職場性別: 職業女性升職難的真正原因大綱

Why aren't more women running things in America? It isn't for lack of ambition or life skills or credentials. The real barrier to getting more women to the top is the unsexy but immensely difficult issue of time commitment: Today's top jobs in major organizations demand 60-plus hours of work a week.
爲什麼在美國沒有多少女性執掌大權？她們並不缺乏抱負、技能或職業資質。阻止更多女性晉升高層的真正障礙是時間上的付出，雖然這看起來一點都不“冠冕堂皇”，但卻是個非常棘手的問題：現今大公司的高級職位都要求一週工作60小時以上。

In her much-discussed new book, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg tells women with high aspirations that they need to 'lean in' at work -- that is, assert themselves more. It's fine advice, but it misdiagnoses the problem. It isn't any shortage of drive that leads those phalanxes of female Harvard Business School grads to opt out. It's the assumption that senior roles have to consume their every waking moment. More great women don't 'lean in' because they don't like the world they're being asked to lean into.
Facebook首席運營長謝麗爾•桑德伯格（Sheryl Sandberg）在其引發熱議的新書中勸說那些志存高遠的女性應更“傾心於”工作──即更勇於表達展現自我。她的建議不錯，但卻沒有找到問題的真正癥結。大批哈佛商學院（Harvard Business School）女畢業生退出職場並非因爲缺乏動力，而是因爲高級職位意味着要消耗她們醒着的每時每刻。越來越多的優秀女性選擇不“傾心於”工作是因爲她們本並不喜歡這個召喚她們加入的世界。

It doesn't have to be this way. A little organizational imagination bolstered by a commitment from the C-suite can point the path to a saner, more satisfying blend of the things that ambitious women want from work and life. It's time that we put the clock at the heart of this debate.
這種狀況是可以改變的。只需要一點對於組織架構的想象力，加上來自最高管理層的支持，就能爲雄心勃勃的職業女性鋪設一條更健康的道路，讓其對生活工作皆滿意。現在該是直面這個爭議的時候了。

I know this is doable because I run a growing startup company in which more than half the professionals work fewer than 40 hours a week by choice. They are alumnae of top schools and firms like General Electric and McKinsey, and they are mostly women. The key is that we design jobs to enable people to contribute at varying levels of time commitment while still meeting our overall goals for the company.
我知道這是可行的，因爲我自己經營着一家成長中的初創公司。公司裏超過半數的職員選擇每週工作少於40小時。這些職員都是名校畢業生，曾任職於像通用電氣（General Electric）、麥肯錫（McKinsey）這樣的名企，他們中大部分是女性。關鍵點在於，我們的職位設計使得員工能夠選擇不同的工作時長來完成任務，同時仍能達到公司的整體目標。

This isn't advanced physics, but it does mean thinking through the math of how work in a company adds up. It's also an iterative process; we hardly get it right every time. But for businesses and reformers serious about cracking the real glass ceiling for women -- and making their firms magnets for the huge swath of American talent now sitting on the sidelines -- here are four ways to start going about it.
這並不是高等物理學，但它的確意味着要通過數學思維考慮如何把一個公司的工作組織起來。它也是個迭代過程；我們並不是每次都能做對。然而，對於真心想幫助女性打破實際存在的玻璃天花板的公司和改革者們──同時使自己的公司能吸引到大批目前仍處於外圍的美國人才──建議可從以下四個辦法開始着手。

Rethink time. Break away from the arbitrary notion that high-level work can be done only by people who work 10 or more hours a day, five or more days a week, 12 months a year. Why not just three days a week, or six hours a day, or 10 months a year?
第一，重新考慮工作時長的概念。拋棄那些主觀臆斷，認爲高水平工作只能由每天工作超過10小時、每週工作超過五天、每年工作12個月的人來完成。爲什麼就不能每週工作三天、每天工作六小時或每年工作10個月呢？

It sounds simple, but the only thing that matters is quantifying the work that needs to get done and having the right set of resources in place to do it. Senior roles should actually be easier to reimagine in this way because highly paid people have the ability and, often, the desire to give up some income in order to work less. Flexibility and working from home can soften the blow, of course, but they don't solve the overall time problem.
這聽起來簡單，但唯一的關鍵是將需要完成的工作進行量化，並且擁有促使工作得以完成的合適資源。高級職位其實應該更容易實現這點，因爲高薪人士有能力而且通常希望爲了減少工作時間而放棄一定的收入。工作的靈活度以及在家辦公當然可以弱化部分矛盾，但仍解決不了整體工作時長問題。

Break work into projects. Once work is quantified, it must be broken up into discrete parts to allow for varying time commitments. Instead of thinking in terms of broad functions like the head of marketing, finance, corporate development or sales, a firm needs to define key roles in terms of specific, measurable tasks.
第二，將工作分解成小項目。一旦工作被量化，它就必須被分解成各個獨立部分以適應不同的時間投入要求。公司需要以具體、可衡量的任務來定義重要職位，而不是從市場主管、財務主管、業務開發或銷售主管等廣義的職能來考慮。Once you think of work as a series of projects, it's easy to see how people can tailor how much to take on. The growth of consulting and outsourcing came precisely when firms realized they could carve work into projects that could be done more effectively outside. The next step is to design internal roles in smaller bites, too. An experienced marketer for a pharma company could lead one major drug launch, for example, without having to oversee all drug launches. Instead of managing a portfolio with 10 products, a senior person could manage five. If a client-service executive working five days a week has a quota of 10 deals a month, then one who chooses to work three days a week has a quota of only six. Lower the quota but not the quality of the work or the executive's seniority.
一旦把工作當成一系列項目看待，就很容易看出人們應該如何選擇工作量。諮詢和外包服務就是在各公司意識到可以將工作分成項目，且外包出去更有效率的情況下發展起來的。它的下一步就是內部職能的細化。例如，製藥公司一名經驗豐富的營銷人員可以主管一個大的藥品推廣項目，而不用負責所有的藥品推廣。高級職員可以管理包括五個產品的項目而不是10個。如果一位每週工作五天的客戶服務高管每個月有10項交易的任務，那麼選擇每週工作三天的人就只有六項交易的任務。任務減少了，但工作質量和執行人員的資歷並不會改變。

One reason this doesn't happen more is managerial laziness: It's easier to find a 'superwoman' to lead marketing (someone who will work as long as humanly possible) than it is to design work around discrete projects. But even superwoman has a limit, and when she hits it, organizations adjust by breaking up jobs and adding staff. Why not do this before people hit the wall?
管理上的懶惰導致這種方式未能更廣泛得以實施：較之以具體項目來安排工作，找到一個主管市場（還可以無限加班）的“女超人”來得更容易。但即使女超人也有極限，當她到達極限時，公司就只能靠分解工作和擴充員工來進行調整。那又爲何不在撞到南 之前就這樣做呢？

Availability matters. It's important to differentiate between availability and absolute time commitments. Many professional women would happily agree to check email even seven days a week and jump in, if necessary, for intense project stints -- so long as over the course of a year, the time devoted to work is more limited. Managers need to be clear about what's needed: 24/7 availability is not the same thing as a 24/7 workload.
第三，“可工作時間”很關鍵。區分“可工作時間”和“絕對工作時長”，這點非常重要。只要一年下來總工作時長有限度，許多職業女性甚至都樂意接受每週七天都查郵件，並且有必要的話也會迅速投入到緊張的項目中去。管理層需要清楚公司要的是什麼：7天24小時都“有空”和7天24小時的工作量可不一樣。

Quality is the goal, not quantity. Leaders need to create a culture in which talented people are judged not by the quantity of their work, but by the quality of their contributions. This can't be hollow blather. Someone who works 20 hours a week and who delivers exceptional results on a pro rata basis should be eligible for promotions and viewed as a top performer. American corporations need to get rid of the notion that wanting to work less makes someone a 'B player.'
第四，目標是質量而不是數量。領導者需要營造一種文化，即按工作質量而非數量去評判優秀人才。這可不是沒用的空話。每週工作20小時、業績按比例來說非常突出的員工應該有晉升的資格，而且應被視爲業績優秀人員。美國公司需要摒棄那種希望工作量少的人就是“二流員工”的觀念。

Promoting this kind of innovation, where companies start to look more like puzzles than pyramids, has to become part of feminism's new agenda. It's the only way to give millions of capable women the ability to recalibrate the time that they devote to work at different stages of their lives.
當公司看上去越來越像是拼圖而不是金字塔的時候，促進這種創新必將成爲女權主義新議題的一部分。這是唯一能讓數百萬優秀女性在人生不同階段得以調整工作時長的方法。

We have been putting smart women on the couch for 40 years, since psychologist Matina Horner published her famous studies on 'fear of success.' But the portion of top jobs that go to women is still shockingly low. That's the irony of Ms. Sandberg's cheerleading for women to stay ambitious: She fails to see that her own agenda isn't nearly ambitious enough.
自40年前心理學家馬蒂娜•霍納(Matina Horner)發表其著名的“成功恐懼”研究以來，我們就一直在鼓勵聰明的女性走入職場。但擔任高級職位的女性依然少之又少。這是對桑伯格鼓勵女性保持雄心壯志的諷刺：她沒有看到她自己的想法一點都不夠雄心壯志。

'Leaning in' may help the relative handful of talented women who can live with the way that top jobs are structured today -- and if that's their choice, more power to them. But only a small percentage of women will choose this route. Until the rest of us get serious about altering the way work gets done in American corporations, we're destined to howl at the moon over the injustice of it all while changing almost nothing.
“全身心投入”也許可以幫助相對少數可以忍受目前這種高級職位結構的優秀女性──而且如果這是她們的選擇，我們應該鼓勵。但只有少數女性會選擇這條路。除非我們其他人開始認真考慮改變美國企業的工作方式，否則我們註定只能怒嚎所有的這些不公待遇，但實際上什麼都改變不了。