When my mother graduated from college in 1972, she interviewed at an investment bank where a manager told her that for certain positions, women were interviewed but never hired. Even in the late 1980s, she went on interviews with headhunters who would explicitly tell her, “They want to interview a woman,” with the emphasis on “interview”— as in, not hire. Through the decades, as she’s climbed the ranks to become a CFO of publicly traded company, I’ve often told these stories to show how much more opportunity exists in the workplace today.
Is #MeToo Backlash Hurting Women’s Opportunities in Finance?
In the aftermath of MeToo, some men are privately saying that they have no intention of hiring women for open roles, or of managing young women if they can avoid it. Such candor is rare, and off the record, because such discrimination is illegal. But women will never know why they were passed over. Although men’s fears may be grounded in an unconsciously biased view of women as untrustworthy or irrational, the MeToo movement also bears some of the blame for this backlash. The hashtag and media reports have had a telescoping effect, essentially blurring important distinctions between rape, groping, and clumsy come-ons. While neither sexual harassment and assault should be tolerated under any circumstances, they are not the same thing. But the level of condemnation offered to each now seems to be the same. As a result, women are silently being pushed to the side — which is not what women, or activists, want.