Why are there are so few women on boards?
What the research says & how to help
In this week’s email
What’s on our mind: Why are there still so few women on boards?
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“What’s the greatest lesson a woman should learn?
That since day one, she already ha[s] everything
she needs within herself. It’s the world that
convinced her she did not.”
Rupi Kaur, Canadian-Indian poet & illustrator
In an era where young girls are encouraged to adopt a you-can-achieve-anything mindset, the reality of the workplace isn’t as clear-cut. No matter how much faith a woman has in her abilities, she will have blockers in her way from the start. Like Rupi says, the ‘world’ needs some more convincing.
Despite significant progress in the fight for gender equality in the workplace, we have a long way to go before we reach a level playing field. Take the boards of companies for example: there is still a significant lack of representation of women. But how drastic is this gap?
Currently, women account for half (49%) of over 16-year-olds working in the UK. And yet, ‘of the one hundred chief executive officers (CEOs) currently heading the country’s biggest public companies by market capitalisation (the FTSE 100), only ten are women.’ (Economics Observatory). 10/100. Those are some pretty uninspiring figures.
Even worse, Harvard Business Review found that even ‘though boards claim they strive for diversity, the number of female directors remains low; women held only 16.6% of Fortune 500 board seats in 2012’: a figure which has remained pretty stagnant for the last decade.
Confidence issues play a role. There are far too many reports on low self-esteem holding women back in their careers to argue otherwise. But who can expect women to ‘be more confident’ when they face systemic injustice daily?
Forbes contributor, Victoria Pynchon says ‘we too often convince ourselves that we've got to be world-changing superstars to become GC of a Fortune 500 firm, CEO of a top tech firm in the Silicon Valley, or Managing Partner of an AmLaw 10 firm.’ Men, on the other hand, have a hard time understanding why they don’t deserve one of these highly-coveted spots by default.
What other factors are stopping women from reaching board level?
Systemic bias and stereotypes: Society has been built with an unconscious bias that men possess the “correct skills” for positions of power that women lack. Things like being assertive, dominant, and willing to take risks. Behaviours that women can and, often do, have.
A shift in priorities: There’s a general preconception that as soon as women become mothers, their priorities shift, assuming that they no longer care about career progression or reaching a leadership level. This is called the ‘motherhood penalty.’
The ‘old boys club’: They say it’s all about “who you know.” Well, one of the biggest causes of gender imbalance at work is the ‘old boys club’ mentality. Essentially this means that existing exec teams are already extremely male-heavy, and make women feel excluded from day one.
Recruitment isn’t inclusive enough: There’s plenty of research that shows why women don’t apply for certain roles, whether it’s off-putting language or lack of transparency around compensation. Board recruitment should reach wide, diverse networks and apply inclusion best practices.
It’s also down to leaders at the top to leverage their privilege and power and push for change. Especially men allies who can make space for women on boards and show the rest of the world how it’s done. When Alexis Ohanian stepped down from the board of Reddit he asked to be replaced with a more diverse choice.
Author and journalist, Christina Patterson says there’s a simple (and cheap) solution: ‘Companies can learn to listen. Men can learn to listen. We can all learn to listen to people who have different voices, and different sex organs, and different views. We can even learn to do this without making a song and a dance of it, an international day of it…’ (The Guardian).
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