Number of female CEOs is on decline
Evidence shows obstacles aren’t just because of choices.
Claire Cain Miller
The number of women leading the largest companies has always been small. This year, it got 25 percent smaller.
The reversal is leading to a search beyond the usual explanations for why women don’t become chief executives — things like not being competitive enough, failing to chase opportunities for promotion and choosing work-life balance over high-powered jobs.
That’s because evidence shows that the obstacles for female executives aren’t just because of their individual choices. There are larger forces at work, experts say, rooted in biases against women in power, mothers who work or leaders who don’t fit the mold of the people who led before them.
For many years, it seemed as if the share of women at the top of corporate America would slowly increase. The number of women leading companies in the Fortune 500 had grown to 6.4 percent last year, an all-time high, from 2.6 percent a decade earlier.
But this year, the number of female chief executives declined 25 percent, according to Fortune’s 2018 list, which was published Monday. There are now 24 women, down from 32. Twelve left their jobs — most recently, Denise Morrison of Campbell Soup Co., who abruptly announced her retirement Friday — and four joined the list.
Women in business start out equal to men in terms of jobs and pay. But at each level, they disappear. Only 22 percent of women are senior vice presidents, according to the annual Women in the Workplace study by Lean In and McKinsey. The dropoff starts with the first promotion to management: Women are 18 percent less likely to be promoted to manager.
“Menandwomen are all going into high-powered jobs,” said Robin Ely, a professor at Harvard Business School and chairwoman of its gender initiative. “The question is what happens to them down the road, and that’s a messy story . ... They’re not given opportunities.”
One of the main explanations for women’s underrepresentation has been that it’s too hard to run a big company and be a mother. But it’s increasingly clear this explanation overlooks deeper issues, some experts say.
For one, men have families, too. By making caregiving a women’s problem, companies avoid changing their cultures in ways that would give everyone more work-life balance — for example, by limiting after-hours work or offering more flexibility.
Instead, women are much more likely to use workplace policies like parental leave, to work part time or to move to less demanding positions because of their family obligations. Men are just as likely to say that they’re stressed about juggling their careers and family life, but they deal with it differently. They leave early, ask colleagues to cover for them or take local clients that don’t require travel — but tend not to tell anyone.
The result is that women’s careers are stunted, but men’s are not.
There don’t appear to be gender differences in leadership ability either. A recent analysis of 2,600 executives found that men and women did not differ on multiple areas that were assessed, including interpersonal, analytical and managerial skills and general ability. Yet comparing women and men with similar skills and talents, women were much less likely to become chief executives.
One reason, other studies have shown, is that we unconsciously assume good leaders are male, and we have mixed feelings about women who have successful careers. The typical chief executive is 6 feet tall with a deep voice — a typical woman doesn’t match the image. In an experiment, respondents said someone named Eric who offered new ideas was a natural leader, while someone named Erica who offered the same ideas was not.
Female business school students who were single reported that they wanted lower salaries and shorter work hours when they expected classmates, particularly single men, to see their answers, according to a study last fall in the American Economic Review. These biases against ambitious women affect how managers treat women at work.