When you become the President of PWA Milan Board, you occupy a very “institutional role” that means working with your team to define strategies, goals and activities – and of course making things happen – but a very important part of your job is meeting people. That is also a fundamental part of my “real” job as a consultant.I find this to be one of the most stimulating parts: people are willing to meet you to share their experiences and their views, suggest improvements and new projects or activities and this continuous brainstorming is a great source of inspiration.
One of my recent meetings, that had nothing to do with PWA Milan, was a lunch with an energetic and enthusiastic friend, founder of an executive search firm. It was a source of reflection and inspiration that I would like to share with you.
We started talking about PWA while waiting for a table, and she said “You know what? You should declare somewhere – maybe even make it part of your mission – that PWA as an association is supporting the professional growth of women with the requisite skills and competencies, that when choosing an employee we will choose a woman, if we need a professional we will look for a woman, our doctor will be a woman…and so on. We all declare rationally that we support women and believe women should reach powerful positions, but are we all sure – myself included – that we are not unconsciously biased by social and cultural beliefs? This would be a powerful declaration and something concrete that would make things happen!”.
That moment of casual conversation led to my personal reflection in the subsequent days of how I relate to women when I make professional decisions.
Of course Italian law – similar to legislation in much of the world – does not allow discrimination based on gender: you cannot open your search to only women or only men. But once you have reviewed all of the resumes, will you be balanced in your judgment? Will you be biased, for example, by the fact that unconsciously women and engineering might not strike you as a “match”?
Are we sure that we as PWA Milan members and supporters, officially and rationally committed to the promotion of women are then concretely supporting women in our everyday decisions?
I honestly believe I base my decisions on merit: I work a lot with women, hire many women – I am usually the one that does the first interview in my firm, which means I make initial recommendations – get along well with women. I promote women I know and trust, both those met at PWA and through my work.
However, one thing is to support an individual who you believe has all the required skills and competencies, a different thing is to voluntarily and rationally choose a woman from two equally skilled candidates, only for the sake of supporting women!
Are we ready to commit on this? Are we willing to proactively look for the “woman option” to compare with the “man option” and possibly choose the first?
We often argue against quotas because we perceive them as unfair. We should look at ourselves and try to understand if we, as women, are the first to trust and believe in women, or do we end up boycotting women when we have the possibility to help them.
I would love to hear your stories and experiences on hiring a woman or choosing a woman as a professional to support you; discuss with you the possibility to concretely do something on this, starting by ourselves and the way we look at other women as professionals.
Monica Pesce
