In 1991, when riot girl band Bikini Kill introduced the concept of "girl power," it was received warmly, despite occasional criticism that it encouraged underage promiscuity. This year, the concept has reached a high point with the awareness-raising #MeToo campaign. But still, "fewer than 20% of the senior positions in Israel are manned by women," says Yael Greenberger, 26, director of marketing and business development at Woman2Woman. The idea for the program Woman2Woman began with a group of military intelligence veterans who served in the IDF's elite 8200 unit. The program reaches out to women with potential and helps them actualize this potential to the greatest extent possible.
"The idea is to increase this percentage [the 20% representation of women] and close the gender gap," Greenberger says. "We're talking about women directors and CEOs. The idea is to shatter the glass ceiling."
W2W, as the program has come to be known, is a mentoring framework that includes some 30 women, referred to as "mentees." The mentees are women who find themselves at a professional crossroads. Each mentee is assigned a mentor – a woman already working in a senior position in a particular sector (high-tech, the legal system, medicine, finance, etc.) – and receives career advice in a series of one-on-one mentoring sessions.
The founders of the program stress that all women are eligible for the program, and that a military background in the 8200 unit is by no means a requirement.
The program was hatched, founded and developed by a group of five young women. Keren Herscovici, 26, Noya Lempert, 32, and Efrat Dayagi, 33, founded the program and were later joined by Efrat Vinker, 26 and Greenberger, who was actually a mentee in the program's first run. Today, she oversees the entire mentoring program.
Three of the women work in high-tech: Herscovici is a controller at Check Point, Winker is a programmer at Microsoft and Greenberger is a product marketing director at BullGuard Israel. Lempert is a doctoral student in psychology and Dayagi is an attorney.
Greenberger explains that the current roster of mentees, the program's third class, comprises 28 women who were carefully selected from 560 applications. "The fact that the number of applicants has more than doubled is already some measure of success. We have graduates who make career changes and climb up the ladder. They earn more as a result of the program, and much more."
Q: How did you come up with the idea?
"The 8200 unit is more than 50% women. Meaning that the potential exists. We saw that women man fewer than 20% of the senior positions in the Israeli market and we asked ourselves why that is. We identified a general need. It wasn't that we couldn't find work."
Q: So why do you think that is?
"There are many reasons. We learned from women that unless they meet 100% of the criteria for a specific job opening, they usually don't even bother applying. A man, however, would apply if he only met 30% of the criteria. There are instances when a man interviews a woman and it affects her self-confidence.
"Sometimes, when a woman is assertive at her workplace she is considered bitchy but a man displaying the same behavior is seen as ambitious. These are social norms that are deeply rooted. It is true, however, that glass ceilings are often established by the women themselves and not necessarily by society."
Last October, 16 of the program's mentees joined a delegation to Boston and New York and visited prestigious universities Harvard, Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as the U.N., among other institutions. They participated in career building workshops, took part in panels with high-powered women professionals and engaged in a host of activities.
According to Greenberger, choosing to send the delegation to the U.S. stemmed from the understanding that one of the things shared by almost all the mentors was their professional engagements abroad. "Our mentors come from different fields, one is an expert in high-tech, another is a doctor and a third is a financial wiz, but we tried to find the common denominator, beyond having broken the glass ceiling and being extremely capable, and we realized that they all have a certain connection to countries outside Israel. It's a fact, the world isn't limited to Israel. It was important for us to expand and build the mentees' international networking base.
"Obviously we're not encouraging anyone to emigrate from Israel, on the contrary. We want to cultivate change here in Israel."
A national interest
One of the most exciting experiences for the delegation to the U.S. was when the women visited the Dell-EMC offices in Boston. There, the delegation met with Dr. Orna Berry, the vice president of the company and the general manager of the company's Center of Excellence in Israel. Berry, 68, is a mentor in the W2W program. She was among the founders of the first Israeli company to be purchased by a European conglomerate (Siemens) – Ornet Data Communication Technologies. She also served as the chief scientist in the Commerce and Industry Ministry and held a long list of high-powered positions in the private sector, including partner in the venture capital fund Gemini.
Last month, Berry announced that she was leaving Dell-EMC. She nothing but compliments for the founders of the M2M program: "In my opinion, they built the best mentoring program that exists today for women with high ambitions."
Her remarks suggest that she is disappointed with the lack of state-run initiatives like W2W. "A small town, with only a few people, Nachum Gutman once wrote. And I say, not only are there only a few people, it is imperative to speed up the development of those people who can contribute to a growing economy. I believe that programs like this one increase the pool of people who can contribute to productivity and growth in the Israeli economy. In my view, this is a national interest, and I always enlist to help with national missions."
Q: How can we convince the government to initiate projects like this instead of relying on private initiatives?
"There are national programs that the government adopts, but I want to say that that the best programs are the initiatives that already have leaders and simply require the proper funding to make them stronger than anything the private sector could do alone.
"I think that today, there are more women in senior positions and they can help cultivate the next generation, which will include women directors and accomplished women. In the past, there was no one to learn from. The population was very small and the number of people who worked in tech was minuscule. Today there are far more people, and though the percentage of women in senior positions is still low, there are a good number of women who have achieved successes."
Changing the perception
According to a study conducted by the BDO Consulting Group, in 2016, the percentage of women in managerial positions (not directors) in all of the Israeli private sector was 20%. In the banking industry, the figure was 28%. In biomed – 26%. In tech – only 12%. Only 21% of vice presidents were women and only 10% were CEOs. The lowest representation of women was among board chairs. Only 4% of chairmen were actually chairwomen (for the sake of comparison, in the U.S. only 2% of chairmen of the board are chairwomen).
Wage gaps between men and women in senior positions correlated with the findings of the study as well. Overall, the gap was 31%, with a gap of 49% in insurance and 187% in industry.
The idea of mentorship is obviously not a W2S invention. Berry talks about her experience in mentoring: "I had a mentor – a man named Meir Borstein. He was a prominent figure in the software and systems industry in Israel. I joke about it, but I'm also serious when I say that thanks to him I did not need any business education when I pivoted from tech to entrepreneurship. He made my friends and me an offer to start a firm. If you don't learn from other people's experience, there are things you will never know."
Einav Aharoni-Yonas, also a mentor at W2W and the CEO of Kodak Israel, stresses the importance of mentorship. "It took me many years to understand how important mentoring is, and even today I have a number of mentors myself, both in the organization and outside it. The truth is that I was a little jealous and wanted a mentor for myself, so we started this group of mentors where we bounce ideas off each other and raise dilemmas, share personal stuff and help one another. The idea is to be able to deliberate in a safe environment, and it's an amazing thing."
Q: Do you think that gender plays a role in selecting a mentor?
"That is an excellent question. I think it depends on where you are and not so much on the gender, but I can tell you that yes, there is something very powerful about a women's mentoring circle."
Aharoni-Yonas, 43, has a degree in law and accounting from Tel Aviv University. She is married and has three children. She began working at Kodak Israel in 2004 as a lawyer and became managing Director in 2012. "I think a lot of it has to do with the openness and depth of Kodak, to understand that someone who doesn't necessarily come from the development side can actually contribute a great deal."
She has been in the W2W program since its first year and it is important to her to follow up on her mentees even after they complete the program. All three women she has mentored are from the tech field. The first two changed jobs after completing the program. Among other things, Aharoni-Yonas taught them how to integrate into a workplace, how to prepare for an important interview, and most importantly, how to figure out what they are looking for: "The decision itself is not fateful. It is the perception that makes the difference. There are many ways to advance in life, and the most important thing is to provide the tools to be able to identify the advantages and disadvantages. I lacked that ability when I was their age."
Q: How do you explain gender inequality?
"I tend not to place blame on others. It is difficult to change others. But what I see repeating itself in women – friends, too – is the deliberating. A woman examines all the avenues. We do a lot more thinking with ourselves and men just submit the application.
"It's important to understand that there is no substitute for professionalism. I personally pushed myself forward and never troubled myself with the gender issue. In any case, I think that if more women were to apply for senior positions, there would be more women in senior positions."
Like Berry, Aharoni-Yonas also believes strongly in the program, particularly in focusing on women around the age of 30. "That's the stage when women start to think about children versus career and there are decisions to be made. For me, my biggest accomplishment is the fact that my children think that there is discrimination against men in the world. They keep asking me why there aren't programs like this for men."
