While learning about culture and leadership, I reflected on my own company’s status regarding women in leadership positions. Northouse states that only “14.6% of women occupy executive officer positions” among Fortune 500 companies (Northouse, 2016). While this is likely the case overall, my company, which is listed as one of the Fortune 500, has 20% of their executive officer positions filled by females. Granted, the 20% is just 2, but it is obvious the company is above the average.
Looking deeper into the next layer of senior officers, I found the number of women jumped to 34% (31 of 91). Next, skipping further down the hierarchy and looking at a segment of second-level managers, I discovered the number of women in those leadership positions to be 37.5% (18 of 48). This real-time data supports the fact that women are underrepresented in upper-level management.
As Northouse explains, there are three explanations for this underrepresentation: 1) women have less education, training and work experience than men, 2) women have different leadership styles and are less effective at leading than men and 3) prejudice and discrimination against women (Northouse, 2016). While all three of these reasons are valid at least to a degree, why, in today’s environment, is this the case?
We know that women have just as much opportunity to obtain an education and training as men, all other things being equal. In fact, this course is comprised of 62% women (13 of 21). Women also can gain work experience just as men do – I work with several women that have more years of service than I do, so that alone shows women have experience. Regarding leadership styles, all men do not have the same leadership style as we have seen in our textbook – some are servant leaders, some transformational, some are authentic and so on. Therefore, we could expect women to have various leadership styles, yet they cannot seem to “break the glass ceiling”.
This leaves prejudice and discrimination as most likely the main reason for women not rising to the upper ranks of leadership. When leaders are selected to fill an executive officer position, most likely the interview and selection process is one that happens in a vacuum. That is, CEOs making the selection do not adhere to standard hiring policies that typically urge managers to hire for a diverse team and this could lead to some gender bias (Northouse, 2016).
Would a change in interviewing and selection practices for executive officers be to help women break the glass ceiling? Perhaps it would, but the question then becomes “Can the CEO work effectively with the person chosen?” Maybe it is the prerogative of a CEO to get to choose whom he wishes to place in the officer positions, but maybe it is time we look at using panel interviews of lower-level leaders to identify and fill executive officer level positions to help women overcome the glass ceiling.
References
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.