What Women Want: Empowering Female Leaders

RAPAPORT... The movie What Women Want was on to something when itcame out nearly 20 years ago. In it, a hotshot playboy and advertisingexecutive wakes up from an accident with the ability to read women's minds. Atfirst, he sees this as a curse, but his female psychiatrist convinces him thathis gift could help his career: "If men are from Mars and women are from Venus,and you can speak Venusian, the world can be yours." This romantic comedy comes to mind as the jewelry industrygrapples with how to get women to buy fine jewelry the way they buy handbagsand shoes. "Women will think nothing of dropping $1,200 on a pair of ChristianLouboutin shoes, but not on a pair of diamond stud earrings," says VictoriaMcKay, founder and managing director of the UK-based Women's Jewellery Network(WJN). "We're finding it hard to keep sales buoyant against other luxuryproducts." But the jewelry trade is still led predominantly by men, andsadly, they can't read our minds. McKay finds the lack of women in seniormanagement to be a huge problem for the industry. "I'm not saying men shouldn'tbe a part of the conversation, but women need to be a bigger part of it thanthey are now. We need more women in leadership [positions] who represent thepeople who buy the jewelry." While there's limited data on the issues women face in thejewelry workplace, research by the Women's Jewelry Association (WJA) suggeststhat they account for only about 30% of board positions. When industry legalconsultant Cecilia Gardner asked CEOs of trade groups why they thought there wereso few women on boards, the resounding answer was that they couldn't find any.So Gardner, who is working with the WJA on its Gender Equality Project toimprove gender parity in the trade, is trying to make it easier to do so. "We are literally building a roster of women interested inserving, and providing the names to nominating committees of boards in ourindustry," she says. In addition to the need for greater advancementopportunities and representation, the industry is still behind when it comes toequal pay, stresses McKay. While the average gender pay gap declined 1.9% to23% among 11 of the UK's largest jewelry groups last year, seven of thosecompanies actually showed a greater discrepancy than in 2017, according to anApril article in Professional Jeweller. "It's been 100 years since women got the right to vote, andwe're still arguing over issues like the gender pay gap, when a woman has towork harder than a man to attain what she's got," laments McKay. Perception is not reality Despite these figures, the prevailing perception amongemployers is that there are plenty of women in leadership roles, and thatproblems such as pay disparity, gender discrimination, sexual harassment andhostile work environments are not an issue in the trade. That's what emergedfrom an independent survey that MVI Marketing conducted last fall for theGender Equality Project, reports Gardner. Employees painted a different picture in the study, but saidthat over 50% of the time, they felt uncomfortable reporting discriminatoryincidents, citing concerns of retaliation or an impact on their futureemployment. McKay, meanwhile, points to a number of issues women face inthe workplace that she says will be everyone's problem in the future, such aschildcare support and flexible work hours. "Millennials, the biggest consumerblock, are different than the Boomers, as they share things like childcareresponsibilities and have a gender-neutral view. Men are just as likely to beimpacted by barriers to this as women. We need [measures for] these things inplace to benefit the workforce." Many states have extremely worker-friendly policies,including New York and California, where a lot of the industry is based, notesTiffany Stevens, president and CEO of the Jewelers Vigilance Committee (JVC)."If someone is facing harassment, whether by a boss, coworker, or even a clientor vendor, chances are they're protected. California and New York also haveinstituted laws around parental leave, lactation and increased harassmentprotection, so whether as an employee or employer, it's worth brushing up onthose rules." Engendering support "Part of the problem has been a lack of willingness by somewomen to acknowledge that these issues exist," says McKay, who believes it'sincumbent on female business leaders to pay it forward and enable other womento walk in behind them. While the WJA has provided mentorship initiatives formembers over the years, the association wants to be more proactive. PhyllisBergman, who headed Mercury Ring Corp. for 32 years and is a managementconsultant, agrees, stressing the need for a deliberate effort "to supportwomen at all levels of the industry in their professional development." Whileshe admits that she has personally perceived things as better than the WJAsurvey suggests, she can still recall a time when women weren't even invited tothe 24K Club, a jewelry networking group in New York (she became its firstwoman president in 2003). "With each woman uplifted in leadership, it getseasier for the next," she says. Often, women can be their own barriers to success by notrecognizing their value, says Ayelet Lerner, director of Lerner Diamonds. Shecites the trouble she had starting a WJA chapter in Antwerp. "It was difficult toget a group of women together here. Women here are not used to being invitedand considered in business. Women have to change that mind-set. Part of thechallenge is getting women to acknowledge their own self-worth." While there are more than 1,600 diamond offices in Antwerp,very few of them are run by women, continues Lerner. She believes the situationis worse in wholesale than in retail. "In Antwerp, it's heavily male-dominated.Just look at pictures from industry events, and you will get a clear picture ofthe landscape." She is inspired by female role models like her mother, JoyLerner, who was one of the first women trading diamonds at the Antwerp bourse."Everyone knew my mom as a fierce and passionate diamond buyer. When she had tobecome a member of the bourse, and this was back in the mid-'80s, she demandeda women's toilet, as there was none." Lerner is also a fan of McKay and what she's doing with WJN.Indeed, the group is expanding internationally, recently announcing 45 newwomen ambassadors from seven countries. Community is a strong part of McKay's vision for the WJN."Women have friends for different things," she says. "Friends to cry on, goshopping with, volunteer, and advocate. We want to emulate that philosophy inhow we organize. By country, regionally, creating networks within networks." #MeToo is real Of the eight gender-based discrimination issues addressed inlast fall's survey by MVI Marketing and the WJA, a significant number had to dowith unwanted sexual advances and hostile work environments. Among employee respondents, 25% of women said they hadexperienced gender-based negative activity, notes Cecilia Gardner of the GenderEquality Project. "The biggest number of complaints had to do with sexualharassment at trade shows and events." Although employees aren't the only ones who face sexualharassment, they tend to encounter it more often: 58% of employers who had anexperience had just one, while nearly half of the female employees who citedharassment had five or more, underscoring the role of power dynamics. "Having spoken and written about this topic over the lastfew years, even before #MeToo broke, I've been privy to more harassment storiesthan I'd care to share," relates Barbara Palumbo, a jewelry writer fromAtlanta, Georgia. "Many women in our industry have shared their experienceswith me, mostly privately, because they felt they had someone they could trust.I shared my own story of a retailer sticking his hand between my legs and awholesaler suggesting I take my clothes off. Many of the women who sufferedsimilar atrocities no longer felt alone." One problem, she says, is that "many of these men stillthink women are being too sensitive, or they just don't understand whatharassment is." To wit, a number of men have responded to her by saying they'reafraid to shake a woman's hand anymore - to which Palumbo replies: "If a guydoesn't know the difference between shaking a woman's hand and sticking hishand in her private area, then yeah...we still have a ways to go." Women also can be part of the problem, she adds. "There aresome women who think of these issues as 'boys being boys,' and that doesn'thelp anybody. There are others who, because things like this never happened tothem, can't understand why women are talking about it publicly. The lack ofempathy and compassion by those of even our own gender hasn't helped, nor hasthe argument that the women who do come forward could be lying. Statistically,there's a far greater percentage of women who are honest about the harassmentor assault that has happened to them, and an even larger percentage of thosewho don't report it for fear of what they'll be subject to. This was a problemyears ago, it's a problem now, and it likely won't be solved any time soon, butat least it's finally being talked about." The Gender Equality Project is looking into developing abystander-intervention training program, says WJA executive director BernadetteMack. The idea is to provide both men and women with techniques that caninterrupt behaviors to prevent sexual harassment and assault. If a person finds themselves in a questionable situation atwork, no matter their position, they should start keeping a written record ofwhen and how things are happening, advises the JVC's Tiffany Stevens. "Thisapplies if you are an employee facing harassment or if you are an employernoticing questionable actions by an employee and are beginning to make a casefor termination." One thing that troubled Gardner in the WJA survey resultswas the large number of small companies that had no policies at all. "If you,as a company head, address issues when there are no issues, it creates apositive atmosphere, making problems less likely," she says. "Lawsuits relatedto sexual harassment are expensive and kill company morale, and seven out of 10employee suits win." Stevens stresses the importance of having "an up-to-dateemployment manual to set expectations with employees, [which] can also protectyou if something goes wrong. There are certainly federal employment laws, andalso many at the state, local and city level, so we encourage jewelers tobecome aware of all the regulations they need to comply with."This article was first published in the May 2019 issue of Rapaport Magazine. Image: The May cover of Rapaport Magazine.