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Women and work
女性和工作
Girl talk
女人之間的事
Working women today have it better than ever before. But few agree on how to help them rise further—or whether they still need help at all
今天，職場女性的地位比過去已經有了顯著進步。但關于怎樣幫助她們進一步攀登職業生涯的更高峰，或者她們到底還需不需要幫助，仍然存在著很大的意見分歧。
Work With Me: The 8 Blind Spots Between Men and Women in Business.
和我一起工作：男性和女性在職場中的八大盲點
By Barbara Annis and John Gray. Palgrave Macmillan; 272 pages; $27.
作者：芭芭拉·安妮絲，約翰·格雷。麥克米倫出版社；272頁；27美元。
To be published in Britain by Piatkus next month; 13.99.
下月將由Piatkus出版社在英國出版；13.99英鎊。
Buy from Amazon.com
Amazon.com有售
A Rising Tide: Financing Strategies for Women-Owned Firms.
新潮：女性主導公司的金融策略
By Susan Coleman and Alicia Robb.
作者：蘇珊·科爾曼，艾麗西亞·羅布。
Stanford University Press; 288 pages; $85 and 77.50.
斯坦福大學出版社；288頁；85美元/77.5英鎊。
Buy fromAmazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk有售
The XX factor: How Working Women are Creating a New Society.
XX因子：職場女性如何創造新社會
By Alison Wolf. Profile; 464 pages; 15.99. Buy fromAmazon.co.uk
作者：艾莉森·伍爾芙。Profile出版社；464頁；15.99英鎊。Amazon.co.uk有售
PEOPLE have been holding heated discussions recently about women’s experience in the workplace.
最近，關于女性職場角色的討論尤為火熱。
The catalyst? A single Silicon Valley executive.
點燃這場討論的是一位硅谷的女主管。
Last month Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, published “Lean In”, a controversial manifesto on why women have not ascended to the most senior positions at companies.
上月，Facebook的首席營運官雪莉·桑德伯格發表了頗受爭議的新書《躋身：女性、工作與領導意愿》，講述女性難以在公司擔任高層職位的原因。
She concludes that it is partly women’s own fault: they do not “lean in” and ask for promotions, pipe up at meetings and insist on taking a seat at the table.
在書中，桑德伯格女士總結說，這一部分是女性自身的問題：她們不愿“躋身”，不主動要求升職，不積極在公司會議上發言，甚至在開會時都不愿上桌。
Three new books will not have the same impact as “Lean In”, but they offer some interesting new perspectives on how women are coping at work, and what is holding them back.
本文要介紹的三本新書雖然無法在影響上與《躋身》相媲美，但也為我們了解女性如何適應職場、是什么阻礙了她們晉升提供了一些有趣的新視角。
Some of it is down to simple miscommunication.
有時這僅僅是因為簡單的溝通障礙。
Barbara Annis and John Gray argue in “Work With Me” that men and women are biologically wired to think and react differently to situations, and have “gender blind spots” when it comes to understanding their co-workers’ behaviour.
芭芭拉·安妮絲和約翰·格雷在《和我一起工作》一書中說，男人和女人因為生理結構的差異而注定對同一情況有不同的看法和反應，并且在理解異性同事的行為時，會存在“性別盲點”。
Ms Annis, who leads workshops on gender for big companies and governments, and Mr Gray, author of “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”, a bestselling book in 1992 about relationship problems, have collaborated to produce an easy-to-read guide to workplace communications.
安妮絲女士平時經常為大公司和政府機構主持關于性別問題的研習班，格雷先生則是《男人來自火星，女人來自金星》一書的作者，這本書出版于1992年，是一本講述戀愛關系中存在的問題的暢銷書。這樣的兩個人合作出一本關于職場溝通的簡明指南，可謂是珠聯璧合。
Women ask more questions, gather more people’s opinions and seek collaboration with co-workers more frequently than men.
和男性相比，女性通常更喜歡提問題，更多地尋求他人的意見，并且也更愿意與同事合作。
Men view these preferences as signs of weakness, and women, in turn, grow annoyed by how competitively men work, and how quickly and unilaterally they arrive at conclusions.
這些特點在男性看來是軟弱的標志，而女性同樣也很討厭男人工作時的好勝心，以及他們不征求別人意見、迅速作出自己單方面結論的作風。
If both female and male employees became more “gender intelligent” about how their work and behavioural preferences are hard-wired, it would contribute to a more harmonious workforce.
如果男女職員都能夠更加明智地認識到性別對他們的工作和行為習慣的固定影響，或許工作團隊中的關系會更加和諧。
Women have been choosing to leave companies at twice the rate of men, and more than half the women whom the authors met in workshops were considering leaving their firms.
女職員主動辭職的比率是男職員的兩倍，本書作者在研習班里接觸的女職員中也有一半以上都在考慮離開現在的公司。
Women often tell their bosses that they are quitting for personal reasons, but the majority actually leave because they feel excluded from teams and not valued for their contributions.
她們通常會對老板說，自己辭職是出于私人原因，但實際上，大部分人真正的理由是她們在團隊中沒有參與感，而且感到自己的貢獻沒有得到重視。
Yet the reality is that women often have trouble communicating with other women at work as well, though the authors do not explain in quite as much detail why this is so.
其實還有另外一個現實的原因，女職員經常在工作中與其他女性也存在溝通問題，盡管這一點在本書中并沒有詳細闡述。
Communication and gender equality are not just problems at large firms.
溝通和性別平等不是只有大公司才存在的問題。
In “A Rising Tide” Susan Coleman and Alicia Robb look beyond women’s experience at big companies.
在《新潮》一書中，作者蘇珊·科爾曼和艾麗西亞·羅布關注的就是女性在大公司之外的經歷。
They focus instead on women entrepreneurs, who have the potential to become leaders in their field, earn a high income and hire more women.
她們的興趣點在女企業家身上，這些女性擁有成為本行業領袖的潛力，收入高，并且傾向于雇傭更多的女性為自己工作。
In a positive shift, women have been starting more firms in the past decade.
過去的十年見證了一個積極的轉變—女性正在創辦越來越多的公司。
However, these tend to be in the service and retail industries.
然而，這些公司大多從事的是服務業和零售業一類的傳統產業。
They also remain smaller than men’s firms.
而且通常在規模上也比不上男性主導的公司。
Ms Coleman and Ms Robb point out that part of this may be by design; women sometimes want to keep their businesses small in order to balance their family responsibilities.
科爾曼女士和羅布女士指出，這種情況一部分可能是有意為之；女老板們有時就是想要保持公司較小的規模，以便兼顧自己的家庭責任。
However, women also often lack the financing that male entrepreneurs enjoy.
除此之外，女老板們也經常缺少男老板們所擁有的那樣充足的資金。
They have fewer savings, so usually launch their businesses with less capital than men, and are less likely to apply for a loan for fear of being denied.
她們的存款較少，所以經常在創辦公司時，啟動資金就比不上男企業家。
And they have not had as much access to the masculine world of Silicon Valley: in 2000 they obtained only 5% of funding from venture capitalists, a notoriously male-dominated industry.
而且，因為害怕被拒絕，她們也不太愿意去申請貸款。因此，在硅谷這個男權世界中，女性的躋身空間很小。2000年，她們僅從風險投資家手中獲得了5%的資金。
During their first year of operation men raised 27 times more equity from outsiders for their start-ups than women.
眾所周知，風險投資也是一個男性主導的行業。新公司運營第一年里，男老板們從公司外部募得的投資是女老板們的27倍。
How has the success of high-achievers differentiated them from other women?
那么，成功的女性精英們與其他女性有什么不同呢？
In “The XX Factor”, Alison Wolf, the director of public policy and management at Kings College London, argues that there are now around 70m highly educated, high-earning women around the world.
倫敦大學國王學院公共政策與管理系負責人艾莉森·伍爾芙在《XX因子》一書中說，目前全世界大約有七千萬接受過高等教育、拿高收入的女性。
They have more in common with elite men than with other women.
與其他女性相比，她們與男性精英擁有更多相同之處。
These grandes dames tend to marry more often and have fewer children than less-educated women.
這些“女強人”通常會比教育程度不高的女性結更多次婚，生更少的孩子。
They spend more time working, and, unexpectedly, more time parenting.
她們花在工作上的時間更多，但令人意外的是，她們花在養育兒女上的時間也更多。
Ms Sandberg also makes this point.
桑德伯格女士也表達過同樣的觀點。
As the demands on women in the workplace have increased, so too have the standards for being a good, involved mother—which adds to the challenges for women at the top.
隨著職場對女性的要求越來越高，要做一個合格的、全身心投入的母親也越來越難。這也增加了女高管們面臨的挑戰。
Ms Wolf and Ms Sandberg ultimately differ, however, on whether the glass is half full or half empty for women.
但是，在對待女性職場前景的態度上，伍爾芙女士和桑德伯格女士有著很大的差別。
Ms Sandberg’s book is a call to female arms to change their behaviour so they can rise further.
桑德伯格女士的書意在呼吁女性改變她們的一些做法，以便攀登事業的更高峰。
Ms Wolf concludes with an economist’s detachment. She says that given how much things have improved for women in the past century, it is “a little surprising to find so many elite women still arguing passionately for directed, top-down social change—change designed to improve things for female elites”.
而伍爾芙女士的結論則顯示出一位經濟學家所擁有的淡然和超脫。她說，在過去一個世紀里，女性地位已經有了很大提升，考慮到這一點，她“有些不理解為什么很多女性精英仍然在樂此不疲地要求有序的、自上而下的社會變革，要求進一步改善女性精英的處境”。
Most people agree that more needs to change in the workplace. Men still occupy most top jobs, do not feel comfortable mentoring younger women and judge young men differently from young women.
大多數人都同意，職場確實還有很多需要改變的地方。男性仍然霸占了大多數的高層職位，不愿意指導年輕的女職員，并且在評價年輕的男女職員時采取雙重標準。
However, after decades of women failing to gain equal representation in executive suites, it is notable how many books now focus on women altering their behaviour, rather than men changing their way of doing things.
但是，在女性奮斗了幾十年，仍然未能在主管辦公室打下半壁江山之后，我們應該注意到，現在的很多書只關注女性如何調整自己的行為，而不是男性怎樣改變他們的行事風格。
Women cannot change their fate on their own. What happened to the responsibility for men to “lean in” to listen and advance women in the workforce, as well?
女性僅靠自己改變不了命運。難道男性不是也有責任要主動傾聽女性的聲音，幫助女性在職場進步嗎？
