This interview with Marie Gervais on Edmonton Woman Magazine talks about the barriers and successes of women and immigrants to Canada.
Marie Gervais is the owner and CEO of Edmonton’s Shift Management, a company at the forefront of e-learning services, intercultural workplace integration and leadership training. Gervais holds a Ph.D. in Culture and Learning with international experience working with various groups in Haiti, Japan and India. Her company serves over 500 clients, has almost 10,000 e-learning users worldwide and is currently involved in many long-term coaching and leadership contracts. EWM asked her to provide insight into how women and minority groups interact with the business world.
Edmonton Woman Magazine: What challenges do women face in the workplace?
Marie Gervais: I was just reading this Deloitte report recently, about women in high-level manufacturing positions and I think that sums up what women face generally in the workplace, is their perception that the workplace is male-dominated and there is no place for them. And to get into it is really difficult and once you’re into it, you face a lot of challenges, prejudice and a lot of suspicions that you’re not competent. That alone is the biggest deterrent for most women.
EWM: What challenges do immigrants face in the workplace?
MG: Immigrants face similar challenges because people are suspicious that they are not competent. If they show anything that doesn’t fit with the accepted norm of the company they are assumed to not know, rather than just to know differently, and that’s the same problem women face. Women know things differently and that different way is often dismissed.
EWM: What strengths do women bring to the workplace?
MG: Women pay a lot of attention to the details of setting something up, the process of reaching goals and also the denouement and it’s more nuanced. Men pay more attention to the end goal and women pay more attention to the process and I think that’s an important strength and why women make good managers. They notice the inter-relatedness of things.
EWM: So is that like saying women are relationship-oriented, versus task-focused, or is that too simplistic?
MG: Well, women can also be very task-focused. It’s the ecosystem that women pay more attention to, generally speaking. Men will look at the individual things in the system; women will look at the whole system and how it interacts. So I suppose that’s relational, but it doesn’t necessarily have to do with people; it has to do with people in the context of their work.
EWM: Why is workplace inclusion still an issue for women?
MG: There are still so many attitudes against women, by both men and women. For example, my youngest daughter just finished a Master’s in Business in Organizational Psychology. She did a study on the perception of competence and aggression in the workplace. She had male and female actors and participants and she videotaped their interactions and analyzed them. She consistently found that both men and women of a variety of ages always perceived women negatively. So if the woman actor was acting incompetently they perceived her as ten times more incompetent. In fact, they rarely perceived men as incompetent, no matter how hard the male actor would try. Even if he acted like a complete idiot the others still thought he was competent! The other issue was that if a woman showed any signs of being upset about something she was immediately labelled aggressive or emotional, whereas if the man actor showed that he was upset he was considered to be a good leader and bringing the team forward. So it’s an issue because women are always perceived as being less competent than men.
EWM: We’ve talked about the barriers, what are some encouraging trends?
MG: One trend that’s very encouraging is that immigrant women entrepreneurs do very well. The strongest thing that immigrants usually bring is that they are going to succeed or die trying, and they’re almost always more successful than the native-born population. The reason for that is they work until they drop to make it happen. The other encouraging thing is that older women tend to do very well. A (Toronto) study that was done on immigrant women in business found they are really good at making strategic choices have the confidence and dedication to meet challenges. They are persistent, creative, willing to learn, flexible, logical and that lends them to be good business owners.
EWM: Why would a company resist investing in and training women?
MG: I don’t have a good answer to that one because I haven’t asked a lot of companies about it. But my experience is that it’s still an old boys club and the guys just don’t like having women around because it disrupts the way that they’re thinking. But, there are some certain champion men that are excellent at bringing women into situations where they haven’t been before.
EWM: What changes do you hope to see in the business community in the next ten years?
MG: I’d like to see a really diverse business community contributing to everything. I’d like to see all ages, women and men. I’d like to see different colours of people, different nationalities and different religions. Wherever you go it looks like the whole world is there— that’s my dream for the future.