Business Luncheon - August 2013
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| Ashley Merryman author of Top Dog |
Last week, the best selling author, Ashley Merryman, spoke about gender differences in competitiveness along with speaking up and taking chances at the GHWCC Business Luncheon.
Texas A&M political science professor Sarah Fulton has found that female political candidates are equally as qualified, just as good at fundraising, and just as likely to be elected as their male counterparts. But still women make up only 18% of Congress. (As huge a disparity as that is – it's better than what you'd see in most boardrooms: women run only about 4% of venture-capital funded companies.)
Texas A&M political science professor Sarah Fulton has found that female political candidates are equally as qualified, just as good at fundraising, and just as likely to be elected as their male counterparts. But still women make up only 18% of Congress. (As huge a disparity as that is – it's better than what you'd see in most boardrooms: women run only about 4% of venture-capital funded companies.)
The question is why? Some of it, according to Fulton, is due to the fact that ambitious men jump into elections because they want to. Ambitious women only run if they think they're going to win. Fulton's not the only researcher who has found this: study after study have found that, on average, women are much more concerned with the likelihood of winning than the men. Indeed, women are good at calculating their odds of success; men are good at ignoring the odds.
The lesson of this research is not that women should "turn into men" and blithely disregard the odds of victory. Instead, it's about timing – knowing when to take a leap and when to avoid risk. For example, when you have more women on a corporation's audit committee, the company's less likely to get in financial trouble. And that's a good thing. But entrepreneurs need to ignore the odds of success. Otherwise, they'd never start the company.
Particularly on an individual level, if a woman sees an opportunity that excites her, she shouldn't let a desire for a guaranteed success stand in her way. Don't always limit yourself to the sure thing. Don't let job description requirements hold you back: do apply for that new job because you want it. Pitching an investor? Give them your down-to-the-penny projections, but then share your vision of what you dream to accomplish (even when it feels like bragging). Don't politely wait for your turn in a meeting: if you have an idea, do speak up. Accept that some failures are inevitable. The key to success isn't to prevent these 100% of the time; instead, it's about learning from mistakes and thus being better the next time.
