites ran with was along the lines of “Women are Losing Ambition.”

Well, not exactly.

In fact, the survey revealed quite the opposite. Because, while 43% of the survey respondents said they were less ambitious now than they were ten years ago, the majority (57%) said they were just as or more ambitious today.

By Hua Wang

New research shows that how law firms distribute billing origination credit and compensation affects the advancement of women lawyers to positions of real power and influence in their firm. What steps can law firms take to develop fair and equitable compensation, origination credit, and client succession policies that will help drive gender balance at the top ranks?

As women lawyers become more senior, they experience an increasing shortfall in income compared to male attorneys, and firms see higher attrition rates of women senior women lawyers. Despite commitments to build a more gender balanced senior echelon at law firms, women represent only 16% of equity partners nationwide. These lawyers hold an ownership interest in their firms and occupy the most prestigious, powerful and lucrative positions.

The underrepresentation of women among law firm equity partners means fewer women on compensation committees, which research shows, impacts the compensation of women across the board. According to the 2010 American Bar Association survey study “New Millennium, Same Glass Ceiling” [PDF] of nearly 700 women law firm partners, about half of the respondents had one woman on the committee. One-fifth had none. Another fifth had two women. When women are not part of the dialogue and the decision-making body that charts the future direction of firms, the chances are greater that the policies and practices implemented will be less responsive to the career needs of women lawyers.