WOMEN SEEK EQUALITY
Full parity 100 years away
For all the talk about their progress in corporate America, women are moving ahead so slowly it will take more than a century for them to reach parity in top positions, according to a new study.
“Women face greater barriers to advancement and a steeper path to senior leadership,” says the study, conducted by McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.org.
Fewer women than men at every level hold the type of operating, or “line,” roles that lead to the C-suite, the report found, based on a poll of 118 large companies in North America and 30,000 employees.
The authors calculated it will take 100 years to achieve gender equality in top management based on the rate of progress in the past three years.
The study disputes the frequently evoked explanation that women are under-represented in these positions because they drop out of the workforce to have children.
On the contrary, it says men are more likely than women to leave a company at every stage of their careers.
It also found that women with children are 15 per cent more likely to be interested in a senior job than women without children.
Even so, women were less eager than men to become top executives. “There’s something that’s on the path to leadership that disproportionately affects women,” said Rachel Thomas, president of LeanIn.org, founded by Facebook Inc. chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. “We feel that’s rooted in bias.”
Women were more likely than men to cite stress as a career obstacle, the study found. That’s not surprising, Thomas said. “Women are less well-liked when they take the lead, which means they are less likely to be advanced,” and this “can create a lot of stress.”
Some 43 per cent of women said they had been denied a promotion, raise or assignment because of their gender.
Few men perceived such bias: Only 12 per cent said women don’t have the same opportunities they do.
Though corporations increasingly talk the equality talk — almost three-quarters say gender diversity is a top priority for their CEOs — fewer than half their workers of either gender believe them, the study said.
Many employees fail to take advantage of programs their companies offer, such as extended family leave, because they fear it will hurt their careers.
The report advises businesses to create metrics for women’s advancement, including compensation, promotion rates, attrition and hiring. They also should track employee attitudes. “An organization can’t change what they don’t see,” Thomas said.
Companies should care about inequality because they leave money on the table if they don’t, according to another study released this week by Grant Thornton.
The U.K. tax-advisory firm compared the return on assets last year for publicly traded companies in three countries with and without women on their executive boards. Those with at least one woman outperformed companies with all-male teams by 1.9 percentage points in the U.S., 0.85 point in India and 0.53 point in the U.K.
And how much did the study show the non-diverse companies lost out on in total return on assets? It was $655 billion US.
Women are less well-liked when they take the lead, which means they are less likely to be advanced. RACHEL THOMAS, LEANIN. ORG