EPISODE #4.4:

Women Leaving the Workplace: How to Stem the Tide  – with Maureen Higgins

Or listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

During the months of the pandemic, women left the workforce in droves. Why? Well the research shows that women still bear the lion’s share of family and home care responsibilities. And we all know the burdens increased over the past year as many worked from home side by side with their children who required care and often homeschooling.  

Furthermore, the chasm between the genders in management and executive roles is great. And to make matters worse, men and women’s wages still differ as well. 

So what is the incentive for women to stay in the workforce? My guest today suggests that we talk a lot about women’s careers and equality at work, but we do not act. We have not moved the needle much. 

My guest today is Maureen Higgins, the leader of IT consulting for Ernst & Young, Calgary. For many years, Maureen has led women initiatives for Ernst & Young throughout Canada.  And she advises the University of Calgary on ways to attract and retain women in STEM programs – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.  

Statistics show us that a greater number of women than men have graduated from college since 1980. And women have been entering the labor force in greater numbers than men in that same time. Yet the gaps between the genders in promotions and wages remains large. White collar jobs are filled by men predominantly.  And the gender difference is even greater in executive roles. 

Family resources are not infinite, according to Maureen. So how are these finite resources of time, money and focus allotted among family members? This is a challenge that many tend to ignore until the stress becomes so great that women leave their careers behind. 

Maureen emphasizes the importance of intentional conversations and planning around whose career will take priority when both spouses and partners work. And she offers tips for how to think about these issues. 

Here is a snapshot of a few topics we cover in this podcast…..

• Women in STEM jobs are on the decline
• Why women don’t return to work after maternity leave
• How to have intentional conversations with partners about how to deploy family resources
• Why women lose when men hire
• How to support women at work

Timestamps: 

• 2:12 Losing women in STEM roles  
• 3:30 Relationship of gender to other diversity efforts 
• 4:33 How innovation depends on diversity 
• 8:37 Importance of changing the conversation about women in the workforce and how to support 
• 10:14 How to improve work/life balance 
• 14:20 Why women aren’t promoted
• 18:01 Stopping mere assimilation and supporting differences 
• 22:42 Men’s role in stopping the outflow of women from the workplace

About Maureen Higgins

Maureen Higgins is the IT Advisory Leader in the Advisory Services practice of Ernst & Young LLP. Maureen is focused on building and leading world-class enterprise technology operations, possessing vast knowledge of the IT landscape. She has the business skills to devise strategic direction, build partnerships, and put solutions in place that support goals and position companies for growth.

Maureen is an Operations and Information Technology executive with over 30 years of experience and proven success building high performing teams, with strategic visionary leader with a clear sense of purpose and urgency when faced with adverse business scenarios, skilled at establishing operational excellence within a diverse culture, translating conceptual ideas and models into growth and operational strategies. She is focused on innovation and bringing value to the overall business and has the ability to work with and influence traditional engineering mindset through multiple approaches.

EPISODE #4.4 TRANSCRIPT

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Welcome to the Conscious Culture Café, the podcast that explores how you can lean into your purpose, live your values, and enhance your social impact through your work. I’m your host, Kathy Miller-Perkins `

Hey, did you know that a greater number of women than men have graduated from college since 1980. And women have been entering the labor force in greater numbers than men in that same time period, but the wage gap between men and women remains. White-collar managerial jobs are predominantly filled by men, and the gap is even wider between men and women in executive positions. According to the United States 2018 census, there were only 45 female executives or senior level managers for every 100 males in these positions. The odds for promotion are one and a half times higher for men than for women. Let’s talk about STEM jobs. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math, and only about a quarter of those jobs are filled by females, even though an increasing number of women are graduating with STEM degrees. My guest today is alarmed by these trends and passionate about addressing the gaps.

Let’s offer a warm welcome to Maureen Higgins, the leader of IT consulting for Ernst & Young, Calgary. For many years, Maureen has led women initiatives for Ernst & Young throughout Canada. In addition, she partners with Catalyst, which is a global nonprofit, working with CEOs to make the workplace great for women. And she serves as an advisor to the University of Calgary, where she assists them with strategies for attracting and retaining women in STEM programs. Maureen, welcome. And let’s begin our discussion by talking about whether women’s issues in the workforce stand apart or are connected with the diversity and inclusion challenges facing organizations. What do you think?

Maureen Higgins:

Well, thanks Kathy. First of all, I wanted to say I’m very honored to be here today, and I have a lot of passion on this topic. I think it used to be separate, Kathy, probably five years ago when we weren’t talking as much about diversity and inclusion, but I think the light has come on to  many people and they’ve started to say, “Oh, you know what? This really isn’t any different.” When we talk about women in the workforce statistically companies perform better, they have better solutions, that overall their stock price is better. So there’s some statistical information. I think that is really where it is. It is really about having a diverse and inclusive culture in organizations. And if you can achieve that through bringing more women into the workforce. And also other visible minorities, other diverse individuals, then I think you really start to round out your company, your culture, your solutioning, and that you have companies that really do perform better, which I think is really powerful.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah. Where innovation comes from diversity, I think.

Maureen Higgins:

Exactly. Yeah. That’s another good one, right? Because we all have a tendency to look at the problem. Likeminded people have a tendency to look at a problem through the same lens. Whereas if you can start to introduce other people to look into that problem through a different lens, that’s where you get a much more viable conversation to occur. And often what I find is in those conversations, even though you go in with your own prejudice, that through that conversation everyone changes their point of view, and that at the end of the day the solution comes out looking something different than I think most people didn’t even think about when they went into that conversation. So I think that’s pretty exciting.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah. Well, so do you think that women as a group get the same kind of attention in the diversity and inclusion space as other minorities? Or what’s your experience with that?

Maureen Higgins:

I think that that’s the part that’s changing. I think initially they were separate. I think it was women, and then there was diversity and  inclusion. And now I think that as… We just had this, as I said, this light bulb moment probably earlier this year in a conversation we were having in the firm because we had two groups as well. We had women, a lot of initiatives focused on women, and then we also had a diversity and inclusion group. And through our conversation, we kind of sat and looked at each other and went, for one thing it’s almost like we’re duplicating work and duplicating conversation. But again, just what we talked about, we could probably have a much more diverse and empowering conversation if we start to bring those groups together versus if we keep them apart and talk about, well, we’re going to talk about women and now we’re going to talk about diversity inclusion and all the other groups that we need to think through. Right.

And I think it also becomes confusing. I think people have… Maybe confusing isn’t the right word. I think it also just becomes a point of we all have so much energy and if we’re going to start to split off our energy into fractional groups and say, “Oh well we’re going to talk about women, now we’re going to talk about diversity and inclusion or this other visible minorities or whatever.” People I think start to think, “Well, I thought we just had this conversation.”

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right.

Maureen Higgins:

Right. We can just change the woman to the different name and we’re going to have the same conversation. So maybe we need to start being more collective and holistic in our approach as we’re moving forward. And maybe that will yield better results. Because I think the other side of this conversation is that I think we’re having lots of conversations. I’m not sure we’re really moving the needle just yet on any of this.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah. I wondered about that. You and I have talked about that over time there’s this whole conversation around activism and what are the right actions to get these diverse populations moving forward. Let’s return for a second to STEM, to STEM careers. Are women getting promoted at the same rate as men? Are there actions around keeping, first of all, attracting women into these positions and then keeping them into the positions? What’s going on in terms of really making progress or not?

Maureen Higgins:

Again, it’s a good question. So when we started this dialogue, you and I a couple of months ago, initially I thought, “Oh, I think we’re making progress.” I look around my office and I think EY and has been a very strong promoter of including women in the workforce, which is great. I don’t think that’s really the question. The question is really once they come to the workforce in a STEM career, do they stay?  And so what are companies doing to have them stay? And I think that women, now, I was reading some stats in preparation for this conversation and when you read the stats it says that women were in STEM roles, and returning to the workforce, and playing more senior leadership roles up until kind of the early 2000s. And since then it’s been on this steady decline.

And I thought that was a bit sad because I thought, “Wow, I thought we were actually making progress.” But I think that goes back to the conversation we just had, which is, now we’re talking about diversity and inclusion and including women. And maybe we need to change what are our conversation is, not just say, “Well, yes we have a woman that sits on our…” We’re meeting the quotas, I guess is what I’m trying to say. I think it has to be more grassroots than that. It has to be more that we’re not just showing up and statistically putting women in senior leaderships. But what is the culture of your company? And how are you making sure that you’re able to sustain it?

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Let me ask you a question about, you’ve mentioned a couple of times now returning, it’s not just attracting, it’s making sure that they return. What do you mean by returning to the workforce?

Maureen Higgins:

So what we often see is that women will stay in a STEM career for the early part of their career and then at that point they make a choice and they either say, “This isn’t for me.” And they leave or typically it will align and when they start a family. And then when they come back to the workforce they choose to… they may come back into that initial career, but they don’t seem to stay, longevity isn’t there.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh that’s really interesting. I wasn’t aware of that. That’s really a concern.

Maureen Higgins:

Is, absolutely it’s a concern. And you asked me, so are they staying in their jobs? I don’t think they’re staying. And why aren’t they staying? Well some of the conversation that we have is really around, we have to make sure that women are getting engaged and involved. 

And so when you start to look at work-life balance, do women and men have work-life balance? I’m just going to focus my conversation for those returning from a mat leave for a minute. And we can talk about then those who don’t. But when you start to look at women who are coming back off of mat leave, they do have other priorities in their life. And I’m not suggesting that men don’t either. But I think that from a society perspective, when we look at who has the primary caregiving requirements, we see that a lot of women take those on.

And I think that’s really a society thing. I don’t think that’s necessarily right or wrong. I think that’s just how it has evolved over time. One thing that I think that’s interesting is I was chatting with a couple of female colleagues that have achieved senior roles in organizations. They said the same thing, which was when they started their career or got to a certain point in their career, and part of that was when they decided they were going to have the family, they had to have a conversation to say, whose career are we going to focus on.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Oh really.

Maureen Higgins:

And in those instances, and I’m not suggesting this is everybody, but in my sample set of two people I spoke to, they said, well, we’re going to focus on your career for these reasons. The man were the CEO of the family business and the women were going out and doing the workforce side of things. And both of them said very pointedly that they couldn’t have done it if they didn’t have that conversation and that support. And one of them in particular said, even though they had that conversation, she was very deliberate about making sure that she would not miss key events. And she said sometimes she felt a tremendous amount of pressure because she said, “I have to go to my child’s play or this or that.” And she said she got a lot of furrowed brow looks and she thought, “Geez, a ton of pressure.” She said at the same time, “If it meant I had to stay up late that night to get the work done then that’s what I did.”

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Wow.

Maureen Higgins:

So I think that’s an interesting aspect.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah. Let me ask you a question about that. You said that these are a few of your colleagues who said that they couldn’t have done what they’ve done if they didn’t have these intentional conversations at home. Do you think that women understand that? Do you think that that’s a widespread recognition that those conversations need to take place or is that something that we need to be encouraging as we think about women, and promotions, and power?

Maureen Higgins:

Yeah. Again, it was one of those things where you get some extra data and you think, “Oh, I never really thought about that.”

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right. Yeah. I wouldn’t have thought of that.

Maureen Higgins:

At the end of the day, I think that it is something that people need to start to think about to say, “We know we do have to have an overt conversation. We do have to decide whose career we’re going to support.” And I think at the end of the day it makes sense because if you talk about a company, you’ll say a company has limited resources. Well a family also has limited resources, right?

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Absolutely. Right.

Maureen Higgins:

So you can’t be all things to all people. And not only do we have children, many of us are in a generation where we have aging parents. So now you have to say, “Well, aging parents are almost a more challenging dilemma to look after because there’s not a daycare you can put them in, so to speak, right? It’s kind of a, you move them into an assisted living or some sort of thing that’s all or nothing. And some of them aren’t ready for the all or nothing just yet. So you still have to have that balance around how do you manage it?

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Well, when you and I first started talking about this, now it’s been a couple of months ago at least, we talked about how women have these competing demands of family and that… And we’re talking about that now actually, that they maybe don’t get promoted into positions of power because of these competing demands. And that they choose because their families are such high priority. They choose to not push themselves into the higher power position. And then a Harvard Business Review article came out saying that this just isn’t true, that both men and women struggle with work-life balance. And there are other reasons why women aren’t being promoted. I know you and I both read that article. What do you think about that? Where are you in your thinking now about whether this is a choice that women make or whether this is opportunity that they’re not given? Or is it a combination of both?

Maureen Higgins:

Yeah, I think it’s both, right. I think the circumstances are probably unique, but if I tackle the promotion side first, so why aren’t people being promoted? I think through my experience of my career and then again, talking to some other women in the workforce who are more senior, there was some alignment and then some other nuggets. And I think one of the pieces of alignment is when you look who is doing the hiring, men do typically have the majority of the positions, leadership positions so they are hiring.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Ah, yeah.

Maureen Higgins:

Yeah, when you start to ask the question, and I think this is some pretty common data that… Typically we all hire people like ourselves, right.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yes, yes indeed.

Maureen Higgins:

So if women are in the hiring position, they’ll hire more women, if men, hire more men. So for myself and a couple of my other colleagues that I’ve spoken with, and this was broader than just those two, just for some additional data, tested some theories and one of them was, I think that you almost need to start to think like the person who’s hiring you. And I don’t mean to say that derogatory at all to any men, but I believe that when men are hiring, they are looking for someone who kind of “looks and acts like them.”  And so we got into a conversation around communication styles. 

I would say that for me, I noticed my communication style when I get into a large group, my communication style is a lot less about storytelling. A lot more about facts. So I’m probably a little more curt. I usually have some comment about the hockey game last night or couldn’t participate in the small talk around the table beforehand and then we get into the work. I’m often very prepared as we were talking with some other people that said, “often feel that I have to be very prepared.” As my other friends said, if it meant she had to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to get the work done, she did, because preparation is utmost, right. You don’t want to be caught flat footed. And I thought that was interesting.

And then just to add onto that, when we get into smaller groups, I think we go back more to our, I’ll call it maybe our true self, which is a little bit more storytelling, more probably nurturing, more how are you, tell me about the kids, tell me about the trip, tell me about all that kind of stuff. So I think we almost wear two hats and I don’t have enough data to say, but I wonder if that, if you started to really look through and maybe Harvard Business Review can do an article on this one. If we start to look through successful women… You kind of have that notion where you’re in a conversation and you’re one person, one persona, and then you go into this other conversation, you’re another persona. So that, I don’t know. I wonder about that.

And then the other conversation that I had was that I do think about the off-ramps that the Harvard Business Review article talked about, and I do believe that there are other pressures for women. And there’s tons of stories where we say as children, boys and girls are brought up differently. Boys are told to be more aggressive. Girls are not supposed to be aggressive. They’re not so good in math, those kinds of things, those kinds of stories and I think that when I read that article and I thought about it, I thought, is it again a bit more of a societal thing where there’s the I need to step back, I need to focus on… Again, I only have so many resources, so where am I going to focus. And if getting to the top really means I have to work all these hours and do these things. And my husband and I are together in this relationship and we haven’t had the discussion that all the resources in the family are going to go behind my career, then maybe all the resources that we have need to go behind his career.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right. Interesting. I want to go back to what you mentioned about the communication styles just for a second because I have some questions about that. I agree with you that I see that all the time. And in fact we do some work with executives and aspiring executives on how to influence and that’s what we recommend, is that people think about their target audience, whether it’s one person or more, and adjust their communication style to that audience. But here’s my concern. If we get back into the diversity and inclusion space, what are we doing when  we adjust our communication style to that predominant culture? What we’re doing, it seems to me, is we’re assimilating into the culture instead of adding our own perspective to the culture. I just wonder if that’s really, in the long term a healthy thing for organizations. I don’t know that we can change it, but it’s just curious to me that we do that, and that we recommend that people do that. What do you think about that?

Maureen Higgins:

I don’t think I’m recommending. So to your… Thank you for that. I think it was a story about the people that at my generation, how we’ve been successful. And I think that through having that conversation and starting to pull some data together, it starts to create awareness to say just exactly what you’re saying. We are just really doing the assimilation and perpetuating something. So when we’re now in these diversity and inclusion conversations, can we start to think through how do we better tune our communication skills? I think we all need to tune them to a certain extent, but does that mean now we have to talk about the hockey game the night before and not be our true authentic selves in these conversations? No. Obviously we would want to make sure that everyone is their true and authentic self, because that’s I think where their value really comes out.

I think the conversations were maybe a bit organic. And when we look back we may say  “Oh my god, yeah, we did that. We all did that.” Now that we can kind of air it, maybe that’s one of the things. And then through that conversation we can also not just have the conversation with women, but now have the conversation with the men that says men have one certain style, women have another style, but let’s try to embrace that and get the most of it versus saying, pushing one down for the sake of lifting the other one up.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right. And I do think it’s mostly unconscious. I mean I do. And so as you’re saying, making it more conscious or raising awareness may be part of the solution here, could be.

Maureen Higgins:

Yes. I think so. No different than what we just talked about with the careers. Right. And I think that’s maybe again, that was something that stood the test of time back in the ’80s or the ’90s. And maybe now again with more diversity inclusion, that storyline also shifts. But I do think at the end of the day, people do have to think that they do have limited resources. So what does that look like for each family and make sure that there is that conversation.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right. Makes sense. And that raises the issue of men’s roles in all of this. So often when we talk, we talk about what women can do to make themselves more promotable or more successful. Tell me, give me some of your thoughts about what is the role of men in all of this and how do we view that? How do we bring both genders into the conversation?

Maureen Higgins:

One of the things I’ll say is that in the conversations I’ve been in, the men that I have been in conversations with, they actually have children who are probably in this millennial age. And I think the millennials have a different view and a different perspective honestly.

And I think that that’s starting to make it almost like a bottom up conversation. So they’re having these conversations at home and I think it’s allowing them to get informed around, oh, there are different ways to look at it. No different than the women. But I think before in work as we were just saying, the certain communication styles, we were kind of assimilating into a common communication, a common culture. Now, I think there’s a lot more diversity outside of work that people are starting to say, “Oh, okay.” And wrapping their heads around it. And now when you come to work, I think that there is a lot more of the, “Oh, this isn’t just at work.” Back to your point. We’re not going to put ourselves in this box at work and then when we leave work we’re going to be someone completely different. I think there’s a lot more autonomy between outside of work and inside work in that we have to embrace the differences and work together. And I think that the men that I am working with, because I think of this, the children and how society’s changing, are starting to appreciate that that has to also come into the workforce. Because otherwise you’re going to alienate really the next level of future workers. They’re not going to want to come and work for us. Right?

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Definitely. And you and I had conversations about the generational differences too, that I wanted to see where thinking has landed with that. We talked about something like, boomers really don’t see this as their issue. And millennials are starting to move into management. We were chatting about whether this will make a difference? Where are you landing in that space now? Do you think the handover of the generations of will make a difference? Do you see a different leadership style within millennials? What are you seeing?

Maureen Higgins:

So yes, I see a different leadership style in millennials, for sure. I think they’re more curious. I get some very interesting questions asked of me in conversations. They just want to really understand more about me personally, what I need, what I want.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Really?

Maureen Higgins:

Yeah. And I think that’s kind of interesting.

I also see them doing that though with my male counterparts too. So I think that’s good. I think it’s really important that they understand and are trying to inform themselves. And yet at the same time, they’re also very happy to share their expectations, and what they see, and make sure that I really understand kind of where they’re coming from. I think from a boomer’s perspective, so I think that one’s always interesting, and I think the boomers are very well intentioned. But again, I think in fairness to them, many of them grew up in a time in society where it was far more traditional. They had mothers that stayed at home, that was very common in that time frame. And now you’re in a society, or now you’re in a time in society where you’re starting to ask them to change everything.

I think there are those boomers that are in for the ride and are willing to kind of figure it out. And I think there is those who are saying, “Good luck. I’ve got just a little bit of time left.” Part of it I think is when you look at senior leaders, many of them are in that role because they have a lot of experience. They’ve proven themselves. They have almost a roadmap or framework that they think in, that they analyze, that they can manage, and they can design, and execute in that framework. And now we’re going to show up and say, “Hey, here’s this whole dimension to this framework that you haven’t worked in, thought about, and now what do you think?” I could see why people say, “Geez, you know what? I’m actually good. I got my framework, I got a couple more years and I’m going to go.”

I think there’s other people who are saying, “Hey, this is really exciting.” Because they have the influence of older kids or potentially even some grandkids. So I think again, we continue to see a little bit of a gamut, but I do think that the boomers, and I know when we spoke earlier, I was probably a bit more definitive, but I do think that they are probably at that pace where they’re just good to move on out because they’re almost at retirement and say, “Hey, let the next guys, let them handle it.”

Kathy Miller Perkins:

As we wrap this up, Maureen, what kinds of tips would you offer the listeners? And that could be either for companies, or for men, or for women. Or what takeaways would you like to leave with the listeners today?

Maureen Higgins:

I think one tip would probably be stay curious. So be curious about who works for you from a millennial perspective, who’s in your office, be curious about whether the career paths of the women, are they feeling that they have the right support? It’s really important that people feel that they are supported, that people feel that they’re engaged. And so from a workforce perspective, I would say make sure that you’re talking to those individuals. And I’m not suggesting they have to be the millennials. They can also be the person that looks very much similar to you from an age perspective. And understand also what they’re thinking. And I think there’s also the middle group that might, we don’t talk about them, but they’re not the millennials and they’re not the boomers, but the Xs.  They also have a different way of thinking and approaching. And so there’s a lot of knowledge, and energy, and innovation, and wisdom in that group too. So let’s start to have the conversation, be curious, ask the questions.

And then the second tip I would say is that think through how you’re going to act on what you learn. As we talked earlier, you can’t just say we’re going to listen to everybody and not do anything because listening creates an expectation. The thing is we’re going to listen to people, we’re going to have conversations, and now what is the action plan that we’re going to do? And how are we going to make sure it is lifted up, we’re embracing this and moving forward, not just talking about it?

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Right. And that’s one of the things that our clients seem to have the hardest time with. Even the clients that are good at discussing the issues when it comes to embedding it into culture, that’s a whole different thing. And that’s really challenging, I think.

Maureen Higgins:

You have to keep each other accountable, right. But it’s hard to be accountable unless you do have a plan or a vision, something that’s we’ll have to put their foot against. Right?

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Absolutely. And if you’re not accountable, if you don’t take action, it builds cynicism in the organization and that creates generational conflict. And we could go on and on about where that lands.

Maureen Higgins:

Yeah, exactly.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

The actions and the accountability. Great advice for our listeners. Don’t just talk about it. Certainly talk about it because you need to, but take action. Put together a plan, and track it, and be accountable to it. Wonderful advice.

Maureen Higgins:

Absolutely.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Well, thank you so much for your time and your insights Maureen. And I will look forward to the next time that we get you back on here to talk about your additional insights as time goes by. Thank you.

Maureen Higgins:

Wonderful. Thank you. Have a good day.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Thanks for listening to the Conscious Culture Cafe. If you liked what you heard, connect with us at millerconsultants.com. You can access the show notes and receive our free materials. See you next episode.