![Morgane Dion: Why don’t nice girls succeed? Morgane Dion: Why don’t nice girls succeed?](https://www.businessofeminin.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/les-filles-gentilles-ne-reussissent-pas-.jpg)
Morgane Dion, co-founder and CEO of Plan Cash (French-speaking financial education platform for women), salary negotiation coach and speaker, has just published “ Good girls don’t succeed “. In this book, she discusses the inequalities between women and men at work and encourages female mutual assistance to succeed professionally.
The title of your book is striking. Good girls can’t succeed
Morgane Dion: Today’s world is not designed for women. If we play the game, if we are nice, if we obey the rules put in place by the patriarchy, we get crumbs. If we do the opposite, if we crush this game, if we are ourselves, we risk having a backlash, it’s true… But when we win, we win more, while remaining true to ourselves, without forcing ourselves to fit into stereotypes that don’t resemble us. That doesn’t mean being mean though. For me, the opposite of nice is being unreasonable, it means daring to go against what is dictated, daring to assert oneself.
You write that the problem does not come from a lack of self-confidence among women or bad choices but that it is systemic. For what ?
Morgane Dion: These are the studies that say so. Impostor syndrome, a term that I prefer to imposter syndrome which refers to the person and not the behavior, suggests that we are sick. This syndrome was originally only studied in women, although men also experience this lack of self-confidence. They are simply more comfortable than women with the idea of not knowing. Women are told so much that they lack self-confidence, that they end up believing in this idea and acting according to it. We can clearly see this with the scale of personal development for women. However, self-confidence is not innate, it is social experiences that build it.
How to change this paradigm?
Morgane Dion: It’s not easy but it starts with awareness, by reading studies on this subject for example. To fight against this system, it involves various little things like showing more faces of female successes, or not putting all names in the masculine form for example but using their feminine or truly neutral form.
How are nice girls particularly disadvantaged compared to men?
Morgane Dion: Women are intelligent and do as well as men, if not better, in higher education in particular. But they are disadvantaged by their environment. Their skills always have to be demonstrated, while those of men always go without saying. Positions of power are mostly held by men who empower other men. There are very few role models to inspire women. And when there are, they often come from the appearance industry while men have more numerous and more varied role models.
You also mention intersectionality, the fact of being discriminated against or advantaged based on various identities…
Morgane Dion: Yes. Intersectionality, as defined by researcher Kimberlé Crenshaw, is the fact of belonging to several identity categories: being a woman, being black, being veiled, etc. The more a woman is at the intersections of criteria discriminating socio-demographics, the more likely she is to be confronted with discrimination, not to be recruited by a company, not to be promoted… One in two black women also think that their skin color will be a barrier to her career compared to only 3% of white women.
To fight against this, we must already realize that women are all different. A white woman will have different experiences than a black woman. In the United States, surveys show the difference in pay between women depending on their skin color or origin. In Europe, we do not have this information. A large number of women are made invisible. If we did so, we would also find that an Arab or black woman, for example, is significantly underpaid compared to a white woman, for the same position. We would also surely see that they have less access to these better paid positions, that they have more difficulty being promoted.
But even if they do not have to face the same discrimination, women must support each other in their struggles in the face of the obstacles opposed to each other.
You write in your book: “ The concept of a glass ceiling only exists because we agree to play by the established rules “. How to change these rules?
Morgane Dion: There is no one answer but the sticky floor. That is to say, all the mechanisms that keep women at the bottom of the job ladder (type of mission, low pay, reduced mobility, etc.), is the real problem for me. Women are kept at the bottom of the ladder with long working hours, staggered hours, far from home… To advance women to the top, we must already give them access to the first management positions. If there are more women passing the first levels, there will inevitably be more candidates for the highest levels – which are also better paid.
Quotas are subject to debate. Why do you think they are a good thing?
Morgane Dion: We understand that quotas are a good thing when we understand that they are a temporary solution. It is then simpler to agree to put them in place. It’s like a vaccine that restores the balance of a body with the aim that it can then manage to regulate itself. Quotas force systems to balance more quickly.
Some women are indeed wary of these quotas because they fear that their arrival will be perceived as favoritism rather than recognition of their skills. But establishing quotas helps to increase the overall level of a group because the number of applications and therefore competition increases. Decision-makers will pay better attention to skills and be able to recruit the best from a wider range.
Some recruiters or managers, including women, have unconscious biases which sometimes lead them to slow down the advancement of women. How to explain it?
Morgane Dion: It’s not these women’s fault. They got there because they themselves agreed to make sacrifices: working late, seeing their children less, putting up with sexist jokes… Unconsciously, they find it unfair that other women do not go through these same stages. It’s also a survival technique: to get there and stay there, they play by men’s rules. And then, as there are very few places for women, they may also perceive them as potential competitors. But while they hit each other, the men quietly continue their climb.
How to get out of this trap?
Morgane Dion: It seems important to me to find allies, for example a male mentor who provides access to his network. We must also show solidarity between women and apply, for example, the “ shine theory », invented by Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow (creators of the podcast Call your girlfriend, Editor’s note). It’s about promoting each other during meetings, communicating about the successes of other female colleagues, etc. This avoids being in constant competition and allows everyone to climb the ladder more quickly.
What advice would you give to a woman who wants to succeed professionally?
Morgane Dion: I would advise her to stop listening to the negative things that are said about her and to remember that she can do it. She will encounter obstacles for sure, but she must surround herself well to have more strength to overcome them. And train yourself too, to succeed in your interviews for example.
Dorothée Blancheton