Women Leaders At Work: Time To Celebrate?

The percentage of women in leadership positions continues to be abysmal. The change is far too slow to warrant celebrations.

By Unmana Datta

Intel India, Lockheed Martin, IBM, Yahoo: all appointed women heads of business this year.

– There was a media furore over the fact that Marissa Mayer was pregnant when she came to Yahoo. A CEO who’s pregnant – who had ever heard of that?

– IBM is a 100-year-old company, and Ginni Rometty is its first woman CEO.

– Globally, women are in one-fifth of senior management positions.

– 10% of businesses have female CEOs.

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– 4% of Fortune 1000 CEOs are women – and that’s still a record high.

– 36% of U.S. companies have all-male boards of directors.

– In India, a number from last year says 5.3% of directors are women.

Those numbers are way too low, and the visibility of a few women leaders does not change that fact.

How many of your employers had a woman at the helm? For me the answer is none (and I’ve worked in four companies) except right now, since I started my own business.

Why do we need more women leaders in business?

Businesses with gender diversity in leadership are more successful.

One research found that 1.3% of start-ups have women founders and 6.5% have women CEOs. Yet the research also found that companies with female leaders are more likely to be successful.

And it’s not just start-ups that are more successful with more diversity in senior management. Big public companies with women on their boards outperformed companies with all-male boards by 26% in six years.

Working women all along the career ladder find it easier.

When young women employees see that all the senior leaders in the company are men, that sends a message. When her boss and her boss’s boss and her colleague’s boss are all men, it takes a strong woman to feel she can be boss too. So having fewer women leaders leads to… having fewer women leaders.

Women are pushed out of the workforce because the existing structure is so masculine.

I’ve heard many stories of sexism in the workplace (and have a few of my own to tell). All of us know women who’ve struggled to juggle work and motherhood. At what point does a professional woman decide that this is just not worth it? That being a stay-at-home mom, or a freelancer, or a business-owner, would be much easier and less stressful?

I have tremendous admiration for entrepreneurs, but there’s a difference between starting a business because it’s your passion and starting one because working in a masculine environment is too stressful.

Mostly-male workplaces tend to foster narrow perspectives.

After the financial crisis, there was a lot of discussion over how the masculine, competitive culture of Wall Street had contributed to the crisis. Recent research indicated how the participation of women led to more generous decisions. I don’t believe women are intrinsically better than men (which in itself is a sexist point of view) but a workplace with more diversity tends to be a workplace where different perspectives are encouraged.

How many workplaces in India offer day-care facilities? How many employers offer flexible hours? Most employers in India seem to assume everyone (including the women!) has a stay-at-home wife who takes care of the children and household issues.

But one token woman isn’t enough to bring fresh perspective.

Women leaders of business are often heard emphasizing that their gender has nothing to do with anything: “I certainly want to continue to be a role model,” said the current CEO of Lockheed Martin earlier this year. “But I don’t think it’s necessarily about being a female in our business. I think it’s about . . . my track record, my results.”

Soon after becoming CEO of Yahoo, Mayer emphasized that she is not a feminist and called “feminism” a negative word. This in itself isn’t surprising: as one of the few women at the top, she’s unlikely to want to jeopardize her position by speaking out too strongly in favour of equality. In fact, someone who speaks out is unlikely to be invited into the “boys’ club” in the first place.

Perhaps with more women in power, women leaders might become less defensive and more proactive about introducing women-friendly work policies.

As this blog post put it:

Just getting women into high ranks doesn’t mean that they will necessarily come in ready to change policies like maternity leave to make it easier for their employees or recognize the struggles women go through as they try to climb the ladder. Another woman CEO is historic, but it’s far from the change we need for women’s workplace equality.

Get your act together, India Inc. We have waited long enough.

*Photo: Kumud Srinivasan, President Intel India. 
Photo source: Intel.

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