Gretchen M. Tibbits
Former President, National Association for Female Executives (NAFE)
"Mentoring and Generation X: Women in the Workplace"
March 4, 2002

Gretchen Tibbits: I thought about what I wanted to talk about today, and I warned everyone that I tend to go off on tangents a little bit. I was a little torn--I saw the ad: mentoring, glass ceiling, Wall Street. I can do a little bit of that. Being president of NAFE, being a networking organization--maybe I should talk about networking. A couple of people told me that your speaker last year, Sheri, spoke a lot about her experiences here at UVA and how those impacted her career. I could spend hours on each of those.

What can I give you that maybe others wouldn't? It is going to be a little statistic-heavy because when you pull it all together, it gives a cohesive picture of women, the changes that we have made--in our workforce, our government, our environment, our university committee, and in the country. It is radically different from the way things were, prior to the early-seventies. The early-seventies is really a seminal time. So much was going on--Title Nine, coeducation of top universities, 1972 NAFE and Miss Magazine were founded, 1976 Working Woman Magazine was founded.

I have with me the 25^th anniversary issue of Working Woman published last September. It's the last one. It is officially "on hiatus." It's the last one. A couple of people have asked me what I have been doing. And I tell people, "well, since August 17^th I have been on what I prefer to call a 'sabbatical'." This means we went bankrupt. So, I asked myself what I wanted to do. I went to Greece and Egypt, I left New York September 9^th (very lucky). I came back on a Thursday in the end of September and came down here the next day for an Alumni Council meeting.

I got back to New York, kind of looked around and said, "this isn't a good place to be, and it is not going to be a good place to be for a while." So, I went to Australia for a month. I came back, spent some time with my parents, and while I was gone my house sold.

I lived in Hoboken. For those of you who are students getting ready to graduate and who want to live in New York--Hoboken is awesome. If you talk to your parents or grandparents and they tell you horrible stories about it, it has changed. Hoboken is known as the birthplace of baseball and Frank Sinatra.

So, I am in Australia faxing documents back and forth to sell my house. I get back and the closing is taking forever and we can't figure it out. I get this message from my lawyer and she says, "do you know who is buying your house?" I said, "I don't know . . . somebody 'Lambert'." She said, "as in Frank Sinatra's granddaughter, Nancy's daughter." So, this was why we there were extra lawyers--it makes a little more sense.

I went on sabbatical, I sold the house, now I had to find a place to live, and it occurred to me--at some point I need to find a job again. So, in January I really started looking. This is something-particularly for women in the room, but for all of us, really--that 80% of people find their job through networking. It is a little different from an entry-level job, but at my level, I have not gotten a single interview from a letter sent out or calling ahead. Nothing has happened. I am now pretty far down the road for two separate things.

One is through, actually, a UVA graduate who I called out of the blue. I talked to his assistant who fortunately recognized my name. She said, "what are you doing?" I said, "well, I'm not--that's why I'm calling." And she said, "well, I'm sure Peter would want to know. You just email me your resume to me and I'll give it to him and we'll see what happens." Two weeks later I get a phone call from human resources. Now, I'm thinking that his industry is over here in one area and I'm over here in another area--where's the connection? I don't know. But, I said to my friend the other night, "you never know until you go." I went in to the interview. She said, "tell me more about NAFE and what you did here." I told her that I was running a business unit in profit and loss in a division of a company, and I did the spokesperson thing, which was really interesting, but it really did not have anything to do with what we were talking about in this interview. She then asked that I tell her more about it and what I liked about it and what I actually did. It turned out that they had this whole group called the "Influencer Group," so we were now talking. Again, I was calling this man that I new purely from UVA--he was on a board, I was on a board, he's from New York, I'm from New York--and next thing I know, this was one of my big job prospects because we found a connection. I was calling him because I thought he might know someone who knew someone who heard of something in publishing. So, you never know.

The other one is a mentor of mine from the company that is now retired. I called her when I was considering where I wanted to work. She said that there was a president of one of the golf magazines whom she gave his first job in publishing. She said that she would email him on my behalf. So, at least he is going to meet with me and talk with me because the woman who gave him his first job said that you have to talk to me. That is kind of what I have been doing. I am hopeful to have a job offer in 2 weeks. That is kind of what I have been doing, but it shows you that you never know where you are going to end up. I am known for being a planner. You have to be open to what opportunities arise before you. That is, I think, a big lesson because you never know where your path might take you, or as Yogi Bear says, when you reach the fork in the road, take it. You want to be open.

I was speaking with Sarah, from Iris, and she was asking me a lot of questions about women's impact in corporations. I woke up very early this morning to talk radio. They were offering a statistic that 300,000 nurses are going to be retiring from the work force within the next X amount of years. They mentioned how, as an economy and as a health care, we need to address this change. Shortly thereafter there was an ad for Bon Secours Hospital with the opening line, "What company in Richmond has been named to Working Mothers 100-best list for the last 3 years." Then it goes into the ad--great placement for them because the talk show was just talking about the shortage of nurses. This company looked out and saw that they had a problem and they asked themselves how they could fix this. They decided that they would make their job more attractive for workers so that, if a person had 3-5 job offers for being a nurse, that person would go work there. That is happening in many companies.

Working Mothers Magazine, which was one of the properties of Working Women Network, has their annual 100-best list. It was referred to as, "that darn list," by HR professionals because they would get phone calls from their CEO's demanding that they get on that list.

I sat, a couple of years ago, in between the Vice-Chairman and one of the newly hired head of human resources at one of the major automotive companies. We have three in the U.S.--two were on the Working Mothers Magazine list, this was the third. They were starting to do the announcements and the Vice-Chairman leaned across me and said to his HR guy, "If I'm not up there on that podium next year, you're not sitting here." Why are those issues so important? Why do particularly women, but also men, start demanding that flexibility from their employers. I will not pretend to know the experiences of the University environment (my experiences were very much so on the corporate side), but the demands and the recognition of that with companies has changed because of the entrance of women in the workforce. In the late-seventies, women made up 35% of the professional-managerial workers. Today it is up to 50%. We are still pretty well represented. The gap is where you have your senior staff, CEO's, and tenured professors. In the middle management, we are doing pretty well. Women have dictated these changes happen.

The other really great thing that you see is what I saw in a presentation from a gentleman from one of the 100 best companies. He said, "Some of you people in the room are on board philosophically because of why this is so wonderful, and some of you are here because your boss made you come. I am going to talk to you all." He had all these great flow charts. According to the Department of Labor, turnover costs you 30% of salary. The higher the position level gets, the higher that number gets. So, a middle to senior management slot is at least their annual salary. The speaker showed that their company came up with multi-million dollar costs that they were saving in turnover costs each year. Then, he fully loaded what their costs were to have on-site childcare, flex time, and job sharing. They were ahead 4 million dollars a year. He said, "forget about that it is a good thing to do on a human level--it's making money and it's saving money." So, that is what has happened at some companies, which is great. What you do find, though, and particularly as the economy is tight, is that it is not ingrained in other companies. You will hear lay-offs and that flextime is no longer offered. It happens in the good economic times, but when it gets tight, it goes away. This is where we have made some steps, but it is not quite yet there.

I'll go through some of the statistics.

Women make up

12.5% of corporate officers

8% of the line officers (which is what leads you to the CEO office, traditionally)

12% of corporate board seats

4.1% of top earners

6 of the Fortune 500 companies are run by women

So, we have 50% of the professional-managerial, but we are not in those high levels. Why does that happen? That is a very loaded question. Is it because there are less women in the pipeline? There were less women who were able to go to a university or who got a graduate degree, who are now in that 50's age range--which is what the CEO's are. Is it because we have gone into other fields? Is it because we have opted out?

In 1977 there were 700,000 women-owned businesses, in 1999 there were 9.1 million. What does that mean? This means that there are 9.1 million women who aren't in corporate America--who have opted out for one reason or another. Why are they opting out? Some of them are opting out because they have a great business idea. There is a woman who owns PC-Connection. Patricia Gallop started this business and it is now a Fortune 500 company. A lot of other women feel that they are hitting the glass ceiling or they just want more control over their lives--they want to be able to build their own schedule and have their own balance. But, that also diminishes the number of women in the pipeline, which also means that there are going to be less women who are in the company, ready for senior management and ready for CEO. It is an interesting question. But women are starting businesses at the ratio of 2-1 to men. Women are opting out. What does that mean? I don't have the answer. Part of it is the glass ceiling.

That is a reality. We did a survey at the NAFE National Conference last y ear that 400 women from across the country in a wide age range and cross-section of industries partook. We asked them, "Do you think feel that the glass ceiling is still in place?" Actually, let me ask this room. I'll give you the four scenarios and then I'll just do a quick show of hands. Promise me you won't pan the crowd (said to the cameraman). The four options were:

1. Yes, women are still having to fight against traditional barriers
2. Yes, but we are starting to break through
3. Maybe, but I think I see the cracks
4. No, it is not an issue

So, how many women say that yes, women are still having to break through traditional barriers? It looks about a quarter of the audience. How many people think that we are starting to break through? Okay, that's most of you. And how many think maybe, but I think I see the cracks? Alright, just a few. And how many think it is not an issue at all? Actually, 6% of our group said that it was not an issue. This room is a little more optimistic. Most of the room seemed to think that we were starting to break through. We were evenly split: 41% say that we still have to break through traditional barriers, and 42% say that we are starting to break through. I think that is pretty realistic, but it also depends where you work--the industry and the environment. We found, actually, 52% of the women who work as educators, government workers, and not-for-profit, said the strongest traditional barriers, and the corporate women--52% of them--felt that they were starting to break through. I was also hoping and pleased to find that the youngest group skewed more optimistic, which one would hope.

We also talked about pay equity. Do you believe that men are paid more than women for the same job. 91% said yes, 72% said it happens all the time, and 19% said it happens, but not at their company.

There is a great study that I just found recently that the Bar Association did. They asked their readers, "what do you think your prospects for advancement are?" "Did you think that the prospects for advancement for were greater for men than for women, in your life?" Only 25% of the women and 3% of the men thought it was easier for men than for women.

You think that that is great because 50% of the law school classes are women. Three quarters of the women say that there is no issue, except that ABA did a follow-up study and said that those women are wrong. They said that women will actually have a tougher time with advancement. One of the reasons, according to a catalyst study, women opt out--they leave law firms on an average of at least 3 years earlier than men. They are not going to the partner level. They are leaving because they are having problems with their feelings of their prospects for advancement. Then, what happens is that the partners think that, even though they might want to promote one of the women, she will most probably leave before then. So, when she leaves because she has not been fast tracked, another woman comes in and the partners think, once again, that there is not point in fast tracking her since she will leave. It becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy.

Just to give you something optimistic--what they say is that you over-communicate. When you go in, you make sure you tell those partners that you really want to be partner there. You have got to over-communicate and let them know and give that reassurance.

There have been over 500 studies done on self-fulfilling prophecies. What they say is that confidence, even misguided confidence, helps people perform better. Which also tells us that the opposite is true. If I think that you are not going to stay for partner, even if I don't even realize that I am doing this, I am going to make sure that you don't get there. You are going to figure that out. I don't have the solutions to any of this, but I think a lot of this is awareness. If we can enlighten each other, if we can communicate as men and women--what are our goals, how do we approach problems in different ways and get to the same place--is one thing.

The other thing is mentoring. As women, I don't care what stage we are, we want to empower each other and we want to help each other through mentoring, through being there and being a resource (whether formal or informal). That is something that can sometimes be difficult for them because they have fought so hard to get where they are. I'll give you 3 different women's perspectives. Carly Fiorina came out and she said that there was no glass ceiling. Working Women Magazine could not get an interview with her. She said that she did not want to be singled out as a woman. 40% of the women at Hewlett Packard are women. She thought it was just fine and that there was no issue. She, then, really go railed by a number of other women entrepreneurs and leaders in the community. But, here is the other side: Would she have been CEO of Hewlett Packard if she hadn't just assumed there was no glass ceiling and that she could do whatever she wanted? That is an interesting one. She did not see any reason that she should be the "poster child" for women's CEO's because that was not what she felt she was about. We were not able to make as much an example out of her as we would have liked because she was not willing to take that. She is an incredible woman, but it would have been nice to be able to have her on the cover and to have her speak at the Working Woman 500. It was just not somewhere that she would go.

I don't know if you know of Ally Gugenheimer. She has been very focused in the New York scene. She is an absolutely incredible woman. She was the first woman on the New York City Planning Commission. She tells a story of when the second woman was named to the New York City Planning Commission--she wasn't real happy and she talks about this. It wasn't about her anymore! She is sitting there at the board table--her and 12 other guys--and everyone asked her, "what will the ladies think? What will the women think?" Suddenly, now there is another woman at the table. It is no longer just her. Now she is feeling more marginalized than when she was the only one there. Now, once it gets to be 5 to 8 or half of the board, it changes all the dynamics again.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg said, "I do think being the second woman is wonderful because it is a sign that being a woman in a place of importance is no longer extraordinary." But, what is that do to the first woman who has been sitting there being extraordinary? When you are the second woman, you are really excited because now we are starting to break through.

I have seen it personally. It wasn't until I went to work with a network that I had a woman mentor. It doesn't mean that I haven't worked in companies with women in senior positions, but they felt that, because they had worked hard to get where they were, you would have to work hard, too. Whereas at Working Woman, there was enough of a senior staff that they picked out a couple of their favorite young up-and-comers that they wanted to replace them. It changes the dynamic. I feel that it is incumbent upon me to do the same. One of them is a woman I hired right out of U.Va., another is a woman that started working for me about six months after she graduated from college. I will follow their careers and make sure that they are doing okay. One of them, Hannah, I called and I asked her what she was doing next. She said that she her job was not really a good place for her but that she was comfortable. I told her that she needed to start thinking what her next step was. The other one, the U.Va. graduate of course, is doing wonderfully. She was just out at the Olympics--the head of AOL Time Warner's corporate entertaining for the Olympics. She doesn't need me at all, but I still check in on her. That is a little bit of the mentoring and some of the experiences.

I talked to a couple of you in the room, I see some familiar faces. As you go out there, be focused and know what you want. If you are calling somebody, don’t call them and ask them to get you a job, but call them and tell them why you are interested in them and why. Make it easy for them.

I have one great quote and it is from an educator, Kurt Hahn: "There is more in us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps for the rest of our lives, we will be unwilling to settle for less." I like that and it is a good challenge for all of us.