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May 30, 2008
Bridge the Jewish gender gap
New book has ideas to help organizations become more equal.
RON FRIEDMAN
If you walk into the office of a Jewish organization, chances are, most of the faces you'll see belong to women. But if you venture further in, to the proverbial "corner office," you're most likely to see a man sitting behind the desk. The authors of a new book, Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life, want to remedy that situation by helping women stake their claim in leadership positions within the Jewish community.
According to the statistics compiled by the authors, while women make up 75 per cent of the staff at Jewish organizations, when you look at the leadership of those organizations, the numbers are inverted. The numbers cited in the book are taken from studies done in the United States, but the authors speculate that they are representative of the Canadian situation, too.
"Virtually all of the top positions are held by men," said co-author Shifra Bronznick, pointing to the finding that, of the top 40 federations in America, only two have women at their helms, as an example. "You see this real imbalance in terms of who is doing the work and who is leading."
The study by Bronznick, Didi Goldenhar and Marty Linsky also found income gaps between men and women doing the same jobs and that there are no policies and practices in place in Jewish organizations that would support women's development to their full potential. In fact, "The professional Jewish community has distinguished itself as being one of the few sectors that has not engaged in a substantive effort to advance gender equity," write the authors.
According to Bronznick, Goldenhar and Linsky, there are several reasons for this reality. Number one is the fact that Jewish organizational life is heavily influenced by the religious sphere. The writers note that it has only been recently that public positions in religious life were opened to women and that, even now, some denominations have not been supportive of women taking public roles. In many places, the "stained glass ceiling" is still in place.
Second, they point to a familial atmosphere in the Jewish community. "In a certain way, that family-like atmosphere has prevented us from setting the kind of rigorous professional standards that allow people to be judged on their merit and not on the perception of their abilities," said Bronznick.
The third reason is that the Jewish community has what they call a "booster culture." "We're always trying to show that there is a success – 'The campaign is going up,' 'Look how we're saving the Jewish people.' In that environment, there is a great resistance to naming and identifying internal problems and to focusing on resolving them," said Bronznick.
Finally, they point to the mission-driven nature of the Jewish community's organizations, which has created an environment where it is hard to be an advocate for gender equity because it is seen as a petty, selfish goal, distracting from the main objective. "Therein lies a very striking contradiction in the Jewish community, which, on the one hand, holds aloft the importance of family, continuity of the Jewish people and the Jewish community and, on the other hand, has not stepped forward to build organizations, which have policies around maternal leave and work-wise flexibility that would allow people to do good work and also lead fulfilling personal lives," said Goldenhar. "Instead, the emphasis is on save time, 24/7 work, because, after all, you're there to save the world."
Leveling the Playing Field is a quick read, but, at only 130-pages, it packs a forceful punch. It is written in the form of a guidebook, laying out a workable plan of action, teaching people how to go about bringing change to their organization. "We need to help put in people's hands the tools, the strategies and the stories that will be their inspiration to use these tools. We want to give it to them in a user-friendly way, where they can facilitate these conversations in their own setting," said Bronznick. For that purpose, the book also contains a section with tools and exercises that people can use to assess the situation in their own organization and find ways to bring about change.
For the authors, success doesn't necessarily mean having proportionate representation in leadership positions, or even having equal representation in those positions. For them, it's more about working together as equals to better serve the community's needs.
"We believe that, in order to really think about what being Jewish is going to mean in the 21st century ... we need the kind of collaborative, boisterous thinking that can only take place when women are truly valued, not just as a pair of hands and not just as the hearts and souls of the Jewish community, but as the intellectual visionaries and the active leaders of the Jewish community. Not to replace men, but to collaborate and partner with men," said Bronznick. "We want to help create a community that attracts people to it because of its vibrancy, its latitude of possibility and its welcoming of new perspectives," added Goldenhar.
A quick survey of the local Vancouver scene revealed a similar inequality to what this book talks about. Out of 50 organizations whose leadership make-up was available online, only 15 listed women in the highest positions.
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