The document discusses the invisible barriers that hold women back from advancing into senior leadership roles despite corporate commitments to diversity, such as entrenched beliefs among managers that subtly hamper women's careers, and it proposes a hard-edged approach of systemwide change driven by targets, data-driven performance reviews, and genuine sponsorship to help companies overcome these problematic mindsets. It also examines data showing the leaky talent pipeline for women and common explanations given for failing to retain or promote promising women.
The document examines differences and similarities between male and female CEOs and their impact on corporate reputation. It finds that having a female CEO does not negatively impact a company's reputation. While some small differences in perceived leadership qualities exist along traditional gender stereotypes, the essentials of strong reputation are largely the same for both male and female CEOs. Both genders contribute similarly to their company's market value through reputation. However, perceptions of the number of female CEOs are inaccurate, and women are significantly more reluctant than men to take on the CEO role.
The document summarizes findings from a survey of 265 women working in new economy companies. Key findings include:
- Many women find the new economy exhilarating and feel they have more opportunities for creative freedom, impact, and rapid growth compared to traditional companies. However, they also experience high stress and difficulties balancing work and personal lives.
- While gender issues may be less pronounced, nearly a third still felt unequal treatment based on attributes like being single or a working mother. A quarter also felt issues like feeling undervalued or overlooked for opportunities.
- Women use strategies like adapting flexibility, maintaining perspective, developing peer support networks, and constant learning to navigate challenges. However, the demanding lifestyle may only be temporary for
The Gender Gap At The Top: What's Keeping Women From Leading Corporate America?Subha Barry
This Working Mother research project takes a comprehensive look at the experiences of women - and men - at all levels of corporations to ascertain what perceptions and realities are keeping them out of the highest ranks and to offer real solutions to close the gap.
In all our institutions, we are still experiencing a tremendous leadership gap. We will talk about the remaining barriers and unconscious biases towards female leadership and the different existing initiatives to overcome it.
This document discusses strategies to address the gender pay gap, including women only doing 78% of their work if paid 78% of what male colleagues earn, negotiating salaries better, and making negotiation a norm. It provides solutions like ensuring fair pay and compensation reviews, evaluating performance fairly by having clear criteria and accountability, and facilitating equal and lengthy maternity and paternity leave policies like Sweden's to encourage fathers to take parental leave.
This document discusses women in leadership and provides characteristics of effective female leaders. It notes that countries cannot flourish if they deprive themselves of the talents of half their citizens. Effective leadership depends on a person's qualities, not their gender. Women leaders tend to be empathetic, focus on teamwork, be flexible and multitask. They are also good communicators. There is a need for more women leaders to promote gender equality and drive effective solutions. However, women leaders face challenges such as gender bias, difficulty trusting their own abilities, and impostor syndrome.
In almost all organizations, some leaders pave the way for their employees to do their best work, and others inadvertently make things much harder than they should be. Where do you fall on this continuum? Do you help or do you hinder? In all probability, it’s the latter. According to our research, your employees are more likely to view you as an obstacle to their effectiveness than as an enabler of it—and that holds true whether your organization is successful or stumbling.
The document examines differences and similarities between male and female CEOs and their impact on corporate reputation. It finds that having a female CEO does not negatively impact a company's reputation. While some small differences in perceived leadership qualities exist along traditional gender stereotypes, the essentials of strong reputation are largely the same for both male and female CEOs. Both genders contribute similarly to their company's market value through reputation. However, perceptions of the number of female CEOs are inaccurate, and women are significantly more reluctant than men to take on the CEO role.
The document summarizes findings from a survey of 265 women working in new economy companies. Key findings include:
- Many women find the new economy exhilarating and feel they have more opportunities for creative freedom, impact, and rapid growth compared to traditional companies. However, they also experience high stress and difficulties balancing work and personal lives.
- While gender issues may be less pronounced, nearly a third still felt unequal treatment based on attributes like being single or a working mother. A quarter also felt issues like feeling undervalued or overlooked for opportunities.
- Women use strategies like adapting flexibility, maintaining perspective, developing peer support networks, and constant learning to navigate challenges. However, the demanding lifestyle may only be temporary for
The Gender Gap At The Top: What's Keeping Women From Leading Corporate America?Subha Barry
This Working Mother research project takes a comprehensive look at the experiences of women - and men - at all levels of corporations to ascertain what perceptions and realities are keeping them out of the highest ranks and to offer real solutions to close the gap.
In all our institutions, we are still experiencing a tremendous leadership gap. We will talk about the remaining barriers and unconscious biases towards female leadership and the different existing initiatives to overcome it.
This document discusses strategies to address the gender pay gap, including women only doing 78% of their work if paid 78% of what male colleagues earn, negotiating salaries better, and making negotiation a norm. It provides solutions like ensuring fair pay and compensation reviews, evaluating performance fairly by having clear criteria and accountability, and facilitating equal and lengthy maternity and paternity leave policies like Sweden's to encourage fathers to take parental leave.
This document discusses women in leadership and provides characteristics of effective female leaders. It notes that countries cannot flourish if they deprive themselves of the talents of half their citizens. Effective leadership depends on a person's qualities, not their gender. Women leaders tend to be empathetic, focus on teamwork, be flexible and multitask. They are also good communicators. There is a need for more women leaders to promote gender equality and drive effective solutions. However, women leaders face challenges such as gender bias, difficulty trusting their own abilities, and impostor syndrome.
In almost all organizations, some leaders pave the way for their employees to do their best work, and others inadvertently make things much harder than they should be. Where do you fall on this continuum? Do you help or do you hinder? In all probability, it’s the latter. According to our research, your employees are more likely to view you as an obstacle to their effectiveness than as an enabler of it—and that holds true whether your organization is successful or stumbling.
- Management styles have evolved over the course of industrialization from focusing on physical work to prioritizing intellectual work and participative leadership.
- Studies show women tend to practice the transformational leadership style more which encourages employee performance, but male-dominated structures evaluate leadership in a masculine way.
- Companies with more women in top management perform better across nine organizational aspects and financially, according to a McKinsey study, but women remain underrepresented in management positions.
This document discusses biases that can negatively impact performance reviews. It identifies four main types of bias: rater bias, self-rater bias, structural bias, and calibration bias.
Rater bias occurs when a manager allows their own unconscious biases to influence their evaluation of an employee. A case study is presented where a manager, Wilhelm, may have let negative biases impact his rating of an employee, Stephanie, based on her personal situation.
The document advocates that managers must work to recognize their own potential biases in order to conduct objective reviews. Strategies are proposed for managers to question how their own experiences and perspectives could skew their evaluation of an employee.
Overall, the document argues that acknowledging and addressing biases
The CS Gender 3000: Women in Senior ManagementCredit Suisse
Greater gender diversity in companies' management improves their financial performance. A new Credit Suisse Research Institute study presents the financial evidence, looks at which regions and sectors show higher diversity levels and analyzes the obstacles to female participation in the workplace.
To download a copy of 'CS Gender 3000: Women in Senior Management', click here: http://bit.ly/1cWMUIM
The document analyzes data from Grant Thornton's annual research on the proportion of senior business leadership roles held by women globally. Some key findings:
- The proportion of senior roles held by women has increased only slightly over the past decade, from 19% to 22%, and the proportion of businesses with no female leaders has decreased from 38% to 32%.
- Eastern Europe leads in gender diversity, with 35% of senior roles held by women, while Japan remains at the bottom with only 8%.
- While some European countries have made progress through quotas, little change was seen in North America or the UK. Latin America has declined, with Brazil seeing a large drop.
- Asia-Pacific shows some
Authored by David F. Larcker and Brian Tayan, April 1, 2020, Stanford Closer Look Series
We examine the size, structure, and demographic makeup of the C-suite (the CEO and the direct reports to the CEO) in each of the Fortune 100 companies as of February 2020. We find that women (and, to a lesser extent, racially diverse executives) are underrepresented in C-suite positions that directly feed into future CEO and board roles. What accounts for this distribution?
The document summarizes research on the impact of women on corporate boards. It conducted interviews with 102 corporate directors from around the world to understand their perspectives. The directors believe that women contribute differently than men in ways that make boards more effective, such as bringing a diversity of perspectives and asking more questions. However, women still make up a small percentage of directors globally. Standard recruitment practices and a lack of effort to recruit women contribute to the slow pace of change.
The document discusses a survey of women in senior hedge fund operations roles. The key findings were:
1) Respondents believed that the greatest barriers for women in these roles were male attitudes, hedge fund culture, lack of flexibility, and lack of support for work-life balance.
2) Respondents cited the need for greater flexibility, such as remote work and flexible hours, but noted negative perceptions can come from using these policies.
3) Outsourcing operational tasks and using new technologies were seen as ways to improve work-life balance by reducing disruptions from reconciliations, reporting, and other demands.
White paper 2018 - 2019 LEE HECHT HARRISON ( LHH ) Elevating women in leader...Michal Hatina
Organizations need to pull several levers at the individual, cultural and organizational levels to make meaningful change. Women need to believe that leadership is a possible career path for them and engage in deliberate ongoing planning. Leaders need to actively champion female talent and create opportunities for women to grow and advance. Organizations must continue to support women in their development, offer meaningful formal practices and hold leaders accountable for creating an inclusive environment. When these initiatives are implemented effectively, movement will occur.
Women are seen to contribute differently and positively to boardroom discussions and effectiveness according to the directors interviewed. Women were said to bring more diversity in terms of gender, experience, and perspective. They were also noted as asking more questions to fuel fuller discussions, with a focus on human factors and implementation. Women were described as more collaborative and likely to listen before synthesizing arguments. Their presence was linked to better quality debates overall.
This document discusses the need for greater gender equality and female leadership in Europe. It notes that currently women make up a small percentage of board members in public companies across Europe. It also explores some of the barriers that prevent more women from advancing to leadership positions, such as gender stereotypes, lack of work-life balance policies, and an organizational culture that favors long work hours. The document argues that increasing female representation in leadership is important for competitiveness and sustainability, and that both female and male leadership styles are valuable and complementary. Overall, it advocates for change to promote greater gender equality and female advancement in European business.
(Full Text Version) The Leadership Machine: All the Research about Women's Ca...Janice Fraser
The document summarizes research on barriers that women face in advancing to leadership roles. It finds that women are less likely than men to receive stretch assignments that develop leadership skills, more likely to be placed in "glass cliff" roles with high risk of failure, and more likely to end up in staff rather than line roles. This limits their access to the most influential assignments and positions. The document also discusses how women receive less sponsorship from senior leaders, are excluded from influential networks, and face biases in talent reviews and day-to-day interactions that undermine their perceived competence. It provides strategies for women to overcome these barriers by cultivating relationships across groups and seeking sponsors and mentors.
The document discusses barriers that women face in achieving leadership positions. It notes that while women make up over 40% of managers in the US, they hold only 6% of top positions in Fortune 500 companies and 2% of CEO roles. Similarly, in the EU only 11% of top executives and 4% of CEO positions are held by women. Prejudices against women's leadership styles and responsibilities like family life contribute to what is described as a "glass ceiling". Suggested interventions include increasing awareness of biases, reducing long hours, using open recruitment, and helping women develop social networks to support their careers.
The document summarizes the key findings of two surveys on workplace stress and organizational environments. The first survey in 2000 found that while many women found the fast-paced tech industry exhilarating, two-thirds also experienced high stress from long hours and an inability to balance work and personal lives. A follow-up 2002 survey of both men and women found that over half felt workplace stress left them with insufficient energy for their personal lives. However, respondents who reported positive workplace characteristics like learning opportunities and collaboration were more likely to remain at their jobs. The article argues that companies should foster positive organizational environments through initiatives like collaborative work communities in order to retain top talent and gain a competitive advantage.
The Better Boards Report - Exploring the Impact of Women on BoardsCate Goethals
The directors interviewed believe that women contribute differently and positively to board effectiveness in several ways:
1. Women bring more diversity in terms of gender, age, experience, and perspective which leads to more robust debates.
2. Women are more likely to ask different types of questions that spur deeper discussion of issues like human impacts, ethics, and long-term implications.
3. Women adopt a more collaborative approach that fosters relationship building and encourages contributions from all directors.
The document summarizes key findings from a study conducted by Korn Ferry on 57 current and former female CEOs from Fortune 1000 companies and similar sized organizations. The study analyzed interviews with the CEOs and psychometric assessments of many to understand common attributes, career paths, and experiences that helped them rise to the CEO role. Some of the main findings included that few planned to be CEOs, many had STEM backgrounds, they took various career paths to get to the top, sought out challenges, and were motivated by purpose and culture.
In an industry in which nearly 80 percent of the workforce is female, why are there still pay and opportunity gaps and what is the event industry doing about it?
McKinsey Global Survey results: Moving mind-sets on gender diversity: To ens...Lucia Predolin
Moving mind-sets on gender diversity: McKinsey Global Survey results
To ensure that corporate culture supports—not hinders—the ability of women to reach top management, companies must address mind-sets and develop a more inclusive, holistic diversity agenda.
Women face barriers to advancement and unequal treatment in the workplace according to a study of over 130 companies and 34,000 employees. Women are less likely to be promoted or hired externally, especially to senior roles. As a result, few women reach the senior-most levels. Women also receive less access to opportunities, senior leaders, developmental assignments, and feedback. They are more likely to be penalized for negotiating promotions. Fewer women than men aspire to top leadership roles, and women have less confidence in achieving those roles. Women of color face even greater challenges and are the most underrepresented group. Overall, the study finds women experience disadvantages and unequal treatment compared to men throughout their careers.
The document discusses the lack of gender diversity in senior leadership roles in Canadian corporations despite 25 years of focus on advancing women. While women make up 48% of the workforce, only 36.5% of lower managers, less than 18% of top executives, less than 14% of boards, and 6% of CEOs are women. This lack of diversity represents a competitive disadvantage as research shows the most successful companies have diverse leadership that incorporates multiple perspectives. The authors argue that true change requires leadership that values diversity and holds teams accountable through transparent processes rather than just counting women or focusing on tactics. Leaders must uncover and address underlying biases to create lasting cultural change at all levels of an organization.
1) The document discusses strategies for harnessing female talent in organizations. It notes that traditional talent management systems are not advancing women into leadership positions.
2) It recommends that companies recognize women as a strategic resource and address unconscious biases that impact women's career trajectories. Senior leaders must become champions for advancing women.
3) Companies that overhaul their approaches to gender diversity and inclusion through clear leadership vision, modeling inclusive behaviors, and holding leaders accountable can realize increased profits by better utilizing their entire workforce.
- Management styles have evolved over the course of industrialization from focusing on physical work to prioritizing intellectual work and participative leadership.
- Studies show women tend to practice the transformational leadership style more which encourages employee performance, but male-dominated structures evaluate leadership in a masculine way.
- Companies with more women in top management perform better across nine organizational aspects and financially, according to a McKinsey study, but women remain underrepresented in management positions.
This document discusses biases that can negatively impact performance reviews. It identifies four main types of bias: rater bias, self-rater bias, structural bias, and calibration bias.
Rater bias occurs when a manager allows their own unconscious biases to influence their evaluation of an employee. A case study is presented where a manager, Wilhelm, may have let negative biases impact his rating of an employee, Stephanie, based on her personal situation.
The document advocates that managers must work to recognize their own potential biases in order to conduct objective reviews. Strategies are proposed for managers to question how their own experiences and perspectives could skew their evaluation of an employee.
Overall, the document argues that acknowledging and addressing biases
The CS Gender 3000: Women in Senior ManagementCredit Suisse
Greater gender diversity in companies' management improves their financial performance. A new Credit Suisse Research Institute study presents the financial evidence, looks at which regions and sectors show higher diversity levels and analyzes the obstacles to female participation in the workplace.
To download a copy of 'CS Gender 3000: Women in Senior Management', click here: http://bit.ly/1cWMUIM
The document analyzes data from Grant Thornton's annual research on the proportion of senior business leadership roles held by women globally. Some key findings:
- The proportion of senior roles held by women has increased only slightly over the past decade, from 19% to 22%, and the proportion of businesses with no female leaders has decreased from 38% to 32%.
- Eastern Europe leads in gender diversity, with 35% of senior roles held by women, while Japan remains at the bottom with only 8%.
- While some European countries have made progress through quotas, little change was seen in North America or the UK. Latin America has declined, with Brazil seeing a large drop.
- Asia-Pacific shows some
Authored by David F. Larcker and Brian Tayan, April 1, 2020, Stanford Closer Look Series
We examine the size, structure, and demographic makeup of the C-suite (the CEO and the direct reports to the CEO) in each of the Fortune 100 companies as of February 2020. We find that women (and, to a lesser extent, racially diverse executives) are underrepresented in C-suite positions that directly feed into future CEO and board roles. What accounts for this distribution?
The document summarizes research on the impact of women on corporate boards. It conducted interviews with 102 corporate directors from around the world to understand their perspectives. The directors believe that women contribute differently than men in ways that make boards more effective, such as bringing a diversity of perspectives and asking more questions. However, women still make up a small percentage of directors globally. Standard recruitment practices and a lack of effort to recruit women contribute to the slow pace of change.
The document discusses a survey of women in senior hedge fund operations roles. The key findings were:
1) Respondents believed that the greatest barriers for women in these roles were male attitudes, hedge fund culture, lack of flexibility, and lack of support for work-life balance.
2) Respondents cited the need for greater flexibility, such as remote work and flexible hours, but noted negative perceptions can come from using these policies.
3) Outsourcing operational tasks and using new technologies were seen as ways to improve work-life balance by reducing disruptions from reconciliations, reporting, and other demands.
White paper 2018 - 2019 LEE HECHT HARRISON ( LHH ) Elevating women in leader...Michal Hatina
Organizations need to pull several levers at the individual, cultural and organizational levels to make meaningful change. Women need to believe that leadership is a possible career path for them and engage in deliberate ongoing planning. Leaders need to actively champion female talent and create opportunities for women to grow and advance. Organizations must continue to support women in their development, offer meaningful formal practices and hold leaders accountable for creating an inclusive environment. When these initiatives are implemented effectively, movement will occur.
Women are seen to contribute differently and positively to boardroom discussions and effectiveness according to the directors interviewed. Women were said to bring more diversity in terms of gender, experience, and perspective. They were also noted as asking more questions to fuel fuller discussions, with a focus on human factors and implementation. Women were described as more collaborative and likely to listen before synthesizing arguments. Their presence was linked to better quality debates overall.
This document discusses the need for greater gender equality and female leadership in Europe. It notes that currently women make up a small percentage of board members in public companies across Europe. It also explores some of the barriers that prevent more women from advancing to leadership positions, such as gender stereotypes, lack of work-life balance policies, and an organizational culture that favors long work hours. The document argues that increasing female representation in leadership is important for competitiveness and sustainability, and that both female and male leadership styles are valuable and complementary. Overall, it advocates for change to promote greater gender equality and female advancement in European business.
(Full Text Version) The Leadership Machine: All the Research about Women's Ca...Janice Fraser
The document summarizes research on barriers that women face in advancing to leadership roles. It finds that women are less likely than men to receive stretch assignments that develop leadership skills, more likely to be placed in "glass cliff" roles with high risk of failure, and more likely to end up in staff rather than line roles. This limits their access to the most influential assignments and positions. The document also discusses how women receive less sponsorship from senior leaders, are excluded from influential networks, and face biases in talent reviews and day-to-day interactions that undermine their perceived competence. It provides strategies for women to overcome these barriers by cultivating relationships across groups and seeking sponsors and mentors.
The document discusses barriers that women face in achieving leadership positions. It notes that while women make up over 40% of managers in the US, they hold only 6% of top positions in Fortune 500 companies and 2% of CEO roles. Similarly, in the EU only 11% of top executives and 4% of CEO positions are held by women. Prejudices against women's leadership styles and responsibilities like family life contribute to what is described as a "glass ceiling". Suggested interventions include increasing awareness of biases, reducing long hours, using open recruitment, and helping women develop social networks to support their careers.
The document summarizes the key findings of two surveys on workplace stress and organizational environments. The first survey in 2000 found that while many women found the fast-paced tech industry exhilarating, two-thirds also experienced high stress from long hours and an inability to balance work and personal lives. A follow-up 2002 survey of both men and women found that over half felt workplace stress left them with insufficient energy for their personal lives. However, respondents who reported positive workplace characteristics like learning opportunities and collaboration were more likely to remain at their jobs. The article argues that companies should foster positive organizational environments through initiatives like collaborative work communities in order to retain top talent and gain a competitive advantage.
The Better Boards Report - Exploring the Impact of Women on BoardsCate Goethals
The directors interviewed believe that women contribute differently and positively to board effectiveness in several ways:
1. Women bring more diversity in terms of gender, age, experience, and perspective which leads to more robust debates.
2. Women are more likely to ask different types of questions that spur deeper discussion of issues like human impacts, ethics, and long-term implications.
3. Women adopt a more collaborative approach that fosters relationship building and encourages contributions from all directors.
The document summarizes key findings from a study conducted by Korn Ferry on 57 current and former female CEOs from Fortune 1000 companies and similar sized organizations. The study analyzed interviews with the CEOs and psychometric assessments of many to understand common attributes, career paths, and experiences that helped them rise to the CEO role. Some of the main findings included that few planned to be CEOs, many had STEM backgrounds, they took various career paths to get to the top, sought out challenges, and were motivated by purpose and culture.
In an industry in which nearly 80 percent of the workforce is female, why are there still pay and opportunity gaps and what is the event industry doing about it?
McKinsey Global Survey results: Moving mind-sets on gender diversity: To ens...Lucia Predolin
Moving mind-sets on gender diversity: McKinsey Global Survey results
To ensure that corporate culture supports—not hinders—the ability of women to reach top management, companies must address mind-sets and develop a more inclusive, holistic diversity agenda.
Women face barriers to advancement and unequal treatment in the workplace according to a study of over 130 companies and 34,000 employees. Women are less likely to be promoted or hired externally, especially to senior roles. As a result, few women reach the senior-most levels. Women also receive less access to opportunities, senior leaders, developmental assignments, and feedback. They are more likely to be penalized for negotiating promotions. Fewer women than men aspire to top leadership roles, and women have less confidence in achieving those roles. Women of color face even greater challenges and are the most underrepresented group. Overall, the study finds women experience disadvantages and unequal treatment compared to men throughout their careers.
The document discusses the lack of gender diversity in senior leadership roles in Canadian corporations despite 25 years of focus on advancing women. While women make up 48% of the workforce, only 36.5% of lower managers, less than 18% of top executives, less than 14% of boards, and 6% of CEOs are women. This lack of diversity represents a competitive disadvantage as research shows the most successful companies have diverse leadership that incorporates multiple perspectives. The authors argue that true change requires leadership that values diversity and holds teams accountable through transparent processes rather than just counting women or focusing on tactics. Leaders must uncover and address underlying biases to create lasting cultural change at all levels of an organization.
1) The document discusses strategies for harnessing female talent in organizations. It notes that traditional talent management systems are not advancing women into leadership positions.
2) It recommends that companies recognize women as a strategic resource and address unconscious biases that impact women's career trajectories. Senior leaders must become champions for advancing women.
3) Companies that overhaul their approaches to gender diversity and inclusion through clear leadership vision, modeling inclusive behaviors, and holding leaders accountable can realize increased profits by better utilizing their entire workforce.
Women in the Workplace is a comprehensive study of the state of women in corporate America published by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company. Learn more at womeninthworkplace.com
The document discusses women in leadership roles and the barriers they face. While women have made progress, they remain underrepresented in leadership. Only 34% of Indian businesses surveyed have women leaders. Studies show women can make better leaders, yet biases and lack of support hold them back. To increase women leaders, companies must create an inclusive culture with flexible work, childcare support, and mentorship. Society must also challenge gender stereotypes and norms that limit women's opportunities.
Die neue Studie “The Female CEO Reputation Premium? Differences & Similarities“ von Weber Shandwick und KRC Research untersucht, wie Führungskräfte weibliche und männliche CEOs wahrnehmen. Obwohl die Unternehmensreputation unabhängig vom Geschlecht des CEOs ist, finden sich dennoch Unterschiede in der Führungskompetenz männlicher und weiblicher CEOs. Weibliche Führungskräfte bleiben daher eher in Unternehmen mit weiblichen CEOs als mit männlichen…
Top 7 Reasons why we need more women in leadership roles.pdfCIOWomenMagazine
Here are the Top 7 Reasons why we need more women in leadership roles ; 1. Innovative revolutionary ideas will be prioritized. 2. Women have more empathy. 3. Women communicate more effectively than males. 4. Women are better at handling emergencies. 5. Female executives can contribute to closing the gender wage gap. 6. Women are excellent mentors. 7. Women provide new insights.
What are the primary barriers to womens leadership? 7 Best Points | CIO Women...CIOWomenMagazine
Here Are 7 Best Points What are the primary barriers to womens leadership?; These are the primary barriers to womens leadership. SOLUTIONS TO LEADERSHIP BARRIERS, Overcoming Structural Obstacles,
Millennial Women and Workplace Transformation: A PreparedU Infographic StorybookBentley University
Bentley University's PreparedU Project examines the unique challenges and opportunities facing millennial women in the 21st Century workforce. How can they be prepared for success? What roles do parents, companies, mentors, higher education institutions, and millennial women themselves need to play? Drawing on the results of the PreparedU survey, this infographic storybook moves past the problems to highlight solutions grounded in data and in the personal stories of women leaders at all stages of their careers. Learn more at www.bentley.edu/prepared and follow the conversation on Twitter with #PrepUWIB.
Women as Mentors Does She or Doesn’t She? A Global Study of Businesswomen and...Meghan Daily
In 2012, there were no more women in top leadership positions at Fortune 500 companies than in 2011.
There are a few who successfully make it to the top of their field, but it is a long, hard climb. Among them are familiar names like Meg Whitman, Oprah Winfrey, Indra Nooyi, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
These are all very different women—from different backgrounds, with different education and careers spanning different industries. What they do have in common is the role that mentoring played in helping them along the way.
Women now make up half of managerial positions, yet comprise only 12.5% of corporate officers and 6.2% of top leadership. Studies show that women are rated equally or higher than men on leadership skills, challenging the idea that women lack skills for leadership roles. However, a paradox exists - while women succeed in applying leadership skills, they have less success being promoted. This is partly due to leadership being implicitly defined by masculine norms and gender biases shaping which skills are valued for men and women. For women to advance, they must build advocacy, understand gender norms, make skills visible, and challenge assumptions constructively.
This document discusses the lack of gender diversity in leadership positions in Malaysia. It finds that while women make up approximately 60% of university graduates, they hold only 27% of management roles and 5% of CEO positions in Malaysian companies. Similarly, in government, women hold only 34% of decision-making roles in the public service and 11% of parliamentary seats. The document argues that greater gender diversity in leadership leads to better organizational performance and governance. However, women face barriers such as masculine organizational cultures, social and cultural norms, and a lack of role models. To address this, organizations, women, and men must work together to remove these barriers through recognition of the issues, setting numerical diversity targets, and holding leaders accountable.
This document discusses women's empowerment and the challenges women face in achieving leadership positions. It proposes a new model to help more women succeed called the 3I model, which focuses on women imbibing lessons from experiences, innovating and applying new ideas, and inspiring others. It also discusses the EMI model which looks at how ready families, societies, and organizations are to support women. Overall the document argues that while progress has been made, more needs to be done to remove barriers and create environments where women can fully utilize their strengths to become leaders.
This document discusses women's empowerment and the challenges women face in achieving leadership positions. It proposes a new model to help more women succeed called the 3I model, which focuses on women imbibing lessons from experiences, innovating and applying new ideas, and inspiring others. It also discusses the EMI model which looks at how ready families (emotional quotient), societies (motivation quotient), and organizations (innovation quotient) are to support women leaders. Overall the document aims to analyze barriers facing women and provide a framework to help more women develop leadership skills and attain leadership roles.
The document discusses women in leadership roles. It notes that women are increasingly entering leadership positions that were traditionally dominated by men. It discusses characteristics of women's leadership styles, such as transformational leadership and promoting cooperation. It also examines barriers faced by women leaders, such as the glass ceiling and gender disparity. The document outlines some enablers to promoting women's leadership, like education and equal opportunity policies. It provides examples of prominent women leaders, such as Indra Nooyi, Arundhati Bhattacharya, Oprah Winfrey, and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw.
This document discusses women in leadership positions and the obstacles they face. It notes that women hold only 2.2% of CEO positions and 15% of board seats at Fortune 500 companies, yet companies with more women leaders perform better. Women face stereotypes that portray them as less suitable for leadership. They also face second generation biases, double binds, the glass ceiling, lack of support systems, and expectancy effects. The document recommends that women seek profit/loss experience, consistently exceed expectations, and develop self-aware authentic leadership styles to help overcome obstacles.
[Report] Gender Equality in the executive ranks a paradox – the journey to 2030Weber Shandwick Korea
Several factors are simultaneously pushing gender equality in executive ranks forward and pulling it back, creating a paradox. Media attention to the issue has increased significantly in recent years and is pushing for more equality. However, many companies still lack formal goals and plans to achieve gender parity at senior levels, and doubts about women's qualifications are holding progress back. Overall, a complex dynamic of forces that could potentially create tipping points was identified, but action is needed by companies to actually achieve equality in the C-suite by 2030 as most executives expect.
Similar to Changing Companies Minds About Women (20)
Assume for a moment…
1. You have a Royal Enfield Bullet (a different one, I know you love the current one if you own a bullet)
2. You have to change the design of text on the petrol tank
3. You cannot use the text design that exists
Of the following designs, which one would you use?
This presentation outlines the tools usually used to influence customers online. The slides outline the stages, and the important things to bear in mind when your custiomer passes through them. It shows a combination of tools/features on your site, and other marketing tools which can be used to influence.
Intranet Things To Bear In Mind In PlanningSridutt YS
This document tries to outline some of the chunks of information that you need to outline before you start creating an intranet. These chunks of information will also allow organizing work flows.
What to decide before going in for an intranetSridutt YS
A paper on the decisions that you need to make while planning to implement an intranet. There maybe more factors to bear in mind, however, this paper covers the most basic questions that you need to answer.
The document discusses how consumers are more focused on their own needs and interests rather than paying attention to advertisements. It notes that consumers will look online for product information and reviews from friends rather than watching TV ads or reading newspaper ads. The document suggests that for marketing to be effective, it needs to directly engage consumers and address their individual wants and needs.
Lets look at what Social media marketing is, and why it's important. What exactly are the results of doing or not doing it? how can a customer help or hurt you on his own, among all the buyers?
1. S E P T E M B E R 2 0 11
o r g a n i z a t i o n p r a c t i c e
Changing
companies’ minds
about women
Joanna Barsh and Lareina Yee
Leaders who are serious about getting more women
into senior management need a hard-edged approach to
overcome the invisible barriers holding them back.
The problem
Your company has trouble retaining
promising women or promoting them
into top jobs. Structural changes,
such as “flextime,” aren’t helping enough;
they do little to address the invisible
but powerful beliefs, held by many man-
agers, that subtly, and unintentionally,
hamper women’s careers.
Why it matters
A bevy of research highlights strong
statistical correlations among large num-
bers of senior women, financial per-
formance, and organizational health. The
bottom line: companies gain hard
business benefits from a more diverse
senior team.
What to do about it
There are no sure answers yet. But
the experience of companies making
progress suggests that injecting greater
rigor into people processes—more
data, thoughtful targets that push
women into the consideration set for
key roles, a company-specific business
case for women, better sponsorship
approaches—can make a difference.
2. 2
Despite significant corporate commitment to the advance-
ment of women’s careers, progress appears to have stalled. The
percentage of women on boards and senior-executive teams remains
stuck at around 15 percent in many countries, and just 3 percent
of Fortune 500 CEOs are women.
The last generation of workplace innovations—policies to support
women with young children, networks to help women navigate
their careers, formal sponsorship programs to ensure professional
development—broke down structural barriers holding women back.
The next frontier is toppling invisible barriers: mind-sets widely held
by managers, men and women alike, that are rarely acknowledged
but block the way.
When senior leaders commit themselves to gender diversity, they really
mean it—but in the heat of the moment, deeply entrenched beliefs
cause old forms of behavior to resurface. All too often in our experience,
executives perceive women as a greater risk for senior positions, fail
to give women tough feedback that would help them grow, or hesitate
to offer working mothers opportunities that come with more travel
and stress. Not surprisingly, a survey we conducted earlier this year indi-
cated that although a majority of women who make it to senior roles
have a real desire to lead, few think they have meaningful support to
do so, and even fewer think they’re in line to move up.
Our ideas for breaking this cycle are directional, not definitive. They
rest on our experience in the trenches with senior executives, on
discussions with 30 diversity experts, and on the reflections of leaders
we’ve interviewed at companies that have been on this journey for
years. These companies include Pitney Bowes, 38 percent of whose vice
presidents are women; Shell, where more than a quarter of all
supervisors and professional staff worldwide are women; and Time
Warner, where more than 40 percent of the senior executives in its
operating divisions are women and where the share of women in senior
roles has jumped 30 percent in the past six years. Great progress,
but even these three companies are the first to admit how much further
they have to go.
Their collective experience suggests to us that real progress requires
systemwide change driven by a hard-edged approach, including targets
ensuring that women are at least considered for advancement, the
rigorous application of data in performance dialogues to overcome prob-
3. 3
lematic mind-sets, and genuine sponsorship. Committed senior
leaders are of course central to such efforts, which can take many
years. We hope our suggestions, and the real-life examples that illus-
trate them, will stir up your thinking about how to confront the
silent but potent beliefs that probably are undermining women in your
organization right now.
Invisible, unconscious, and in the way
For evidence of the problem, look no further than the blocked, leaky
corporate-talent pipeline: women account for roughly 53 percent
of entry-level professional employees in the largest US industrial corpo-
rations, our research shows.1 But according to Catalyst, a leading advo-
cacy group for women, they hold only 37 percent of middle-management
positions, 28 percent of vice-president and senior-managerial roles,
and 14 percent of seats on executive committees. McKinsey research
shows similar numbers for women on executive committees outside
the United States—from a high of 17 percent in Sweden to just 2 percent
in Germany and India.2 Our analysis further reveals that at every
step along the US pipeline, the odds of advancement for men are about
twice those for women. And nearly four times as many men as women
at large companies make the jump from the executive committee
to CEO.3
To understand what’s going on, look to the words that appeared
most frequently in open-ended responses to our recent survey as expla-
nations for poor retention and promotion of women: “politics,”
“management,” “the company,” “people,” and “the organization.” These
forces manifest themselves in myriad ways. We’ve all heard endless
variations on the mind-sets that set women up for failure:
“She’s too aggressive” (or “too passive”). Whether a woman is perceived
as aggressive or passive, that’s different from the judgment a man
1 The entry-level figure is from our April 2011 report, Unlocking the full potential of women
in the US economy. Read an executive summary or download the full report on the
McKinsey & Company Web site.
2 The full report, Women at the top of corporations: Making it happen, part of McKinsey
& Company’s Women Matter 2010 series, is available on the McKinsey & Company
Web site. The differences among countries reflect significant variance in their starting
points and cultural norms—which, for example, can make it difficult for a woman to
outearn her husband.
3 Part of the reason is that almost twice as many executive-level women as men (60 percent
versus 35 percent) occupy staff roles that are less likely to lead to the top job.
4. 4
would face, and she often doesn’t receive the coaching a man would to
help her assimilate into the company’s culture.
“I don’t want to tell Bob he didn’t get that job.” There’s a limited pool
of senior positions, and leaders are not comfortable telling protégés
they have groomed for years that someone else is getting the spot.
“I don’t know how to talk to or mentor her.” Men tend to sponsor other
men, find it harder to build relationships with people when they share
fewer common interests, and sometimes are nervous about forging
a close relationship that could seem inappropriate.
“If I put a woman in that role and she fails, it’ll set back all women.”
Mind-sets like this one inadvertently treat men as individuals and
women as representative of their whole gender.
“A woman isn’t right for that role.” Long-held stereotypes about the
relative strengths of men and women survive, at least in vestigial form.
In the face of these silent but potent forces, it’s little wonder the careers
of many promising women die on the vine. Slowly but surely—despite
the best intentions of HR departments and individual executives—the
experience of women starts to diverge from that of their male peers:
Less opportunity for professional growth. Unintended performance bias
and softer feedback. Fewer sponsors offering fewer opportunities and
less advocacy. Lowered ambition. Greater satisfaction with staying put.
Attrition and a fresh start at a different company.4
A word about the role women play in this vicious cycle: they start out
ambitious. Most young women, like young men, hope to move to the next
level, and women who reach more senior levels retain that ambition
(exhibit). That said, women also turn down advancement opportunities
for varied reasons, ranging from commitments outside work to risk
aversion for positions that demand new skills to a desire to stay put in
roles that provide personal meaning. In addition, mothers with more
than one child are much more satisfied with staying put, our survey
shows, though they remain highly confident about their performance
and abilities.
Subtle changes in these attitudes toward advancement are another
powerful benefit of changing how companies “think about women
4Our data show that like the men we surveyed, most women who leave a job move to another
rather than exit the workforce.
5. Q4 2011
Mind-sets
5
Exhibit 1 of 1
Like their male counterparts, most young women want to move up.
Many of those who advance retain that ambition.
Desire to move to the next level, % who agree or strongly agree
Young Young Women of all ages
men women
98
92
79 83
Aged 24–34 In early stage In early to middle
of career1 management
1 Entry-level, nonmanagement roles; excludes administrative, maintenance, or other support services.
Source: Feb 2011 McKinsey survey of 1,000 women and 525 men currently working in large corporations or professional-
services firms; McKinsey analysis
around here.” By addressing the mind-sets holding women back,
corporate leaders can reshape the talent pipeline and its odds, increasing
the number of women role models at the top and, in turn, making
it likelier that more women will retain their ambition.
Changing companies’ minds
No program or initiative can be the “silver bullet” to advance women into
senior roles. Rather, the whole organization must change. That’s hard
work; it will take years and, potentially, even a generational transition.
This goal requires a serious commitment from busy leaders, whose
natural tendency is to discuss the issue, create a plan, and hand it off
to HR. And it requires real engagement up and down the line,
including engagement from women.
To make these changes, corporate leaders need to see them as no less
important than a major strategic or operational challenge, such as
falling market share or changing the corporate cost structure. And like
efforts to address those challenges, efforts to advance women can’t
just be add-on programs. They must be integrated into the organization’s
daily work through goals, performance monitoring, processes that
force tough conversations, and serious skill building.
6. 6
Undertaking such a transformation in difficult economic times, when
there are fewer opportunities to go around, may seem like a recipe
for failure. But the fact is that these changes never will be easy and that
a few companies, including those we focus on below (Pitney Bowes,
Shell, and Time Warner), have managed to stay on course through both
good times and bad.
Make it personal
Make no mistake: as a senior executive, you are already inf luencing
your company’s approach. If you’re not paying much attention to
the issue of women’s advancement, you’re ensuring that things won’t
change. As Shell’s executive vice president of global supply and
distribution, Peggy Montana, says, “When you look at corporate mind-
sets, change starts at the top. I haven’t seen change in diversity start
from middle management.”
And if you’re personally committed, you can catalyze change that will
improve not only your company’s treatment of women but also, in
all likelihood, its business results. 5 In the early 1980s, Pitney Bowes
CEO George Harvey learned that the most productive newly hired
salespeople were women, many of whom had previously been school-
teachers. Curious to know the explanation, he visited sales offices
late in the day and discovered women “writing personal notes to their
customers with a lot of conviction”—a practice that, further inquiry
revealed, seemed to be driving sales.
According to Pitney Bowes executive vice president Johnna Torsone,
Harvey’s recognition of the value of these committed women touched
off a wave of change. Torsone says Harvey became “determined to
open up an environment that allowed people to come in who hadn’t had
a true opportunity on a level playing field.” They would be motivated,
he reasoned, and their success would “increase the competitive environ-
ment for the men and for everybody else in the organization.” The
end result, Torsone explains, “was an HR strategy based on business.”
5For evidence of the strong correlation between women at the top and stronger financial
performance, see Georges Desvaux, Sandrine Devillard-Hoellinger, and Mary C. Meaney, “A
business case for women,” mckinseyquarterly.com, September 2008.
7. 7
Make no mistake: as a senior executive,
you are already influencing your company’s
approach. If you’re not paying attention
to the issue of women’s advancement, you’re
ensuring that things won’t change.
This is a powerful idea that resonates with our experience: strong as
the general business case for women is, companies are more likely to
transform mind-sets if they build their own case. That case should
be grounded in the impact women are having at your own organization—
whether hard business results or indirect benefits, such as building
better teams. Harvey’s commitment also highlights the importance of
having leaders start this journey by changing their own mind-sets:
all transformations start with the self; leaders influence everyone else
in the organization through their attitudes and actions.6
Change the conversation
It’s one thing for executives to commit themselves to change. It’s another
to actually make progress. A starting point is making sure enough
women are being considered for advancement, to boost the odds that
some will get through. Broadening the conversation ensures that
high-talent women aren’t “underexposed,” compared with men, as senior
executives talk through promotion possibilities. While putting one
woman on the promotion slate will not change the discussion, focusing
on metrics will. And though most companies are loath to consider
quotas, they’re far from the only way to introduce a hard edge to the
ongoing talent dialogue.
6For more on the role of senior leaders in catalyzing change, see Joanna Barsh, Josephine
Mogelof, and Caroline Webb, “How centered leaders achieve extraordinary results,”
mckinseyquarterly.com, October 2008; and Carolyn B. Aiken and Scott P. Keller, “The CEO’s
role in leading transformation,” mckinseyquarterly.com, February 2007.
8. 8
Pitney Bowes, for example, focused on the front end. For a number of
years, every list of candidates for promotion there had to include 35 per-
cent women and 15 percent minorities, equal to their representation
in the workforce at the time. Harvey chose this approach because “he
felt that white men had been disproportionately advantaged and had
gotten complacent,” Torsone explains.
Shell focused on outcomes, setting a long-term target for women at the
top: currently, 20 percent of the company’s senior executives world-
wide. So far, women hold just over 15 percent of those positions, up from
10 percent in 2005. The company includes an assessment of progress
against this target in all senior executives’ reviews and presents the over-
all results in its annual report.
At Time Warner, chief diversity officer Lisa Quiroz explains that each
division is required to have a succession plan and a robust promo-
tion slate for its top layers of management. The CEO and the HR chief
review the plans and slates every year for diversity, among other cri-
teria. This review also includes specific discussions about how individual
women are being prepared for their next role, including rotation
among the company’s divisions and between staff and line roles. For
more than a decade, a noticeable part of each divisional CEO’s bonus
has depended on meeting the company’s expectations for diversity.
Will men raise concerns? Maybe. They did early on at Pitney Bowes,
despite support for diversity from the top. “George [Harvey],” Torsone
explains, “brought challenge and passion to the focus, but it felt alien-
ating to the men. That was not the intention, and so it had to evolve.
When I came in, we broadened our efforts to upgrade talent devel-
opment, making it better for everyone. We still see resistance from men
occasionally, but the overall culture changed, and those attitudes are
really disappearing.”
Any top-down talent review process
conducted primarily by senior men can
unintentionally reinforce the status
quo. Bottom-up survey data can help shake
things up.
9. 9
And what about women? Shell’s Montana says her response to fears from
women that they’re getting jobs just because of their gender is, “Get
over it. I’ve never seen a selection panel pick somebody on the basis of,
‘She’s not really qualified, but we need a female in this job.’ It just
doesn’t happen. We’re running a business, and we’re not taking undue
risks. It’s never going to be a risk-free exercise. But neither is it for
the rest of the population.”
Use data to create transparency and challenge
entrenched mind-sets
Most companies collect some data on diversity. Yet few track the
results in enough detail to help executives gain a real understanding
of what’s going on in their own departments or business units and
how their mind-sets may be contributing. Furthermore, many compa-
nies track data only at the executive level, not down to the front line.
They therefore have no idea what their pipeline really looks like, let alone
how to improve it. PepsiCo, by contrast, tracks the progress of women
at all levels and shares the results throughout its talent review processes.
As a result, the full pipeline of female talent—not just the senior ranks,
which are much harder to influence rapidly—is highly visible.
When the findings are impossible to overlook, leaders can use them to
make the invisible mind-sets visible and then manage these mind-
sets to remove their influence. Pitney Bowes carefully rates and scores
each division’s diversity plan and, like Time Warner, includes in
its bonus decisions an executive’s success in promoting diversity. Further-
more, Torsone says, from the time this process was started, during
the 1980s, the CEO “would talk about it at every operating and manage-
ment review.”
Of course, any top-down talent review process conducted primarily
by senior men can unintentionally reinforce the status quo. Bottom-up
survey data can help shake things up, however. Each year, Shell asks
all employees to answer a survey with 61 questions, ranging from how
they like working at the company to whether they feel able to speak
up freely. The company uses the results from five of these questions to
measure the inclusiveness of the work culture and how it changes
year to year. Shell also analyzes the responses of groups such as men and
women, different nationalities, and different tenures to see whether
their experiences diverge.
One way the company uses the results is to measure the effectiveness of
supervisors in creating an environment where everyone feels engaged
10. 10
and able to excel. The results flag outliers: parts of the organization
where everyone can thrive and those areas where some or all employees
feel stymied (those are addressed by specific follow-up plans). Over
the years, Shell has seen the gap between men’s and women’s experiences
shrink—a positive trend. There’s still the question of whether gender-
based attitudes influence responses to surveys like these. In our experi-
ence and in Shell’s, though, they are much better than nothing.
Rethink genuine sponsorship for women
For men and women alike, effective sponsors can make careers through
ongoing, in-the-moment support. Sometimes that means supporting
women in stretch roles. In the words of a female executive at a financial-
services firm, “The head of the business offered me a big promotion
that entailed a move, but then he said, ‘We’re going to make 100 percent
sure that you don’t fail. We have your back, so take this promotion.’
He called the executive who would become my new boss to extract that
commitment, and that made it a lot easier for me to take on this
scary, big step.”
At other times, the best thing a sponsor can do is offer tough love. Shell’s
Montana says she has “held some people back from the next level
until they had more of an operational P&L role. I felt that if they didn’t
have it, at least in a reasonably early time in their career, it would
hold them back once they had the opportunity for more senior levels.”
Clear as the benefits are, so are the challenges of sponsorship for
women: many male executives feel more comfortable sponsoring men
or simply don’t know how to be effective sponsors for women. Take
one common kind of sponsor we’ve met in dozens of workshops—the
“relentless coach” who pushes the sponsoree to the breaking point.
While many men recall this grueling experience with gratitude and even
affection for the sponsor, it doesn’t work well for many women, espe-
cially those who carry the burden of responsibility at home in addition
to their work. Another valuable, but often controversial, kind of
sponsor is what we call the “devil’s advocate.” We all value being chal-
lenged to make our work better, but many women find that constant
questioning drains their confidence and energy. With self-awareness
and training, sponsors can learn to adapt their styles to the individ-
ual and situation at hand.
Effective sponsors are deeply, personally engaged, down to the level
of small details, whose importance adds up. Time Warner’s Quiroz
describes true sponsorship as “someone being planful about what you