Time for women to stop being shrinking violets at work.

職場女性，從此不再羞答答的開。

"I DON'T know any successful women who haven't had a powerful sponsor in their organisation to give them their first big break," says Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, the boss of 20-first, a consultancy that helps companies put more women into senior jobs. That sentiment is echoed by many people who work in this field. But why do women need so much help.

"在一個組織里，對于女性而言，沒有過硬的后臺幫助她們完成人生的首次突破，還能夠風生水起的，我實在是沒咋地見過，"性別顧問公司20-First總裁阿維娃·維滕貝格·考克斯如是說。顧問公司20-First幫助很多的公司的女性做高層領導。她的這一觀點得到眾多同行的呼應。但是為啥女性需要那么多的幫助呢?

Many men who climb the corporate ladder have sponsors, too. Indeed, they find it easier than women to persuade a senior colleague to sponsor them. But women need help more because they are generally more reluctant to promote themselves. They are also less likely to build up useful networks of contacts.

許多女性要想晉升，必須有后臺，這一道理同樣適用于公司。確實，女性要想勸高層領導幫助自己，不是件太難的事。但是女性需要更多的幫助，原因就是，一般來的來說，她們不愿意推銷自己。同時，她們也不大可能去建立一個對自個有用的關系網。

That may help to explain why women, although they now enter white-collar jobs in much the same numbers as men in many countries, still find it so hard to get anywhere near the executivesuite. A new report, "Sponsor Effect: UK", produced by the Centre for Talent Innovation (CTI), a New York think-tank, offers a detailed picture of the female talent pipeline in Britain, based on asurvey of about 2,500 graduate employees, mostly of large companies. It notes that although women in Britain account for 57% of new recruits to white-collar jobs, they make up just 17% ofexecutive directors and a mere 4% of chief executives of the FTSE's 100 biggest companies.

這也解釋了這樣一個現象，在很多的國家，白領女性的數量跟男性持平，但是女性進入高管還是一個字，難。一份新的報告，《后臺效應：英國》，制作者為紐約智囊團人才創新中心(CTI)，詳述描繪了英國女性人才的分布狀況。這份報告的制作，是基于對2500個左右研究生雇員的調查，且她們基本上都來自大公司。它指出，雖然女性新雇員占白領比例57%，但是在富時指數的100個大公司里，執行理事也就17%，首席執行官只有可憐的4%。

It is not that the women lack ambition, says the report. No less than 79% of senior women in the sample said they aspired to a top job and 91% were keen to be promoted. Nor, say the authors, are they necessarily held back by family responsibilities: nearly two in five of those aged 40 or over had no children. Three in five of the over-40s did have children, and talented women who quit work to raise kids are not included in the sample.

不是說女性沒有雄性壯志，報告講。調查者中，多達79%的大齡女性表示希望成為高管，91%希望得到晉升。作者稱，家庭責任并不一定會拖累她們：年齡在40或是以上的，接近五分之二，是沒有孩子的，有五分之三的女性是有孩子的，這個確實不假。那些為了照顧孩子而放棄工作的才女們并不在這個范圍之內。

Still, the survey's main finding is striking. Only 16% of the sample had sponsors, defined as people several levels above them who give them career advice, introduce them to contacts and help them get promotions. Having a sponsor dramatically improves a woman's career prospects.

仍然，這個調查的主要發現還是會嚇人一跳。調查者中，只有16%的人有后臺，后臺的意思指的是那些比她們的位子要高那么幾級的人，在工作當中給予她們建議，給她們接觸的機會，幫助她們晉升。有個后臺，女性在職場上的路要好走非常多。

The British report is a follow-on from a similar study by the CTI on America, "The Sponsor Effect", published last year by the Harvard Business Review. The CTI is now working on India; Germany may come after that. It is also preparing a "road map" to make it easier for women everywhere to find sponsors.

這份英國報告，其實是美國CTI的一份類似研究的后續。這份研究的名稱為《后臺效應》，去年在期刊《哈佛商業評論》上出版。CTI現在正在對印度進行研究;印度之后可能就是德國。CTI同時也在醞釀一幅"公路圖"，目的就是為了讓各地的女性更好地找到后臺。

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the CTI's boss, who co-wrote the report, says there are some differences between countries (for example, American male bosses are more reluctant than British ones tosponsor younger women, lest they be suspected of an affair, which could wreck their career). But the broad picture is similar everywhere: women underestimate the importance of sponsorship and fail to cultivate business relationships effectively. This may be true, but networking takes time, often after hours. Are women with children equally willing to put in that extra time?

西爾維亞·安·休利特，CTI老板，是此份報告的共同撰寫者。她說，各個國家的情況真的還不大一樣(比如，美國的男性老板，比起英國的男性老板，就不大愿意幫助年輕的女性，因為這會導致緋聞，對事業不利)。但是從更大范圍來看，情況其實差不多：女性低估了后臺的力量，并且沒能夠有效地培養商業關系。這可能是對的，但是關系網的維護還是需要時間的，尤其是下班時間。那么，女性會把跟孩子在一起的時間花在培養關系網上嗎?

Drawing attention to the problems of women in upper management makes a useful change from the usual lament about the lack of women on boards. The scarcity of both is a symptom of something bigger: a lot of employers neither know nor care how many senior women they have working for them. Studies show a correlation between more women in senior positions andsuperior company performance, though it is hard to know whether more sexual diversityimproves performance or top-notch firms promote more women.

把注意力集中到高管女性的問題上，而不是像往常一樣，哀嘆董事會的女性怎么就這么少，要有用的多了。高管女性和董事會女性的稀缺只是問題的一個癥狀，更大的問題是：許多老板對這個有多少女性在為他工作上，不關心，也不在乎。研究顯示，女性高管越多，公司的表現越好，這之間是有一定的關系的，雖然還不是很確定，到底是性別多樣化促進績效呢，還是一流的公司更多的提拔女性呢。

How much can sponsorship help? Ms Wittenberg-Cox is glum. She says there have been so many initiatives that many firms suffer from diversity fatigue, but none has dealt with "the appallingreality of the pipeline". The only remedy, she reckons, is a change of thinking at the top.

后臺到底能有多大用?維滕貝格·考克斯女士不清楚。她說，有太多的公司因為性別單一而缺乏主動性，但是并沒有什么人來解決這個"可怕的人才分布事實"。她覺得，唯一的解救方法，恐怕就是高層的變動。