Gender Intelligence: Breakthrough Strategies for Increasing Diversity and Improving Your Bottom Line – 25 Years of Research on Workplace Equality

by Barbara Annis, Keith Merron

World-renowned experts on gender intelligence Barbara Annis and Keith Merron suggest it’s time to move beyond arguments based on politics and fairness, building an economic business case for gender diversity in the workplace. Despite forty years of laws, quotas, diversity training, and legal expenses aimed toward equalizing pay, opportunities, and working conditions between the sexes, the glass ceiling remains firmly intact. For too long, companies have played the “numbers game”—attempting to tackle gender imbalance by forcing affirmative action policies and numeric standards on organizations to increase the representation of women in management. Yet, these efforts have rarely been sustained. In this groundbreaking comprehensive analysis, based on more than twenty-five years of in-depth surveys involving 100,000 men and women across dozens of Fortune 500 companies, Barbara Annis and Keith Merron provide a deeper understanding of the multiplicity of forces that have combined to create and perpetuate gender inequality. Gender Intelligence exposes common false assumptions that prevent men and women from successfully performing together at work—myths exacerbated by worn-out theories of gender blindness and sameness thinking. It show how a small but growing number of courageous, leading-edge companies have broken through the barriers to successfully advance women, making the remarkable transformation from compliance to choice—from pressure to preference—and show how it can be done in any business. Gender Intelligence features 17 illustrations.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 29, 2014

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed learning about the neurological differences between women and men and how that impacts the way that each interact with business. I thought the argument was interesting, valid, and important. My only issues were that it seemed to get really repetitive by the end and a lot of the examples given were given anonymously (probably to protect identities) which made it more difficult to get the full picture of some of the examples.

[Dirk Tussing · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the data presented in Chapter 8. Other chapters were pretty light.

[Julia Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The content of this book was really interesting and insightful; however, it read a not like a textbook and could be very repetitive at times.

[Angélique Kleemans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Content interesting and relevant, could have used less pages and more practices.

[Kimberly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I downloaded this book as an ARC from Edelweiss sometime in 2014, back when I was still a business librarian. I just recently got around to reading it (I do read the ARCs I get, just not always in a timely manner!) and I thought it was pretty good for a business book. Granted, I was a women's studies major and this definitely touches on a lot of the themes I am interested in. Like most business books, it's a bit dry and repetitive in places. There were parts that were genuinely interesting though. All of the information in the beginning about the differences between male and female brains, and the developing research in this field, was fascinating. I think anyone who is married to someone of the opposite sex could tell you that there are very obvious differences between men and women, and not all of them can possibly be due to socialization. Anyway, it was fascinating to read about the very real, physical differences between the brains of the sexes.

For the most part I found this book interesting and the ideas engaging. I am not at all familiar with corporate culture; I have worked in female-dominated fields my entire life. It was interesting then to read about all of the women who don't feel "heard" at work. I have never felt this way, at least not on an ongoing basis. Have I just been lucky, or is this a benefit of working with and for other women? This book was written to help those in traditional business model companies, men in particular, move toward becoming more gender intelligent. It would be interesting to see research or data on women who work primarily with other women. Do the men that work in these fields also feel unheard or embattled at work? I would be curious to find out.

I think the only point in this book that I disagreed with is the idea that men are able to bring their whole selves to work, and be themselves at work, while women are not. I am not sure that this is necessarily true. Do men really bring their whole selves to work? Don't we all compartmentalize our "selves" based on where we are and who we are with? I know that my Dad and my husband are not the same people at work that they are at home, and most of us are not the same with our friends as we are with our families or when we are at work. So I struggle with the idea of bringing your whole self to work. I don't know that it's realistic. On the other hand, I can see the author's argument that women have to be less themselves than men do, and that's probably a legitimate point.

If you're looking for a book to introduce your organization to the idea of gender intelligence, or you're wondering why the women in your company are leaving in droves, this is a good book to pick up. You will almost certainly learn something new, and who knows what changes will spring from that?

[Lois · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides a fresh perspective on how gender diversity might be approached in the workplace and is based on research on gender differences. Men and women are wired differently and the authors advocate for gender intelligent programs that acknowledge and leverage the diverse leadership, problem thinking and collaboration styles women bring to the table instead of holding women to a male model of leadership.

There is evidence that having more women in the highest levels of leadership leads to greater profitability. They offer insight into why.

Of course not all women are one way and all men are another, there is a continuum of styles and we all fall somewhere on that curve. What's different about this book is that it is acknowledging and recommending that we embrace both masculine and feminine styles for their difference thinking to have a more holistic approach that enables women to lead with their more authentic selves resulting in less turnover, greater satisfaction for both men and women and greater profitability for the organization