Andie & Al, Author at Andie & Al

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Compensation & Promotion, Leadership & Management

Seven Techniques to Land Your First “Real” Job Interview

If you have ever grumbled, “I am never going to find a job that uses my education,” you are not alone. Forbes recently reported that half of recent graduates are either underemployed or not using their college degree at all. Meanwhile, employers are skeptical of whether recent graduates are adequately prepared for workplace success. According to a recent survey conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, less than two in five employers rate recent graduates as “well prepared” with the skills and...

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by Andie & Al

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Advocating for Yourself, Equality & Diversity, Fighting Stereotypes & Breaking Biases, Gender Communication Techniques, Life Balance & Positive Mindsets

A Very Bad Idea For Achieving Gender Equality

Anne-Marie Slaughter’s 2012 article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All,” became one of the most popular in The Atlantic’s history. Slaughter’s message, based on her two years in a high-level job at the U. S. State Department, was that a woman cannot successfully juggle a highly demanding career and the needs of two teenage boys. Many women across the country seemed to respond with a resounding “Damn right.” We, however, found Slaughter’s article superficial and its conclusions unsupported. In Breaking...

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by Andie & Al

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Compensation & Promotion, Equality & Diversity, Fighting Stereotypes & Breaking Biases, Gender Communication Techniques

Gender Bias: Here, There, Everywhere

The enormous gap between women’s and men’s career achievements is primarily due to serious workplace discrimination against women seeking to move up to increasingly important leadership positions. That discrimination, in turn, is due to stereotype-driven gender bias. Our book, Breaking Through Bias, the blog posts we write, and the speeches and workshops we give are all focused on this workplace bias and how women can avoid or overcome it. But women face gender bias in situations that have nothing to...

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by Andie & Al

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Advocating for Yourself, Gender Communication Techniques, Life Balance & Positive Mindsets, Motherhood bias, Office Politics, Politics

Clinton Did It; Should You Wave the “Mom Flag” in a Professional Setting?

Hillary Clinton's campaign has recently touted her softer side - positioning her as a mother and grandmother. Should you also do it in a professional setting? The Chicago Tribune asked Andie about what is entailed in "waving the mom flag at work." Andie talks about the Goldilocks Dilemma, and the difficulty most women face when discussing their motherhood at work. Read the full article here....

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by Andie & Al

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Advocating for Yourself, Equality & Diversity, Fighting Stereotypes & Breaking Biases, Goldilocks Dilemma, Leadership & Management, Politics, Uncategorized

We Enjoyed Ezra Klein’s (The Vox) Observations Regarding the Wildly Different Impressions of Hillary Clinton

We enjoyed reading Ezra Klein's recent passage appearing in Vox. Not only does Ezra provide astute investigative reporting, we admire his fearlessness in expressing the truths he found. We are particularly impressed with Ezra's identification of the gender biases that exist among this year’s election, and generally among women and men in the public’s eye. As our followers know, we have also commented on the many stereotypes that Hillary embodies, and the difficult balance aspiring women must strike between communal (female) and agentic (male)...

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by Andie & Al

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Compensation & Promotion, Equality & Diversity, Leadership & Management, Office Politics

Eliminating Gender Biases in Your Legal Organization’s Performance Evaluations

Most leaders in the legal profession would agree with Katherine Phillips of Columbia University Business School, when she said: “[s]ocially diverse groups… are more innovative than homogeneous groups.” Yet, as McKinsey & Co. recently concluded, “Corporate America [including the legal profession] is not on a path to gender equality.” Women are simply not present at senior levels of our law firms and corporate law departments in numbers anywhere comparable to men, and the reason is straightforward: the gatekeepers to women’s career advancement — the...

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by Andie & Al

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Advocating for Yourself, Equality & Diversity, Fighting Stereotypes & Breaking Biases, Gender Communication Techniques, Leadership & Management, Office Politics

Are U.S. Millennial Men Just as Sexist as Their Dads?

Millennials, those Americans now between 16 and 36 years old, are often spoken of as if they’re ushering in a new era of enlightened interpersonal relations. For example, in 2013 Time predicted Millennials would “save us all” because they are “more accepting of differences…in everyone.” That same year, The Atlantic stated that Millennials hold the “historically unprecedented belief that there are no inherently male or female roles in society.” And in 2015 the Huffington Post wrote that Millennial men are “likely to see women as equals.” If these...

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by Andie & Al

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Equality & Diversity, Fighting Stereotypes & Breaking Biases, Goldilocks Dilemma, Leadership & Management, Politics

Hillary Clinton: The Sum of All Stereotypes

It is often difficult to point to concrete, real world examples of a woman who has been disadvantaged in her career specifically because of gender stereotypes. For the most part, people who control women’s career advancement are generally unaware that they rely on gender stereotypes when making hiring, promotion, and compensation decisions. And when those decisions have discriminatory consequences, multiple explanations are frequently available to explain the outcome. Even though an organization’s employment practices strongly suggest gender bias, its leaders...

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by Andie & Al

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Advocating for Yourself, Equality & Diversity, Fighting Stereotypes & Breaking Biases, Gender Communication Techniques, Life Balance & Positive Mindsets, Politics

Silencing Women’s Public Voices

At the beginning of the Odyssey, Penelope enters the great hall and begins to speak. Her son, Telemachus, quickly tells her to return to her room because speech is “the business of men.” And ever since, men have sought to silence women’s public voices. Indeed, male hostility toward women’s participation in public discourse is far more common today than many of us are likely to be aware. For example, a male attorney recently admonished his opposing counsel that it wasn’t...

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by Andie & Al

staircase representing gender bias in the workplace

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Advocating for Yourself, Compensation & Promotion, Equality & Diversity, Fighting Stereotypes & Breaking Biases, Gender Communication Techniques, Goldilocks Dilemma, Leadership & Management, Office Politics, Uncategorized

The Goldilocks Dilemma: Why Career Advancement is So Much Harder for Women Than Men and What Women Can Do to Change That

America’s workplaces, even in our best-intentioned organizations, are riddled with bias against women leaders. As a result, women seeking to advance in careers — particularly careers in traditionally male fields — face both negative and agentic biases. Negative bias is the result of the traditional feminine stereotype that a woman is or should be “communal,” that is, warm, caring, and gentle. A woman who conforms to the communal stereotype at work is likely to be seen as pleasant, but not...

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by Andie & Al