(Author: Richa Singh is a second year PGP student at IIM Ahmedabad)
In most top-notch, high-achieving boardrooms across the world, women are conspicuous. Albeit, by their absence.It is not just a trend seen in the developing or under-developed countries where the reasoning that fewer women are able to continue their education in the same vein as men holds. The trend is just equally valid, and therefore more worrying, in developed countries. A report by the Centre for Talent Innovation (CTI), a New York think-tank suggests that in Britain more than 55% of all white collar recruits are women, yet less than 17% make it to the executive class and less than 4% to the chief executive rungs.
Different theories have been proposed to explain the trend, I would like to try and look at it from the lens of three questions.
· Are women even interested in being there?
· Do they have the capability to be there?
· Is someone/something stopping them from being there?
In a survey of 2500 graduate employees, mostly of large companies, conducted by the Centre of Talent Management, 79% of the senior women employees said they aspire to top jobs. In the same breath, however,as many as 91% indicated they were keen to be promoted but felt being pulled down and not allowed to rise to director and plus levels.
So, women do strongly share a similar ambition and desire to rise. The capability to do so is certainly not lacking. There has been a clear and proven correlation between more number of women in the Executive and Chief executive class of a company and its performance.
So what is stopping them? I am going to run through this question in the context of a company where there is no deliberate attempt to pull or push the women down or up respectively. In other words, let’s assume a neutral and unbiased atmosphere and review system and then understand why is it that fewer CXO/CEO/COO visiting cards are being printed out for women.
First, it is strongly believed that women are not as proactive as men are in promoting themselves and reaching out. Reports and articles like “The Sponsor Effect” and “Sponsor Effect: UK” by groups like the HBR and CTI prove beyond doubt the importance of sponsorship or advocacy by a senior ally in traversing the road-to-top. And for several reasons, not the least of which is concern it will look short of proper and professional, women shy away from spending much time outside work with a particular male senior sponsor. It is not just the woman protégé, but the male sponsor too who will be worried about his image, about water-cooler gossip, should he spend much one-on-one time with one particular woman employee. Concerns like this are increasingly relevant in workplaces with stringent-than-ever norms against sexual exploitation and for equal opportunity. This factor is so pronounced that even the women who do make it to the top attribute their success solely to pure capability and hard work. Men feel less reserved about attributing their rise to continuous support and sponsorship from another senior with who they have had a long-standing, close collaboration spanning years, sometimes more.
The solution to this lies in workplaces actively trying to encourage such relationships irrespective of the gender of the participants. Senior employees should be encouraged to find and stick to mentors amongst the management and grow a close, personal bond with him or her. Adding transparency and defining protocol around the same will help.
Second, for based equal measures in evolution and sociology, women feel more responsible to balance their ambitions with responsibility towards the family- kids, elderly etc. The first woman director of policy planning at the State Department in the US, Anne-Marie Slaughter, believes women simply cannot have it all. She returned back to her family from her high-flying senior position in the White House with the faint realization that it may not be possible to devote ‘enough’ time to family and yet do justice to a demanding job. This is the story that has been sold to millions of young women by feminists and companies alike. Sometimes it is just not possible and that is not because of a lack of capability, it is simply because the current system is just not designed for it.
The solution, Slaughter suggests, lies in a gradual but forceful evolution of the system. Women have to stop competing in the current system where for example, “supporting the family” refers solely to winning bread for it. The definition for success has to change to include the entire gamut of choices that women, and increasingly men, have to make. It is not just workplace policies but social policies and public attitudes that beg a makeover so as to create the ramp that more and more women can eventually take to the upper echelons.
However, the road is anything but all dark. Compared to even a couple of decades back, women have found a much stronger say and a more cemented stay inside boardrooms of leading corporations across industries. Women like GinniRometty (IBM), Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Marissa Mayer (Yahoo) in technology, IndraNooyi (Pepsico) and Irene Rosenfeld (Kraft) in consumer products, Abigail Johnson (Fidelity Investments) in finance have paved the way and act as role-models for aspiring women managers globally. In India too, women like Chanda Kochar (ICICI Bank), Mallika Srinivasan (TAFE), Vinita Bali (Britannia), Zia Mody (AZB Partners) have blazed the trail for aspiring women honchos.
To ensure that India Inc. keeps churning out the Kochars and Balis with unwavering regularity, two important avenues need to be addressed, as discussed above. Companies must make it easier and women themselves must commit themselves to seeking sponsors more openly and firmly. Also, women and men of the new generation must stand together to redefine the paradigm where it is the working woman who has to go back home after signing the multimillion dollar deal to take care of the toddler at home.
Sources:
http://www.economist.com/node/21556963
http://hbr.org/product/the-sponsor-effect-breaking-through-the-last-glass/an/10428-PDF-ENG
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/?single_page=true
In most top-notch, high-achieving boardrooms across the world, women are conspicuous. Albeit, by their absence.It is not just a trend seen in the developing or under-developed countries where the reasoning that fewer women are able to continue their education in the same vein as men holds. The trend is just equally valid, and therefore more worrying, in developed countries. A report by the Centre for Talent Innovation (CTI), a New York think-tank suggests that in Britain more than 55% of all white collar recruits are women, yet less than 17% make it to the executive class and less than 4% to the chief executive rungs.
Different theories have been proposed to explain the trend, I would like to try and look at it from the lens of three questions.
· Are women even interested in being there?
· Do they have the capability to be there?
· Is someone/something stopping them from being there?
In a survey of 2500 graduate employees, mostly of large companies, conducted by the Centre of Talent Management, 79% of the senior women employees said they aspire to top jobs. In the same breath, however,as many as 91% indicated they were keen to be promoted but felt being pulled down and not allowed to rise to director and plus levels.
So, women do strongly share a similar ambition and desire to rise. The capability to do so is certainly not lacking. There has been a clear and proven correlation between more number of women in the Executive and Chief executive class of a company and its performance.
So what is stopping them? I am going to run through this question in the context of a company where there is no deliberate attempt to pull or push the women down or up respectively. In other words, let’s assume a neutral and unbiased atmosphere and review system and then understand why is it that fewer CXO/CEO/COO visiting cards are being printed out for women.
First, it is strongly believed that women are not as proactive as men are in promoting themselves and reaching out. Reports and articles like “The Sponsor Effect” and “Sponsor Effect: UK” by groups like the HBR and CTI prove beyond doubt the importance of sponsorship or advocacy by a senior ally in traversing the road-to-top. And for several reasons, not the least of which is concern it will look short of proper and professional, women shy away from spending much time outside work with a particular male senior sponsor. It is not just the woman protégé, but the male sponsor too who will be worried about his image, about water-cooler gossip, should he spend much one-on-one time with one particular woman employee. Concerns like this are increasingly relevant in workplaces with stringent-than-ever norms against sexual exploitation and for equal opportunity. This factor is so pronounced that even the women who do make it to the top attribute their success solely to pure capability and hard work. Men feel less reserved about attributing their rise to continuous support and sponsorship from another senior with who they have had a long-standing, close collaboration spanning years, sometimes more.
The solution to this lies in workplaces actively trying to encourage such relationships irrespective of the gender of the participants. Senior employees should be encouraged to find and stick to mentors amongst the management and grow a close, personal bond with him or her. Adding transparency and defining protocol around the same will help.
Second, for based equal measures in evolution and sociology, women feel more responsible to balance their ambitions with responsibility towards the family- kids, elderly etc. The first woman director of policy planning at the State Department in the US, Anne-Marie Slaughter, believes women simply cannot have it all. She returned back to her family from her high-flying senior position in the White House with the faint realization that it may not be possible to devote ‘enough’ time to family and yet do justice to a demanding job. This is the story that has been sold to millions of young women by feminists and companies alike. Sometimes it is just not possible and that is not because of a lack of capability, it is simply because the current system is just not designed for it.
The solution, Slaughter suggests, lies in a gradual but forceful evolution of the system. Women have to stop competing in the current system where for example, “supporting the family” refers solely to winning bread for it. The definition for success has to change to include the entire gamut of choices that women, and increasingly men, have to make. It is not just workplace policies but social policies and public attitudes that beg a makeover so as to create the ramp that more and more women can eventually take to the upper echelons.
However, the road is anything but all dark. Compared to even a couple of decades back, women have found a much stronger say and a more cemented stay inside boardrooms of leading corporations across industries. Women like GinniRometty (IBM), Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Marissa Mayer (Yahoo) in technology, IndraNooyi (Pepsico) and Irene Rosenfeld (Kraft) in consumer products, Abigail Johnson (Fidelity Investments) in finance have paved the way and act as role-models for aspiring women managers globally. In India too, women like Chanda Kochar (ICICI Bank), Mallika Srinivasan (TAFE), Vinita Bali (Britannia), Zia Mody (AZB Partners) have blazed the trail for aspiring women honchos.
To ensure that India Inc. keeps churning out the Kochars and Balis with unwavering regularity, two important avenues need to be addressed, as discussed above. Companies must make it easier and women themselves must commit themselves to seeking sponsors more openly and firmly. Also, women and men of the new generation must stand together to redefine the paradigm where it is the working woman who has to go back home after signing the multimillion dollar deal to take care of the toddler at home.
Sources:
http://www.economist.com/node/21556963
http://hbr.org/product/the-sponsor-effect-breaking-through-the-last-glass/an/10428-PDF-ENG
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/?single_page=true