WSJ’s Shelby Holliday takes a closer look at the reasons why and other key takeaways from the data. This video was licensed from Grab Networks. A majority of women initially hold line roles, defined as positions with profit-and-loss responsibility and a focus on core operations, but by the VP level, more than half hold staff roles, or support positions like legal, human resources and IT. The majority of men, meanwhile, hold line positions at every level. The difference between the genders comes when aspiring to the top spot. As previous studies have found, the new report also showed that black, Hispanic and Asian women were, on average, 43 percent more interested in becoming a top executive than white women were and 16 percent more interested than white men were.
Advertisement
While three-quarters of companies tracked by Lean In and McKinsey named gender diversity as a priority of the chief executive, fewer than half of employees surveyed said it was high on their own CEOs priority list. Senior-level women also reported that they were consulted on important decisions at half the rate of their male coworkers. Perhaps most startling, 25% of women feel their gender has hindered their progress, a perception that grows more acute once women reach senior levels.
Many people assume women are underrepresented because they are leaving companies at higher rates than men or due to difficulties balancing work and family, the report said. For example, when parents at PwC take an extended leave, their performance rating from the year before carries over so they don’t need to worry receiving a lower rating.
Women were more likely than men to cite stress as a career obstacle, the study found. That’s not surprising, Ms Thomas said.
Fueling the ambition gap may be the current culture of work, one which does no favors for men or women, and one in which fealty to work is allat all hoursas caregiving and family life are shunted to the margins.
The study – conducted by McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.org – measured women’s roles in the workforce and how likely they were to make it to the top.
Interestingly, women at all levels of a company believe they are given fewer opportunities to advance because of their gender and believe they are disadvantaged by their gender. Rather, they face more barriers to advancement and are less likely to reach senior leadership positions. “Shifting women into work in higher productivity sectors on a par with the employment pattern of men would contribute another 23 percent of the total opportunity”. Thirteen percent even said that it was harder for them to advance because they felt disadvantaged by gender-diversity programs. The first caucus initiative announced Monday is a Corporate Gender Diversity Resolution supporting market-based efforts to boost the participation of women in leadership.
There’s a common misconception that women who start families are subsequently less ambitious in their careers.
“Two-thirds of both women and men do not think their companies are meritocratic, suggesting a broad appetite for cultural change”, the study reads.
There are more men than women with low intelligence.
Advertisement
The report concludes with several recommendations for changing the ratio of women in the workplace at all levels of the corporate ladder.
