Gender bias in the c-suite our own fault?

Why aren't there more women senior leaders in Pharma and Biotech? Honestly, I think some of it is our own fault. Yes, there are both gender biases and stereotypes. Yes, there is a seemly bulletproof glass ceiling and there’s the obvious broken rung in the career ladder for women, but I think there’s also something else we as women can do better for ourselves. Some of that has to do with luck and a lot of it has to do with attitude.

The luck part of the equation has to do with where we’re born; the attitude part is about how we let where we were born define our sense of self worth when we open our mouths.

The dominance of English as the lingua franca across many industries means that native English speakers naturally have the upper hand on a practical as well as subconscious level. Language bias is real and even with the best will in the world we subconsciously judge others by how they sound when they’re speaking.

I’m not just talking about range of vocabulary, accent or proficiency but your own self image while you’re speaking. Native speakers have a natural advantage in communication both in ability and attitude and they don’t experience the same anxiety and perfectionism felt by the non-native speakers.

There is a lot of language over thinking going on in the heads of the non-native leaders, the majority of which already have a upper intermediate level language skills. Their skill often isn’t the thing that’s stopping them from speaking up with confidence, its more often their projected fears of what people think about their language skills and their own perfectionism that’s stopping them from speaking up with presence.

Perfectionism is rife amongst scientists as it should be, because science needs to be accurate but it's not helping science communication, among senior leaders communicating in cross functional meetings and its certainly not helping women leaders in the industry from representing themselves confidently in interview and obtaining senior positions.

The truth is that if you don’t trust your language skills and if you can’t separate your scientific perfectionism from your English perfectionism, you can't communicate with confidence or lead with presence.

If you can't compartmentalise your perfectionism and allow yourself to make mistakes in your language communication and forget words without completely derailing your whole presentation you’re not going to get those senior positions, and to be quite honest you probably don’t deserve them.

That’s hard to hear I know, but the truth is that senior leaders need to have confidence in their message and the direction they are taking their team. If you don’t have confidence in yourself and the fear of a forgotten or mispronounced word has you trembling with anxiety, perhaps senior leadership isn’t for you.

But it could be...

If you learn’t to get over yourself and let go of perfectionism when speaking a second or third or even forth language. If you stopped projecting negative criticism and expecting failure and if you stopped sabotaging your own communication… it wouldn’t rob you of your confidence and presence.

Because every time you doubt your voice, you’re doing just that. Everyone in that meeting hears that doubt in your voice but what they don’t realise is that the doubt isn’t about the scientific content or your ability to lead. It’s about how you sound in your head in English and how you think you're being judged for your language mistakes.

You need to get over that because it’s damaging not only your career, but the science you say you’re so passionate about.

I hear you asking “Aren’t these the same challenges that men face as well?” “Is this so different for women?” You’re right, non-native leaders of all genders face the same challenges, but for women, it’s yet another challenge to overcome on top of all the others. The icing on the cake so to speak. Which means if you’re also a woman of colour, as well as a non-native English speaking senior leader in Pharma or Biotech, you’re facing yet another level of discrimination and injustice.

The reason personal attitude is an important topic, and the reason I’m so passionate about supporting women overcome language inferiority is because it’s one element we have control over and can do something about. We might not be able to change the policies and the attitudes of the people setting the rules and doing the hiring, but we can make sure we have the right mindset to ensure that our voices match our position.

If we want more women in senior leadership roles particularly within industries dominated by English such as Pharma and Biotech one way is to support the non-native English speaking female leaders.

We need to support them to find their voice and tune in to their authentic confidence. We need to help them connect with all the skills and experience they bring to the job. We need to help them lead with gravitas. Not by adopting power poses or using outdated ‘fake it till you make it’ methodologies, but by helping them to identify the internal subconscious messaging that’s telling them they don’t belong and replace it with the knowledge that they do.

That’s what my training and coaching programs are designed to do, to help women leaders identify what’s holding them back and enable them to build enough authentic confidence that they know they belong so they don’t exhaust themselves trying to convince themselves and others of their rightful place.

If you’re struggling to step into a more senior role, or you know someone who is, dm me to arrange a free consultation call to discuss how my programs can help you.