It Takes More than Family-Friendly Benefits to Attract Female Leaders

August 23, 2013 HBR's The Daily Idea Leadership can take a toll on one's work-family balance. This is one reason why a lot of organizations, especially those that require an "all-in" attitude, have a tough time recruiting women. One way many organizations try (and often fail) to close the gender gap is by offering more family-friendly benefits. Take the Stanford School of Medicine. They offer (unpaid) leave for up to a year after a child's birth, grants for childcare, onsite childcare, you name it. Sounds great, right? Yet many women didn't use those benefits. Why? Flexible benefits didn't jibe with the school's norms of success. But when the school made efforts to fully integrate these benefits into the faculty advancement process, things changed for the better. A change in culture, they learned, must always come first. SOURCE: Stanford Medical School's Plan to Attract More Female Leaders by Lauren Stiller Rikleen