#InspireInclusion and Why This Speaks to a Critical Issue for Employers in 2024 – Part I

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This week’s newsletter coincides with International Women’s Day 2024 on March 8 and its theme to “inspire inclusion.” Given the growing number of conversations on this topic, I have chosen the same theme for a two-part series that begins today and will conclude next week.

When talking about women in the workplace, one issue that often comes up is their persistent underrepresentation in senior roles despite continued efforts to eliminate past biases and barriers. Some evidence even suggests we may be heading in the wrong direction lately. The 2022 edition of the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report highlighted a year-on-year widening of the gender gap in senior roles in the United States, by 2.4%, and the 2023 edition suggested a continuation of this trend.

But what lies behind these worrying developments?

Two major recent studies suggest the problem is a lack of workplace inclusion, so I think this year’s International Women’s Day theme is spot on when it comes to the situation in the US.

Specifically, a large survey by Bain & Company revealed that women were three times more likely to leave their organizations if they felt excluded at work. And there is no exception at the management level. The results of McKinsey’s 2022 Women in the Workplace study showed that women leaders were quitting at a much higher rate than men in similar roles.

You might be asking, is there any way to know what particular factors are driving this?

Well, in 2022, Forbes published an article summarizing the results of a detailed study that examined workplace inclusion of women across 10 companies. On aggregate, women were 1.6× more likely than men to experience exclusion in the workplace. Importantly, this was further broken down into various categories: career opportunities, compensation and benefits, and respect.

Perhaps surprisingly (or not, depending on your perspective), the last of these was the strongest area of exclusion for women. In other words, microaggressions and other day-to-day negative experiences had a bigger overall impact on women than exclusion from promotion opportunities or equal compensation, which are talked about a lot more.

As highlighted by the study authors, these findings emphasized how representation does not automatically mean inclusion, and that opportunities for advancement and equal compensation will not lead to retention without an inclusive workplace culture. The new data underlines how being intentional about inclusion is often a missing piece of the puzzle. As the World Economic Forum has put it , we need to “fundamentally rethink the world of work.”

Why is this the case?

In short, because modern work practices were effectively designed for men as women were historically only a small minority in many workplaces. To better understand how to remedy our current situation, let’s briefly look at that historical context (in keeping with this month as Women’s History Month) before identifying a few key pointers that you might find helpful to build into your strategy to increase diversity and retention.

How Historical Biases Led to the Exclusion of Women

As the Industrial Revolution gathered pace during the late 19th century, cultural norms meant that few women worked outside the home. For those that did, prevailing social attitudes dictated certain choices that were generally restricted to “stereotypically female” roles.

The overall labor force participation rate for women was only 14%, and this was much lower for married women. Those in the workforce were mostly young and single and they typically left their jobs if they got married. And although college attendance was rare at this time, women were largely excluded.

The early 20th century saw increasingly rapid industrialization that created many new work opportunities and shaped the beginnings of modern professional job roles and workplaces. In particular, new organizational and management structures emerged to sustain rapidly growing national (and multinational) corporations.

This period was pivotal in defining the essence of corporate workplaces in the modern era, and critically for today’s topic, the new structures were developed and implemented in heavily male-dominated corporations and boardrooms. Thus, modern work practices were formulated in mostly male workplaces, and this also occurred against a backdrop of the exclusion of women from senior positions.

Before World War II, all women faced bias and barriers when seeking employment. On the one hand, discrimination in labor unions denied them access to skilled and higher-paying jobs. On the other hand, while women had increasing opportunities to enter higher education over the first half of the 20th century, these opportunities tended to be concentrated in sub-baccalaureate schools. Segregation was also common, given the expectation that women would train for “female roles.”

We can now see that as the dynamics of the modern workplace took shape, particularly for professional occupations that came to require college degrees, women were excluded due to bias in both labor unions and the education system.

And while the postwar period saw progressively increasing representation in the workplace, perhaps due to the success of the women’s movement, these women were entering organizations guided by an established paradigm where “management is not a job for women.”

Conclusion to Part I

As we have seen today, history explains why women were, and continue to be, significantly underrepresented at higher levels in many companies. But how can we drive meaningful change? I will begin to answer that question next week, including some action items to help shape more inclusive workplaces for women.

JOIN US IN THE COMMENTS: What stood out to you today? Are you surprised that the representation of women in senior roles has slightly decreased, or have you already experienced this where you work? We always welcome community feedback and invite you to share what’s on your mind after reading the article!