March is Women’s History Month; the annual conference sponsored UN Commission on the Status of Women met a couple of weeks ago; and the declining number of women in headships in independent schools occupied a good part of the conversation at one of the conferences I attended recently. In addition, I devoted my last two columns to the leadership of Washington and Lincoln. So, for this column, I’m going to contemplate women and leadership.
While women have certainly made strides, significant ones, in the last forty years, there is still much work to be done; indeed, there is some indication that we’re going backward in some areas. While the percentage of women in Fortune 500 corporate board positions has continued to increase gradually to 16.1%, the percentage of women in executive officer positions actually declined slightly between 2010 and 2011 from 14.4% to 14.1%, and that despite the fact that in 2010 women made up 51.5% of management, professional, and related positions. While women represent over 47% of law students and 45% of associates, they only represent 19.5% of law firm partners.[i] In the 2010 Congressional elections, for the first time since 1987, the percentage of women in Congress did not increase; women’s representation in state legislatures declined nationwide by almost 80 seats. Although women now earn the majority of both bachelor’s and advanced degrees, they constitute only 26% of full professors and 23% of college presidents; indeed, the percentage of female college presidents has remained stagnant for the last ten years.[ii] The percentage of women heading independent schools at 32% is two percentage points lower than ten years ago while 70% of independent school professional staffs are female. In spite of the large numbers of women on most college campuses, many of the most selective schools have experienced a decline in women’s assuming top level student leadership roles. At Princeton, for example, in the 1980s, the decade after coeducation, the percentage of women holding the highest profile student leadership positions grew to almost 25% and then increased in the 1990s to over 31%, only to decline again in the 2000s to just slightly above 17%. The same trend occurred in winners of the highest academic award, where female recipients actually outnumbered men in the 1990s but then dropped to a third of winners in the 2000s. Marshall and Rhodes Scholars also witnessed a peak of female applicants and recipients in the 1990s only to have numbers reverse in the 2000s.[iii]
Women are educated; in fact, more educated than men, now; they are in the workplace – constituting 47% of American workers; they hold mid-level positions in large numbers.[iv] There are many explanations as to why American women have not made greater progress in achieving leadership positions more proportionate to their numbers. Being parents is one explanation; consciously choosing a less demanding track to spend more time with family is a corollary to the parent explanation; and gender discrimination remains a factor. It also may be that women simply don’t seek out the leadership positions as actively as men. This appears to be the case with female independent school administrators who have less confidence in their preparation for headship and are less focused in their searches for head positions; they are also less likely to seek out head jobs because of concern about the time commitments; and they are more hesitant than men to move to take on a headship, therby significantly narrowing their options.[v]
While understanding the reasons women are underrepresented in leadership positions is important, we need to focus on steps we can take to address the situation. But wait. Some might say, does it even matter whether women hold these leadership positions? Especially if they are opting out themselves? I would say emphatically, yes, it does matter. For one, there are practical, financial reasons to have women leaders. Companies with higher percentages of female leaders make more money: 35% higher return on equity and 34% higher total return to shareholders in the case of Fortune 500 companies with high levels of female officers. Second, the type of leadership typically associated with women, characterized by greater collaboration, inclusivity, coalition building and embracing of diverse perspectives, has proven value in both the business and government sectors in today’s environment. According an analysis published in the Harvard Business Review, women’s “’transformative’ leadership style – making institutions more transparent, responsive, accountable and ethical – has been found to be more effective in leading modern organizations than men’s ‘transactional’ approach”[vi] Citing lessons learned from the Great Recession, Sally Hegelsen, a leading researcher on women’s leadership, observes, “Leaders will also need to cultivate more balanced and inclusive ways of operating that draw information and strategic insight from beyond the usual sources. In order to achieve these goals, organisations will have to become better at drawing on the skills, talents, perspectives and ideas of women.”[vii]
Finally, discrimination against women persists and discrimination is simply wrong. Women may be exercising a choice in opting out of these leadership roles, but why are they doing that? Often because the path to the leadership position, such as the partner track in the law or the tenure process in academia, is grueling and forces individuals to sacrifice a great deal of personal life for career advancement. Likewise, the world of finance, particularly the Wall Street investment banks (wherever they may be located) remain male dominated hierarchies that demand a prodigious commitment extremely unfriendly to family life. Men increasingly find these structures unappealing, but they are still more likely to sacrifice family life to career than women.
So what can we do? The White House Project, “a nonprofit leadership development organization that invites, inspires, and equips the next generation of diverse women to lead in business and politics,” provides several recommendations, creating a critical mass of women in leadership roles being the most important. Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter first identified the importance of critical mass more than 40 years ago when she posited that “once women reached a critical mass in an organization, people would stop seeing them as women and start evaluating their work as managers.”[viii] Her colleague, Robin J. Ely, built on Kanter’s findings to argue that for true change to occur, women need to hold senior leadership positions in significant numbers, not just fill out the ranks from entry level to mid-management. “Until women receive representation at the top, Ely argued, sex role stereotypes persist – and not only won’t men’s perception of women change, but women’s own perception of women remains stagnant.”[ix]
While the critical mass argument makes sense, it also seems a little circular to me. We don’t have enough women in leadership positions because we don’t have enough women in leadership positions. One solution the White House Project offers is setting specific numerical targets and holding organizations accountable for those goals. Norway managed markedly to increase the percentage of women board members in publicly traded companies from 11% to 40% in just three years by passing and enforcing legislation mandating this change.[x] Rwanda provides a political example. The Rwandan constitution stipulates that 30% of the Parliament must be female. Currently, women hold 45 out of 80 seats and Rwanda enjoys the distinction of being the first country in the world to have a majority female parliament.[xi] Perhaps these facts are only circumstantial, but the financial downturn had little impact on Norway and Rwanda has recovered remarkably from its horrific genocide.
Setting targets and enforcing them clearly seems to work, but a little bit of a chicken-egg problem still exists. We need women to step into the leadership roles in order to meet the targets. This requires more individual and personal intervention. Ample research (as well as personal experience) indicates that women, even very qualified women, often do not perceive themselves as ready for leadership roles when men with similar or even fewer qualifications would. This means that we need to reach out to women; we cannot assume that they will pursue an opportunity just because they are made aware of it. In recommending that faculty actively encourage students to apply for scholarships (such as Rhodes and Marshalls) and seek leadership positions, the Princeton report observed, “All talented students deserve such affirmation, but women in particular respond to it and may indeed even wait for it before taking steps to pursue their ambitions.”[xii] Sometimes, this reaching out can be as simple as someone in a position of responsibility asking an individual apply for the position. Such an ask opens up a conversation that hopefully encourages the woman to begin to see herself as a leader; it’s not an exaggeration to say that such an overture can change the trajectory of her career.
In a more comprehensive approach, the research also clearly recommends mentoring for women. Women need to be encouraged to seek out mentors, but women (and men) leaders need to step up to mentor promising women. Not surprisingly, developing more formal and comprehensive mentoring programs stands out as one of the key recommendations from the Princeton report. All of us can assume the role of mentor, and it’s a most rewarding one, for both the mentor and the mentee.
In this month honoring women, let’s remember Madeleine Albright’s admonition: “There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women” and reach out to the women around us – of all ages – and help them realize their leadership potential.
I’ve invited any faculty interested in greater leadership roles to join a conversation to that end. What are you going to do?
[i] Statistical Overview of Women in the Workplace, Catalyst, Dec. 2011 (http://www.catalyst.org/publication/219/statistical-overview-of-women-in-the-workplace)
[ii] “The White House Project Report: Benchmarking Women’s Leadership” (November 2009), 10; Amanda Green, “How Are Women Faring In 2012? A Women's Rights Report Card,” “The Huffington Post,” March 6,2012
[iii] “Report of the Steering Committee on Undergraduate Women’s Leadership: Summary of Findings and Recommendations” (March 2011), 4-5
[iv] Statistical Overview of Women in the Workplace, Catalyst, Dec. 2011 (http://www.catalyst.org/publication/219/statistical-overview-of-women-in-the-workplace
[v] Pat Bassett, National Association of Independent Schools, “The Prospects for Women” powerpoint, March 1, 2012 (http://www.nais.org/about/article.cfm?ItemNumber=156311)
[vi] “The White House Project Report: Benchmarking Women’s Leadership” (November 2009), 6.
[vii] Sally Helgesen, “Shaping Our Common Future: Preparing Girls for Leadership in a Changing Envirnonment,” Seminar Series 192, Centre for Strategic Education (February 2010), 4.
[viii] “The White House Project Report: Benchmarking Women’s Leadership” (November 2009), 13.
[ix] “The White House Project Report: Benchmarking Women’s Leadership” (November 2009), 14.
[x] “The White House Project Report: Benchmarking Women’s Leadership” (November 2009), 14.
[xi]“ Revealed: The best and worst places to be a woman,” The Independent, March 4, 2012 (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/revealed-the-best-and-worst-places-to-be-a-woman-7534794.html); “Women Run the Show In a Recovering Rwanda,” The Washington Post, October 27, 2008 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/26/AR2008102602197.html)
[xii] “Report of the Steering Committee on Undergraduate Women’s Leadership: Summary of Findings and Recommendations” (March 2011), 15
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