A funny thing happens on the way to the coveted corner office: In disproportionate numbers, women “fall off the ladder.” That is, they may start out strong in first- and even mid-level positions, but the higher up the ranks you look, the fewer female leaders you will see.
This is not a new or surprising finding; the glass ceiling has been talked about and researched for years. But in a special report from DDI’S Global Leadership Forecast 2008|2009, we provide compelling new data that illustrates how deeply rooted the problem is.
Women in Leadership
Our global sample included leaders from all industries worldwide—a total of 12,208 leaders in all. The male/female split was roughly 60/40. Looking at the leadership ranks, women’s representation in executive-level positions (21 percent) was half that in first-level management (42 percent).
Some other findings among the global sample:
- Men make up progressively larger proportions of high-potential leaders within each management level. (High potentials are the leaders who receive focused development to accelerate their capabilities and careers.) Among executives, 50 percent more men than women are high-potentials.
- Organizations provide increasingly less support for women as they move up the management ladder. Specifically, we looked at the assistance organizations offer leaders transitioning into a newer, more senior role and found men benefit more frequently than women.
- Men were twice as likely as women to have stretch assignments, such as multinational leadership responsibilities. Overall, 21 percent of the men in the study were in positions with a multinational scope compared to only 9 percent of the women.
Don’t Count on Safety in Numbers
Having significant numbers of women in management doesn’t mean that will carry to the executive level. The gap between women’s representation in the first and executive levels is apparent across industries, but it is particularly glaring in health care, where women dominate the total leadership population. The proportion of women in U.S. health care dropped from 82 percent in first-level management to 48 percent at the executive level. This was a larger percentage reduction than in industries with a balanced ratio of men and women in management. At the same time, the proportion of men in health care leadership grew by 194 percent between the first and executive levels.
So why is this happening? Although family responsibilities might dampen some women’s willingness to seek demanding positions at the top, the research data suggest that organizational practices sharply curb women’s opportunities for top positions.
Across industry groups men were overwhelmingly favored in high-potential programs. Especially striking is the finding that in industries like health care, where women are the majority, the percentage of high-potential males is two and a half times that of females. This practice serves to keep men in the top positions in organizations whose leadership ranks are primarily female.
The thrust of these findings is that women are not only less represented at the highest levels of an organization, but processes are in place to ensure that the situation doesn’t change. Regardless of the dominance of women in an industry, the prevalence of men in the highest leadership positions was compounded by organizations’ obvious favoritism toward men in high-potential programs. These actions serve to keep women out of the most prestigious positions at the top of the organization. Although more women might join the ranks of management in the future, their chances of equaling or exceeding men at the highest levels will not grow commensurately.
Closing the Gap
So what can organizations do to close the gap for women in executive leadership roles? We have several suggestions:
Formalize Succession Planning: Succession planning should begin at the bottom of the hierarchy, objectively identifying high-potential individuals and accelerating their development. In the U.S. health care industry, nearly twice as many women were executives if their organization had a formal succession plan. Organizations with a formal succession plan usually make efforts to evaluate leaders’ capabilities objectively and shore up development needs. Organizations without a plan rely on individual managers’ recommendations. Informal succession plans lead to comments such as this one, collected from a director in a health care organization who took part in this research: “I was held back by a CFO who wouldn’t let me step up or go further. Everyone thought I was the prime person for the position, but I wasn’t a buddy.”
Recognize Performance Equally: Organizations need to set up objective methods of performance management and use these tools to help determine recognition, rewards, and advancement. Salary programs should be carefully monitored for unwarranted gender differences. If organizations want to keep talented women, those women need to feel valued. “As I’ve watched male coworkers promoted and lauded, I’ve come to realize that my gender has hindered my career . . . male coworkers seek and get more attention and recognition for accomplishments,” said a technology company senior manager from our survey.
Democratize Development: The more strategic and programmatic an organization’s approach to development is, the greater the opportunity to make sure that men and women are treated equally. It’s especially important to assure that high-potential women have equal access to accelerated development experiences so that they are equally qualified in terms of experiences for promotions that arise. Access to high visibility positions and other prized assignments should be particularly scrutinized to assure equal treatment by gender. Again, we hear from respondents to our survey: “Males were able to go to more seminars and conferences. When it came to the female executives, it was a real tight pick and choose. And if you did get to go it was only once every other year.”
Provide Women with Mentors: Another way that women are deprived of development is that men more often have access to mentors. One way that mentoring can help women leaders is by encouraging them to be more proactive about seeking out new positions.
Equalize (and Enhance) Transition Support: Organizations should provide much more support for leadership transitions for both men and women. Leaders of both genders indicated that this was a clear need, but women were especially likely to be left in the lurch and thus have more difficulty with transitions.
This article was adapted from Holding Women Back: Troubling Discoveries and Best Practices for Helping Female Leaders Succeed—A Special Report from DDI's Global Leadership Forecast 2008|2009 by Ann Howard, Ph.D., and Richard S. Wellins, Ph.D.
About the Author
Ann Howard, Ph.D., DDI’s Chief Scientist
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