This document summarizes challenges and opportunities for women in product management and marketing roles. It discusses how these roles can provide rewarding career paths with opportunities for leadership, creativity, and making meaningful contributions. However, it also notes potential perilous paths, including a lack of respect, unconscious bias, isolation, lack of role models, salary inequity, and challenges balancing work and family responsibilities. The document advocates finding mentors, practicing needed skills, and leaning in to help overcome barriers while also highlighting the importance of increasing diversity in technology fields.
2. Rewarding Roadmap
• Product Management/Marketing is a very
rewarding career path
• It provides an opportunity to excel and make a
very visible contribution to a company’s
success
• It requires skills that women appear to be
good at
– Cross functional leadership
– Creativity
3. Breaking Boundaries
The role of a product manager is
really all about breaking
boundaries. It is being able to see
what is relevant today and
dreaming up what will be relevant
tomorrow. The best advice I have
for girls and women seeking a
product management role is to stay
in the forefront of an industry that
interest them. Understand how
technology can better that industry,
and look for technical opportunities
to make that happen.
2014 Pentaho Blog
Michelle Bradbury,
Director of Product
Management at Pentaho
4. Higher Collective Intelligence
The product manager ideally does not take credit
for the deep skills of the people with whom she
works. Instead, she works as a peer to draw the
necessary connections between them and keep
them in sync. She pays attention to the existing
self-organization of small groups of smart people
and sympathetically exerts soft power to try to
leverage their skills on a larger scale, without
wrecking what they already do well. She does
not build from the ground up, but helps fit
pieces together—horizontally. (This less
dominant, more agile approach—call it “peer-to-
peer managing”—may be part of why teams
with more women seem to have higher
collective intelligence.)
2011 Harvard Business Review Article
Anita W. Woolley, Assistant Professor
Of Organizational Behavior
Carnegie Mellon University
5. The Age of the Product Manager
2013 Slate Article
As a Google product manager and later
executive, Marissa Mayer was credited
with enforcing a rigid vision across
Google’s user-facing properties; she
became the linchpin of integration
between products, and she kept tabs
on every engineer and designer, high
and low.
Her confidence and meticulousness are
far more valuable than the business
connections of the overentitled, macho
executives she replaced.
6. There is really no reason not to try
Simo believes the digital industry can
offer the most exciting and rewarding
careers for women today, and when
asked what advice she would arm
young women with as they consider
taking a job in digital, she says they
should “dream big”.
“Don’t be afraid of failing. In the digital
industry in particular, the barriers to
entry to testing new ideas are so low
that there is really no reason not to try.
And when you dream big you are more
likely to inspire people who will support
you and are less likely to fail in the end
anyway,” she adds.
Fidji Simo, Product Manager
Facebook
2014 The Drum Interview
7. Perilous Path
• Women who work in Product Management in
High Tech companies face a lack of respect,
unconscious bias, and isolation
• There is a lack of role models
• The number of women getting technical
degrees in the US is decreasing
8. A Lack of Respect
We don’t celebrate women going into Product
Management. Instead, we couch it as “well
women don’t feel comfortable going into pure
technology.” We emphasize that “the role is full
of soft skills.” We discuses how it’s “non-
threatening,” for developers to have female
PMs. Then we assert that “pure technologists
are the ones with all the respect.”
When we talk about men going into Product
Management it’s framed in a completely
different light. “He wanted more scope.” “He
wanted more control over the direction.” We fit
the role into masculine traits of leadership and
control. We view it as a step towards company
leadership. The media rarely, if ever, applies
those traits to women in PM.
2014 Women 2.0 Blog
Ellen Chisa,
Product Manager
Kickstarter
9. Gender Bias in High Tech
Laura Sherbin, Director of
Research at the Center for
Talent Innovation
Gender bias underpins why women
either don’t think they can get
ahead or are choosing to leave their
organizations. One-third of U.S.
women in what the report calls
“lab-coat, hard-hat and geek
workplace cultures” feel excluded
from social networks at their jobs
(that number is 53 percent in India).
Meanwhile, 72 percent of women
in the United States and 78 percent
of women in Brazil perceive bias in
their performance evaluations.
http://2012 Washington Post Article
10. A Lack of Diversity
2014 NPR Report
A lack of diversity means fewer ideas,
perspectives and pushback that come
with a varied and eclectic group of
folks at the table. It can lead to the
perpetuation of “brogrammer
culture," where it's an accepted norm
for "booth babes" to hawk your
products while wearing a few strips of
clothing, to have no shame presenting
a titstare app designed to show you
different sets of breasts, or to
anonymously swarm women on the
Internet with rape threats and
beyond.
Elise Hu, Technology and Culture
Reporter
11. Salary Inequity
2013 NPR Report
Catherine Bracy,
Director of Community Organizing
Code for America
According to the Measure of
America's , women make 49
cents for every dollar a man
makes in Silicon Valley. That
figure is 77 cents on the dollar
for the rest of the country.
12. Isolation, Lack of Role Models
Women in technical fields face isolation,
lack of access to influential social
networks, mentors, lack of sponsorship,
and a lack of role models.
Ongoing work-family pressures affect
technical women’s retention and
advancement.
Unwelcoming organizational cultures
hurt the recruitment and retention of
technical women.
Persistent unconscious biases keep
women’s representation in technology
low.
Research from the
Anita Borg Institute
Dr. Anita Borg (1949-2003)
13. What we Learned at Product Camp
We had a session attended by veteran product managers,
novice product managers, students, researchers, and others
We used the chart that follows to
• Share stories about our rewarding roadmap
• Share stories about our perilous path
• Provide each other tips
Thank you to all who participated. I learned a lot and would
love to keep in touch !
Xenia Kwee xenia@prouductive.com
14. This is a very
visible position
I can make a
difference
Look at Kim Polese,
Marissa Mayer,
Lucinda Duncalfe
I was raised to do this:
build teams, foster
relationships, listen,
create, innovate
I am often the
only woman on
the team
I was not raised to
do this: compete,
demand, dictate
I am perceived as
less accomplished
than male
colleagues
Find a mentor
Be a mentor
Percentage of
women in STEM is
going down
Raises and
advancement for
women lag behind
those for men
Practice the skills
you need
Leaning In
Stepping Up
I get a chance to
work cross
functionally
MYREWARDINGROADMAPMYPERILOUSPATH
MY ADVICE