Why Women in Power Keep Getting Interrupted

Disrespect toward women who had achieved the highest levels of power was rampant on Tuesday. At the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was interrupted during her questioning of Attorney General Jeff Sessions by Sen. John McCain, who was frankly out of order. Meanwhile, at a meeting of board and employees to discuss sexist practices at Uber, a male board member tried to shut down a female. As Arianna Huffington discussed how one female director makes it possible for others, David Bonderman quipped, “more women means more talking.”

As Susan Chira pointed out in New York Times Business section, social media outrage ensued and Bonderman resigned from Uber’s board. But that doesn’t change reality—study after study proves that when women speak up they are shut down. Who can forget the fracas when Sen. Elizabeth Warren was determined to read Coretta Scott King’s letter on the floor of the Senate? Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shut her down with a little-known rule.

“Sen. Warren was giving a lengthy speech,” he said. “She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” Those last three words became a rallying cry—but as Tuesday showed, they’ve done little to move the bar toward equality.

The truth is that without a systemic change, no amount of public chastisement is going to help. I’ve seen this repeatedly in the corporations I’ve worked with—they throw millions of dollars at diversity programs, but little ever changes. Without a complete overhaul of the culture of a company, no amount of pithy sayings or public outrage will make the slightest bit of difference.

Photo credit: MMM

Where are the Waldos?

Do you remember the children’s puzzle books, Where’s Waldo? by British illustrator Martin Handford?You would have to find the skinny guy in the red-striped shirt and glasses in a thickly populated illustration.  The Board of Directors at Uber are starting to remind me of this popular series. No matter how hard they look they can’t seem to find someone to take responsibility for what goes on in the company.

I’ve written quite a lot about Uber this year, from the shocking revelations of sexual harassment made by a former employee, to the assurances of board member Arianna Huffington that the company had no systemic problems, to the heartrending suicide of one of their engineers, Uber has been dominating the business news. Now they’re again grabbing headlines, this time for pocketing millions of dollars of drivers’ commissions due to a “miscalculation.” The company has been basing its percentage on a driver’s entire fare, rather than what the driver makes after taxes. Uber spokeswoman Rachel Holt has issued a statement according to the New York Times that “We are committed to paying every driver every penny they are owed — plus interest — as quickly as possible,” but I have to wonder how a company of this size could make not only this mistake, but expect drivers to pay the taxes on fares instead of passing that cost on to the customer.

Where is the board’s oversight in this? Either they’re ignorant of what is going on here and therefore negligent, or they’re complicit. The solution is simple. Rather than trying to find a chief operating officer to babysit CEO Travis Kalanick, they’d be better off replacing him. The buck, like their fares, has to stop somewhere.

 Andrew Faas is the author of From Bully to Bull’s-Eye: Move Your Organization Out of the Line of Fire

Illustration credit: Where's Wally at Wemberley?

How NOT to Fix Workplace Culture

In February I wrote about the reports of sexual harassment at Uber and how CEO Travis Kalanick had created a culture that promoted this sort of behavior. However, I was enthused to hear that high-profile board member Arianna Huffington was stepping in and vowed to make sure that Uber would no longer be at the mercy of “brilliant jerks.”

Sadly, my rejoicing was premature. Huffington told CNN today that she and the head of human resources at Uber had spoken to hundreds of women at the company and they had found only “a few bad apples” but “this is not a systemic problem,” she said.

This is an amazingly shortsighted. Employees who work for bullies are highly unlikely to confide anything in the HR department, which is generally seen as being on the side of management. Nor are they likely to confide in a celebrity whose chief goal is damage control. An independent investigative team should have been called in that could guarantee anonymity for the people with whom they spoke. It’s already been shown that HR failed the young woman who reported her experiences on her personal blog, which went viral.

The fact that Huffington reported all of this on national television brings home how self-serving this report was. Even if, as Huffington indicated, Kalanick has “evolved,” and Uber does hire a chief operating officer to help Kalanick run the company, it is naïve to assume that this would do anything to change behavior is ingrained in the workplace culture.

It is perhaps ironic that this report dropped the day after the sitting president of the United States was proven to be a liar. I would imagine that the employees of Uber are like the rest of America—they have no idea who in power they can trust.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons