>> Narrator: From the VMware campus in Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE, covering women transforming technology. (electro music) >> Hey, welcome to theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at VMware in Palo Alto at the third annual, Women Transforming Technology event. Really excited to be here. I am joined by Shelley Correll, the director of The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford. Shelley, exciting day, welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you, good to be here! >> Lisa: Big news. >> Very big news! >> Lisa: So you're also the founding director of The Center for Advancements of Women's Leadership. The Clayman Institute has been around since 1974, but you've been partnering with Vmware for the last five years? >> Shelley: Yes, in a variety of ways, yes. >> So talk to us about the big announcement today with Vmware and The Clayman Institute. >> Well we're very exited, we've been working with VMware for five years, as you said, in a variety of different capacities, And have really been engaged with them over the idea that we could better connect academic research with practice. And so, the news we had to announce today is that they are investing 15 million dollars into our efforts and we're going to be launching a new lab that's going to be focused on advancing women's leadership. >> Lisa: Phenomenal. Talk to us about some of the foci that you're going to be focusing on to accelerate the change we need, not just to bring more eyes and ears in dollars to it but accelerate it. >> I'm glad you used that word, that's exactly what it's about, it's accelerating. We come into this with research that shows very clearly that the progress, in terms of moving women into leadership, has just all but stalled. The progress we're making is very slow, and if we just sit back and wait, we're not going to see, you and I aren't going to see gender equality, in our lives, our daughter's lives. It's not going to happen. And so we're asking ourselves, what can we do to accelerate change? And so, to me, one of the most important things that we need to be doing is bridging the gap between academic scholarship, which tells a lot about the barriers to women's leadership, with the kind of activities that organizations are doing, the diversity initiatives their putting in place. If we can join forces, then I think we can better accelerate change. And so that was kind of the idea behind this lab. We really have three main things that we're hoping to accomplish. One is to diagnose the barriers to women's advancement, across all kinds of diversity that women occupy and own. So understanding those barriers, and then second is piloting solutions, working within companies to develop interventions that we can put in place, so we can learn how to get beyond the barriers. That's the kind of next thing that we're doing. And third, is just to be a hub of information. We're going to take these learnings from our research and translate them into tools that people can use, to be able to put research into action and in their own organizations. So that's the three-prong goal of this new laboratory. >> Lisa: So exciting. And it's something that, you know, as we talk about, it's 2018 and this is still such a massive issue. It's been very widely known for a long time that the numbers of women in technical roles in technology is what, below 25%. But something I found interesting when I was doing some research on you is that there's also this motherhood penalty that I was unaware. Tell us a little bit about what that is and how is that something that maybe this new innovation lab will help to eliminate? >> Right, and I think it's important because when we think about putting solutions into place, we know that they're not going to be, sort of, one-size-fits-all solutions. They're going to differ for different kinds of women. And in my own research on the motherhood penalty, what we found are very clear gaps between women who are childless and women who are mothers. And in fact, the wage penalty that we usually talk about, the gender wage gap, is largely a gap between mothers and childless women. And so, we got to asking ourselves, why? Why would a women who's a mother be so penalized relative to a childless woman? So we've got gender inequality, and now we've got this motherhood penalty on top of that. And so, our research found that if you take a resume for a woman and you just add in subtle information that she's a mother, >> Lisa: Like on the PTA, or something. >> The PTA association, that people are 100% less likely to recommend her for hire. >> 100%? >> 100%, yeah. You know, it's a huge gap there, and so, as we dig deeper, what we see is that people's stereotypes about mothers, are that mothers are so committed to their families that they couldn't possibly be committed to their job. Every one of us who work with mothers in the workplace know that's not the case, right? But yet that's the stereotype that's holding mothers back, in addition to what we find for women in general, if you will. >> So if a man on his resume has that he is a soccer coach or a baseball coach, that is not factored into the decision to not hire him? >> Well it is, but guess what? It advantages him, it doesn't disadvantage him. >> Lisa: Advantages? Yes, so for fathers, we find that people see fathers as more committed to the job than childless men. So, we're seeing how parenthood works differently for men and women in the workplace. So I think one of the barriers we want to get past is the effects of biases on how people are evaluated, and they're not just gender biases. They're biases about gender, but also about parenthood, about race, about ethnicity, about sexuality. I mean, all of those things intersect in complex ways. So, it means that we're going to see different barriers for different types of women, if you will, and that means also that we're probably going to need to have different kinds of solutions as well. >> Absolutely, so something that interests me is, you know, in the last six months, me too movement exploded on the scene, times up, Brotopia, a recent book out by Emily Chang, that is shocking to say the least, very informative, enlightening. When those movements popped up and there was a, sort of, unlikely alliance with Hollywood, I'm curious, we're you like yes, good, we have some momentum here that we need to be able to leverage to making the gaps, as you said, there's so many that women face, more sensible intact, was that kind of a let's get on the same bandwagon? Yes, you have to ride these waves when they happen. The problems that me too is identifying are certainly not new problems, and this has been going on as long as women have been in the work place, but the attention to it is what's new, and so, as a scholar when there's attention to important social problem that you research, you ride that wave. We've got the world's attention now. Let's use that attention to take the messages about what we know from research and the strategies we have and get them out to people that need them, so it is an opening that allows us to take the me too, kind of, moment that we're in and really turn it into a movement that produces sustainable change. >> We need to get our own hashtag. (laughter) What are some of the things that say in this next, what are we almost and half way through 2018, which is kind of scary. What are some of the, maybe, the small ones or the quick ones that you think with this new VMware partnership that you're going to be able to identify and uncover in 2018? >> We've been working a lot on ways to reduce unconscious biases in the workplace. I think some of the projects that we're launching are really about going into organizations and diagnosing where a bias might be affecting how they're evaluating women at the points of hire, at promotion, as we're thinking about who to put all the stretch assignments. So identifying the way those biases are occurring in workplaces and then working with managers in those organizations to design tools to help get beyond those biases. This is some work that we have stared initially that we're now expanding to more research sites and so I think that's one of the first things to do is to really go in and try to remove these biases that don't, they're not good for women, but they're not good for the organization either. If you're biased against women, what that means is you're not valuing women's talent and any organization wants to accurately assessing the talent of people in their workplace. >> I think I read in a press release this morning that a McKinsey report that said that organization, if I can, yes. According to McKinsey, companies with diversity on their executive teams are 21% more profitable than those who lack diversity. Profits. >> I know, it's profit. We see it with innovation, too. It makes sense if you think about it, right. If our biases we causing us to see women as less talented than they are and maybe men as more talented then they are, what that means is we're not hiring on average the most productive, talented people. I think all organizations want to source and hire the best people they can, and so we're moving these biases as one way of doing that. And, when we remove those biases, I think improvements or diversity will follow. >> When you look at a company that's been around for a long time and you think wow, culture is very slow to change. >> Shelley: Right. >> How do you advise organizations that have been around for decades that are predominantly male led, especially at the executive level, to just be more aware and open to changing the culture to, you know, maybe it's hey, you could be 21% more profitable. >> Shelley: Exactly. >> Who doesn't want that? >> Shelley: Who doesn't want that, yeah. >> How do you have the conversation with an accumbent about cultural change? >> Right, and I think sometimes people think culture is just sort of what it is and cannot be changed, but we can make small wins, small improvements in that culture, and so one of the things that has been most effective in our research is to go in and work with managers on trying to improve how they're hiring people, how they're promoting people, and so the conversation isn't really about culture. It is at a deep level, but it doesn't seem like that at the surface level. It's really about how can you more accurately asses talent, and when you start asking that question, what you start seeing is the ways that you were assessing talent before were flawed in some ways and they were flawed in a way that was limiting your ability to see women's abilities and their talents. The conversation really is just about doing what I think we all want to do, which is truly evaluating people based on their merits, and I think if that's the message, a lot more people are on board with that. The other thing I'll say is when we had, we were working with a company who was telling us that one of the ways they assessed people for promotion was they wanted their leaders to be very responsive to people in the organization, and that's a great value to have, right, to be responsive. When we probe them about how do you know when someone's responsive, they didn't really. First they couldn't articulate how they were evaluating that. What it became clear is without clear criteria for assessing responsiveness, they're implicit measures were like how quickly does this person respond to email. They realized that women weren't being as quick responding to email, especially during the dinner hours. I think you and I can know exactly why that is. >> Right. >> They they got to starting thing, well that isn't maybe the very, that's not a very good measure of leader responsiveness, and they went back to look at their responses from women and they were more elaborate, they were more detailed, they were more helpful, and so the measure they were using was sort of, it was biased against women, but it was also not productive for what they were trying to do. These are the kind of small wins that open people eyes to the fact that they could do things differently that would be good for diversity and inclusion and would be good for what they're trying to do as an organization, the bottom line as well. >> Wow, what are the other things. We talked about, you know, the numbers of women in technical roles is very small, under 25%. Another big challenge that we have in technology is attrition, and the fact that more women leave tech for other industries than women leave other industries. >> Shelley: Exactly. >> What are some of the things that your research has shown that companies can do to also, not just focus on bringing in young talent or working with universities on STEM programs, but for women that are maybe in the middle of their, whether they're thinking about the leaving the to have a family or simply this is not the right environment for me. That retention from middle career. What are some of the things that you found there? >> Yeah, and I'll say too about, I think one of the sort of narratives that people tell themselves in companies is that women are leaving tech to have children, but women don't leave tech to have children at any higher rate, and actually a lower rate than other professions, so it's not, that's not the reason they're tech at a higher rate than some other places. There's something else going on there. I think working on improving the inclusion and the environment is really important for retaining women. Surveys that sort of show why people left their jobs find that in tech, a big reason women leave tech compared to other places is they don't feel like they're supported in the workplace, more so than in other places, even including other STEM fields, like science and things like that. Higher exit rate because they don't feel included in the workplace, so the question is, what's the barrier there? What are we doing in our workplaces that women in tech don't feel included and what can we do to change that. I think, again, removing some of these biases, if you're in a workplace where you constantly feel like your talent is not being appreciated, that's one way you quickly don't feel included as a technical worker. I think this sort of cultural change that we're talking about is probably even more important for retention than it is for hiring. >> Do you think that younger companies maybe start us maybe, you know three to four years old or less than 10 year's, we'll say, have a better chance at being able to morph quickly and pivot than a larger company that's been around for decades? >> Yeah, I mean, it's much easier to get things right to begin with, you know, so people sometimes ask you know when they're founding a company how soon, you know, do we need to have a woman on board, and my answer is always as quickly as possible, and I you get to 10 employees with no women, you're already behind the curve. Really, kind of starting off with the idea that we want to get the culture right to begin with so that we don't end up having to scramble the eggs later down the road, and that's one of the things we've learned from working with VMware, is early on in the founding of this company, there was an attempt to create the kind of culture that I think more companies are wanting to emulate today. >> We've got Betsy Sutter coming on a little bit later and I'm really curious to talk to her about coming on years ago, when VMware was a start up 100 people. >> Shelley: Exactly. >> And now being in this chief people officer role of an organization of 20,000 and here we are at VMware today walking into a room of females who are here to really kind of embody what the charter of this consortium of WT Squared is, is connecting and inspiring, but supporting women and tech of all levels, right, not just here in Silicon Valley, but beyond as well and having the powers coming together from industry, from acidemia, from non-profits is, it's a very, the vibe when we were in the key note just an hour ago was so palpable that there's certainly that we will create change. >> Betsy's so inspirational to me in this regard, is that she has been here since 2001 and was sort of critical to getting the culture in place at that point in time and, you know, it's not that VMware doesn't have challenges with hiring and retaining a tech. All companies do, but they've created a culture from the beginning that I think is kind of a model for what companies are wanting to do today. >> Last thing before we wrap, here, is we had the opportunity to listen to Laila Ali and so cool. >> Shelley: So cool. >> I mean, just to hear a confident women, who was probably born with a natural confidence, that women have and some women don't, but to hear her talk about hey, sometimes this interwar, the flame is out or it's low and I, too, have to say this is my purpose. This is my passion. I don't want to have to look around and constantly think I'm in a man's sport. I know, this is my sport. I thought just that having that world kind of talk to us, women intact to say hey, it's going to take reminding yourself often what your purpose is, what you're passion is, but she challenged us to do that and I just thought it was a really encouraging, inspiring message for everyone to hear so early on a Tuesday morning. >> We run sort of a leadership program for high school girls and this whole issue of purpose is something that we really stress as well is when you're trying to lead and people aren't following, stop and ask yourself what was the purpose in doing what you're doing and articulate that purpose to others and that's the way you can kind of bring people along. I just loved her example today about when you're not feeling confident, go back and ask yourself why, the question of why. It's too easy to go through life just doing things and losing our sense of purpose and that really is a good source of confidence because you're doing something for a reason that really matters to you. That will help recharge you. >> Absolutely. Shelly, thanks so much for stopping by. >> I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it. >> TheCUBE this morning and sharing your purpose and the exciting news of what VMware and the Clayman Institute are going to do. We look forward to hearing some of the great stuff that comes out in the next few years. >> That sounds great. Thank you, nice to talk to you. >> And we want to thank you. You're watching theCUBE. We are on the ground at VMware at the 3rd Annual Women Transforming Technology event. I'm Lisa Martin. Thanks for watching. (funky music)