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Women and work
女性和工作
Girl talk
女人之间的事
Working women today have it better than ever before. But few agree on how to help them rise further—or whether they still need help at all
今天，职场女性的地位比过去已经有了显著进步。但关于怎样帮助她们进一步攀登职业生涯的更高峰，或者她们到底还需不需要帮助，仍然存在着很大的意见分歧。
Work With Me: The 8 Blind Spots Between Men and Women in Business.
和我一起工作：男性和女性在职场中的八大盲点
By Barbara Annis and John Gray. Palgrave Macmillan; 272 pages; $27.
作者：芭芭拉·安妮丝，约翰·格雷。麦克米伦出版社；272页；27美元。
To be published in Britain by Piatkus next month; 13.99.
下月将由Piatkus出版社在英国出版；13.99英镑。
Buy from Amazon.com
Amazon.com有售
A Rising Tide: Financing Strategies for Women-Owned Firms.
新潮：女性主导公司的金融策略
By Susan Coleman and Alicia Robb.
作者：苏珊·科尔曼，艾丽西亚·罗布。
Stanford University Press; 288 pages; $85 and 77.50.
斯坦福大学出版社；288页；85美元/77.5英镑。
Buy fromAmazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk有售
The XX factor: How Working Women are Creating a New Society.
XX因子：职场女性如何创造新社会
By Alison Wolf. Profile; 464 pages; 15.99. Buy fromAmazon.co.uk
作者：艾莉森·伍尔芙。Profile出版社；464页；15.99英镑。Amazon.co.uk有售
PEOPLE have been holding heated discussions recently about women’s experience in the workplace.
最近，关于女性职场角色的讨论尤为火热。
The catalyst? A single Silicon Valley executive.
点燃这场讨论的是一位硅谷的女主管。
Last month Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, published “Lean In”, a controversial manifesto on why women have not ascended to the most senior positions at companies.
上月，Facebook的首席营运官雪莉·桑德伯格发表了颇受争议的新书《跻身：女性、工作与领导意愿》，讲述女性难以在公司担任高层职位的原因。
She concludes that it is partly women’s own fault: they do not “lean in” and ask for promotions, pipe up at meetings and insist on taking a seat at the table.
在书中，桑德伯格女士总结说，这一部分是女性自身的问题：她们不愿“跻身”，不主动要求升职，不积极在公司会议上发言，甚至在开会时都不愿上桌。
Three new books will not have the same impact as “Lean In”, but they offer some interesting new perspectives on how women are coping at work, and what is holding them back.
本文要介绍的三本新书虽然无法在影响上与《跻身》相媲美，但也为我们了解女性如何适应职场、是什么阻碍了她们晋升提供了一些有趣的新视角。
Some of it is down to simple miscommunication.
有时这仅仅是因为简单的沟通障碍。
Barbara Annis and John Gray argue in “Work With Me” that men and women are biologically wired to think and react differently to situations, and have “gender blind spots” when it comes to understanding their co-workers’ behaviour.
芭芭拉·安妮丝和约翰·格雷在《和我一起工作》一书中说，男人和女人因为生理结构的差异而注定对同一情况有不同的看法和反应，并且在理解异性同事的行为时，会存在“性别盲点”。
Ms Annis, who leads workshops on gender for big companies and governments, and Mr Gray, author of “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”, a bestselling book in 1992 about relationship problems, have collaborated to produce an easy-to-read guide to workplace communications.
安妮丝女士平时经常为大公司和政府机构主持关于性别问题的研习班，格雷先生则是《男人来自火星，女人来自金星》一书的作者，这本书出版于1992年，是一本讲述恋爱关系中存在的问题的畅销书。这样的两个人合作出一本关于职场沟通的简明指南，可谓是珠联璧合。
Women ask more questions, gather more people’s opinions and seek collaboration with co-workers more frequently than men.
和男性相比，女性通常更喜欢提问题，更多地寻求他人的意见，并且也更愿意与同事合作。
Men view these preferences as signs of weakness, and women, in turn, grow annoyed by how competitively men work, and how quickly and unilaterally they arrive at conclusions.
这些特点在男性看来是软弱的标志，而女性同样也很讨厌男人工作时的好胜心，以及他们不征求别人意见、迅速作出自己单方面结论的作风。
If both female and male employees became more “gender intelligent” about how their work and behavioural preferences are hard-wired, it would contribute to a more harmonious workforce.
如果男女职员都能够更加明智地认识到性别对他们的工作和行为习惯的固定影响，或许工作团队中的关系会更加和谐。
Women have been choosing to leave companies at twice the rate of men, and more than half the women whom the authors met in workshops were considering leaving their firms.
女职员主动辞职的比率是男职员的两倍，本书作者在研习班里接触的女职员中也有一半以上都在考虑离开现在的公司。
Women often tell their bosses that they are quitting for personal reasons, but the majority actually leave because they feel excluded from teams and not valued for their contributions.
她们通常会对老板说，自己辞职是出于私人原因，但实际上，大部分人真正的理由是她们在团队中没有参与感，而且感到自己的贡献没有得到重视。
Yet the reality is that women often have trouble communicating with other women at work as well, though the authors do not explain in quite as much detail why this is so.
其实还有另外一个现实的原因，女职员经常在工作中与其他女性也存在沟通问题，尽管这一点在本书中并没有详细阐述。
Communication and gender equality are not just problems at large firms.
沟通和性别平等不是只有大公司才存在的问题。
In “A Rising Tide” Susan Coleman and Alicia Robb look beyond women’s experience at big companies.
在《新潮》一书中，作者苏珊·科尔曼和艾丽西亚·罗布关注的就是女性在大公司之外的经历。
They focus instead on women entrepreneurs, who have the potential to become leaders in their field, earn a high income and hire more women.
她们的兴趣点在女企业家身上，这些女性拥有成为本行业领袖的潜力，收入高，并且倾向于雇佣更多的女性为自己工作。
In a positive shift, women have been starting more firms in the past decade.
过去的十年见证了一个积极的转变—女性正在创办越来越多的公司。
However, these tend to be in the service and retail industries.
然而，这些公司大多从事的是服务业和零售业一类的传统产业。
They also remain smaller than men’s firms.
而且通常在规模上也比不上男性主导的公司。
Ms Coleman and Ms Robb point out that part of this may be by design; women sometimes want to keep their businesses small in order to balance their family responsibilities.
科尔曼女士和罗布女士指出，这种情况一部分可能是有意为之；女老板们有时就是想要保持公司较小的规模，以便兼顾自己的家庭责任。
However, women also often lack the financing that male entrepreneurs enjoy.
除此之外，女老板们也经常缺少男老板们所拥有的那样充足的资金。
They have fewer savings, so usually launch their businesses with less capital than men, and are less likely to apply for a loan for fear of being denied.
她们的存款较少，所以经常在创办公司时，启动资金就比不上男企业家。
And they have not had as much access to the masculine world of Silicon Valley: in 2000 they obtained only 5% of funding from venture capitalists, a notoriously male-dominated industry.
而且，因为害怕被拒绝，她们也不太愿意去申请贷款。因此，在硅谷这个男权世界中，女性的跻身空间很小。2000年，她们仅从风险投资家手中获得了5%的资金。
During their first year of operation men raised 27 times more equity from outsiders for their start-ups than women.
众所周知，风险投资也是一个男性主导的行业。新公司运营第一年里，男老板们从公司外部募得的投资是女老板们的27倍。
How has the success of high-achievers differentiated them from other women?
那么，成功的女性精英们与其他女性有什么不同呢？
In “The XX Factor”, Alison Wolf, the director of public policy and management at Kings College London, argues that there are now around 70m highly educated, high-earning women around the world.
伦敦大学国王学院公共政策与管理系负责人艾莉森·伍尔芙在《XX因子》一书中说，目前全世界大约有七千万接受过高等教育、拿高收入的女性。
They have more in common with elite men than with other women.
与其他女性相比，她们与男性精英拥有更多相同之处。
These grandes dames tend to marry more often and have fewer children than less-educated women.
这些“女强人”通常会比教育程度不高的女性结更多次婚，生更少的孩子。
They spend more time working, and, unexpectedly, more time parenting.
她们花在工作上的时间更多，但令人意外的是，她们花在养育儿女上的时间也更多。
Ms Sandberg also makes this point.
桑德伯格女士也表达过同样的观点。
As the demands on women in the workplace have increased, so too have the standards for being a good, involved mother—which adds to the challenges for women at the top.
随着职场对女性的要求越来越高，要做一个合格的、全身心投入的母亲也越来越难。这也增加了女高管们面临的挑战。
Ms Wolf and Ms Sandberg ultimately differ, however, on whether the glass is half full or half empty for women.
但是，在对待女性职场前景的态度上，伍尔芙女士和桑德伯格女士有着很大的差别。
Ms Sandberg’s book is a call to female arms to change their behaviour so they can rise further.
桑德伯格女士的书意在呼吁女性改变她们的一些做法，以便攀登事业的更高峰。
Ms Wolf concludes with an economist’s detachment. She says that given how much things have improved for women in the past century, it is “a little surprising to find so many elite women still arguing passionately for directed, top-down social change—change designed to improve things for female elites”.
而伍尔芙女士的结论则显示出一位经济学家所拥有的淡然和超脱。她说，在过去一个世纪里，女性地位已经有了很大提升，考虑到这一点，她“有些不理解为什么很多女性精英仍然在乐此不疲地要求有序的、自上而下的社会变革，要求进一步改善女性精英的处境”。
Most people agree that more needs to change in the workplace. Men still occupy most top jobs, do not feel comfortable mentoring younger women and judge young men differently from young women.
大多数人都同意，职场确实还有很多需要改变的地方。男性仍然霸占了大多数的高层职位，不愿意指导年轻的女职员，并且在评价年轻的男女职员时采取双重标准。
However, after decades of women failing to gain equal representation in executive suites, it is notable how many books now focus on women altering their behaviour, rather than men changing their way of doing things.
但是，在女性奋斗了几十年，仍然未能在主管办公室打下半壁江山之后，我们应该注意到，现在的很多书只关注女性如何调整自己的行为，而不是男性怎样改变他们的行事风格。
Women cannot change their fate on their own. What happened to the responsibility for men to “lean in” to listen and advance women in the workforce, as well?
女性仅靠自己改变不了命运。难道男性不是也有责任要主动倾听女性的声音，帮助女性在职场进步吗？
