large companies in the US. CSR ratings quantify a firm’s investment in employees and the community. The ratings measure, among other things, whether a firm provides childcare benefits, flexible hours, and employee health programs.
The study found that companies run by a male CEO who has at least one daughter have CSR ratings that average 9.1 percent higher than the median rating for similar-sized firms. The biggest effect on a firm’s CSR rating comes from a male CEO’s first-born daughter, although later-born daughters also increase a firm’s CSR rating incrementally. When a firm changes its CEO from a man who has one or more daughters to a man without daughters, the firm’s CSR rating tends to quickly drop.
Imagine what dads of daughters could do for workplace flexibility and mentoring if they prioritized them at their workplaces. What if dads experimented with alternative work arrangements and set up formal mentoring programs to ensure that women don’t fall through the cracks? What if dads publicly set concrete goals and regularly measured their progress? What if dads took all their paternity leave and encouraged other men to do the same? Four dads of daughters in Silicon Valley’s tech industry have taken up this challenge to become role models for how to get started.
The Silicon Valley Coaches
When Richard Dickson became the Chair of Fenwick & West LLP, a Silicon Valley technology and life sciences law firm, his two daughters, Jordan and Alex, were seven and five years old. Even during elementary school, Jordan and Alex weren’t just athletic, competitive, and opinionated. They were also budding feminists. Jordan could often be spotted in a “Girls Rule” tank-top, while Alex’s favorite purple t-shirt displayed the Shakespeare quote: “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” While saying grace before a meal at their grandparents’ house, they once changed the word “amen” to “awomen,” just to be fair. The phrase, “girl power,” is invoked frequently around Richard’s house, and his daughters aren’t afraid to speak up and question his authority. Jordan and Alex have grown up truly believing that girls can do and become anything they want.
So when Richard stepped into his law firm’s leadership role, he felt an obligation—and a fair amount of pressure—to meet his daughters’ expectations about gender equality. “Your daughters are part of your identity,” says Richard, “so the increased importance of a world that’s fair and equal to them is something that has an impact.”
Advancing women’s equality in a corporate and technology-focused Silicon Valley law firm is no easy task. Nationwide, only eighteen percent of law firm equity partners are women, even though women have made up about half of all law students for the past twenty-five years. The numbers are even lower for women in corporate law, which is the largest part of Fenwick’s practice. The gender pay gap in the legal profession is also staggering. The median compensation for partners at the two hundred largest law firms is about twenty percent less for women than men, even in the equity ranks. Women are also scarce in leadership positions at the technology, life sciences, and other Silicon Valley companies that make up most of Fenwick’s client base. Women fill less than twenty-five percent of general counsel positions at Fortune 500 companies, and only seventeen percent of venture-backed start-ups have a woman founder—a percentage that hasn’t changed since 2012.
Fortunately, Richard could build on a strong foundation set by the firm’s prior Chair, Gordon Davidson, who’s also the dad of a daughter. Business professor Isabel Metz studies diversity management and she’s found that companies with the greatest gender diversity are ones with multiple generations of leaders who are committed to the cause. “We are talking here about cultural change, and we all know that cultural change doesn’t happen in a few months or a year,” she explains. “It takes one passionate leader, followed by another, that persistently has this issue in the spotlight, and it will have a snowball effect.”
This effect is picking up speed at Fenwick & West because of the two dedicated dads of daughters who have led the firm back-to-back over the last several decades. Gordy joined the firm in the 1970s after getting bitten by Silicon Valley’s start-up bug. With Stanford degrees in law, electrical engineering, and computer systems, Gordy quickly established himself as a leader in technology law. His clients range from start-ups to Fortune 1000 companies. He’s worked on over fifty public offerings and lead more than a hundred mergers and acquisitions valued at more than $75 billion. Because of his visionary leadership, he was elected as the firm’s Chair in 1995. Serving in that role for the next eighteen years, Gordy grew the firm from about 150 to 325 attorneys, and he nearly tripled the firm’s revenue.
Despite his firm’s financial success and his status as Silicon Valley’s legal guru, Gordy dedicated himself to advancing women attorneys before that path had been forged by others in the male-dominated legal profession. Gordy recruited his firm’s first woman attorney and mentored her throughout her career. He later helped craft a part-time schedule for her and was an outspoken advocate for electing her to become the firm’s first reduced-hour partner. In 2001, Gordy was among the first to sign up for the San Francisco Bar Association’s “No Glass Ceiling” initiative, which committed his firm to specific goals for increasing women partners.
In becoming an early Silicon Valley advocate for gender diversity, Gordy was nudged along the way by his high-achieving daughter, Laurie. While Gordy was leading his firm, his daughter finished high school, graduated from college, and began a teaching career. While watching her journey, Gordy became motivated to dig deeper into the barriers and biases that were pushing women out of the legal profession.
Gordy’s firm was having a hard time retaining women attorneys, particularly women with children. So in 2006, he convened a task force to examine how law firm billable-hour requirements and scheduling practices affected women attorneys. Law firms demand notoriously long hours, in part because clients are typically billed based on the number of hours an attorney spends on a client’s work, instead of based on projects or outcomes. So more attorney work hours means higher law firm profits. It also means that attorney salaries and promotions typically depend on the number of hours an attorney clocks. Gordy suspected that this was part of the retention issue for lawyer moms, so his firm hosted a forum to discuss how to keep women attorneys after they have kids.
Based on what he learned, Gordy established a formal part-time program that’s open to all attorneys. Most importantly, attorneys who work part-time may still become partners, which was a groundbreaking shift from most firms’ second-class mommy-tracks. Of the last thirty attorneys who’ve been elected to Fenwick’s partnership, eight have been working reduced-hour schedules, which includes six women. Although the policies were triggered by the desire to retain women, they’ve also benefitted men who are seeking work/family balance.
Gordy stepped down as Fenwick’s Chair in 2013, and the partners chose Richard to take his place. While helping raise two young daughters, Richard had built a successful practice advising high-tech, internet, telecommunications, software, and semiconductor companies. After leading many Silicon Valley start-ups through venture capital financing, mergers and acquisitions, and initial public offerings, Richard became the head of Fenwick’s start-up group and the leader of the corporate department before replacing Gordy as the firm’s Chair.
Richard built on Gordy’s work by focusing on advancing women into leadership roles. As a dad of daughters, Richard saw this focus as both a moral responsibility and a business opportunity. Watching his daughters grow their talents reminded him that his firm is a talent organization. Law firms are service providers, and their assets are their people. So recruiting, keeping, and promoting the most talented individuals has been Richard’s highest leadership goal. Having daughters made him more attuned to the importance of gender diversity for achieving that goal. “Our greatest opportunity is the retention and promotion of women because they’re half of the talent pool,” says Richard, “but that’s something that the legal industry has not been very good at recognizing.”
Richard became convinced that effective mentorship was the key for having more women attorneys rise to the partnership ranks. But mentorship takes skill, commitment, and most of all, empathy. Richard’s capacity to be more empathetic was perhaps his most important gift from his daughters. “My daughters have made me more of a softie,” he admits, “but in a good way.” Richard believes that empathy is one