Here is a brief excerpt from the fourth installment of a series of articles in the “Women at Work” series by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant for The New York Times. To read the complete article, check out others, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
Photo Credit: Gaetan Bally/Keystone for The New York Times
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It’s easy to see how women benefit from equality — more leadership positions, better pay at work and more support at home. Men may fear that as women do better, they will do worse. But the surprising truth is that equality is good for men, too.
If men want to make their work teams successful, one of the best steps they can take is to bring on more women. This fall, the Internet sensation Alibaba went public after achieving years of extraordinary growth as China’s largest e-commerce company. The founder, Jack Ma, explained that “one of the secret sauces for Alibaba’s success is that we have a lot of women.” Women hold 47 percent of all jobs at Alibaba and 33 percent of senior positions.
Research backs him up. Studies reveal that women bring new knowledge, skills and networks to the table, take in ways that make their teams and organizations better. Successful venture-backed start-ups have more than double the median proportion of female executives of failed ones. And an analysis of the 1,500 Standard & Poor’s companies over 15 years demonstrated that, when firms pursued innovation, the more women they had in top management, the more market value they generated.
Some men might wonder whether these benefits for the organization, and for women, might come at their individual expense, and ask, will I end up lower on the corporate ladder?
No. Equality is not a zero-sum game. More profits mean more rewards and promotions to go around. The risk is in not including women. Teams that fail to leverage the skills of a diverse work force fall behind. Two chief executives, John T. Chambers of Cisco, and Carlos Ghosn of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, have said that they can’t be competitive in the global economy without increasing their percentage of female executives.
In a previous article, we highlighted why men ought to share the “office housework” — taking notes, planning meetings and helping others. Doing more actual housework matters, too. Research shows that when men do their share of chores, their partners are happier and less depressed, conflicts are fewer, and divorce rates are lower. They live longer, too; studies demonstrate that there’s a longevity boost for men (and women) who provide care and emotional support to their partners later in life.
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Here is a direct link to this fourth installment in the series.
Sheryl Sandberg is chief operating officer of Facebook and the founder of LeanIn.Org. Adam Grant is a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Give and Take.