MEN-IN-THE-MIDDLE

Reed considers the median male executive in this nonfiction study of workplace equity.

What’s standing in the way of gender equity in the workplace? The simple answer is: men. Men hold three out of every four senior executive positions in America, and if they’re unwilling to make an effort to promote gender equity in the workplace, it isn’t likely to get done. It’s worth exploring, then, just what men think about gender equity. “#MeToo elevated stories predominantly about men who took advantage of situations or offended women but not conversations with men about gender-related issues in the workplace and their viewpoints on change for good,” writes the author. Reed set out to have these conversations by interviewing men in corporate leadership roles, attempting to discover what they actually think about gender in the workplace. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the men she spoke with sat somewhere in the mushy middle, “far from the extremes of either outwardly, vocally championing women or treating women like sex objects in the office.” This book probes the fine points of the views of these men with the goal of better understanding how true gender equity can be achieved. Reed mixes her interviews (which are anonymized through the use of pseudonyms) with research on the ways opinions get shaped and a selection of mediation strategies. Her prose is direct and nonjudgmental, as here, when she presents the views of a man she calls Bob: “While Bob supports gender equality, he won’t treat men and women in a similar way regarding work-social events like meeting over drinks or dinner. He perceives there is a potential risk of a false accusation, especially when, in a one-on-one setting, it would be his word against hers.” The evidence the author collates may not be surprising in the broad strokes, but the nuances she gleans contain a great deal of compelling information. The book makes for a fascinating window into the mind of the contemporary male executive in the post-#MeToo era.

An illuminating study of how men look at workplace gender equity.