Why Gender Equality Isn’t Happening: What High Potential Women Need and Want

Part of Kathy Caprino's new LinkedIn series "True Leadership Today"

Gender equality is a critical issue today in our workforce, and so much has been written and studied about how organizations can create and support a diverse workplace. Yet why isn’t the needle moving? Why does this remain such a deep, intractable problem in the American workforce today?

I caught up recently with Bonnie Marcus to answer that question. Bonnie is an award-winning entrepreneur, consultant and coach, and Forbes and Business Insider contributor. She assists professional women to successfully navigate the workplace, and position themselves to advance their careers, and consults with companies to retain and support their female talent.

Bonnie’s latest research on women and ambition is highlighted in the new report, Lost Leaders in the Pipeline: Capitalizing on Women’s Ambition to Offset the Future Leadership Shortage, which she co-authored with Lisa Mainiero. The study addresses the challenges women face sustaining their ambition and how companies can best retain their top female talent.

Kathy Caprino: What does your study reveal about why we’re not making faster progress to gender equality in leadership?

Bonnie Marcus: What is important to note is that there is a huge disconnect between the current number of women in leadership roles and the number of ambitious women in the workplace today. A recent Catalyst survey found that only 19% of women serve on corporate boards in Fortune 500 companies in the United States, and only 4% hold CEO positions. And these statistics have not changed much over the last decade.   

 Yet there are many ambitious women in the workplace. I conducted a survey of 615 professional women across a multitude of industries to better understand women and their relationship with ambition over time. What was most impressive was 74% of the women self-identified as very/extremely ambitious. That’s a very large percentage! So I asked myself what happens to these women who enter the workplace with great determination and optimism. And most importantly, I wanted to know what companies can do better to retain these women over the span of their careers.

In our study, my co-author Lisa Mainiero, and myself suggest that if companies want to retain their top female talent they need to understand what the high potential women in their company need to sustain their ambition over time. Their lack of understanding of the issues women face in their workplace along with false assumptions about what they need that have resulted in companies failing to reach their gender diversity goals. 

Caprino: What do leaders/employers need to do dramatically different than they are now?

Marcus: First of all, I applaud all the companies who have the best intentions to advance and promote women. Companies are investing in initiatives and competitive benefits to attract and retain female talent. Yet they continue to lose future female leaders. 

We suggest that these well-meaning companies let go of their assumptions about what it takes to advance women in their organization. Before they adopt or create new programs, they need to identify and ask the high potential women what challenges they face and how they can best support them over the span of their careers. Information from a customized assessment of their female talent pool will help companies design effective initiatives at different career stages for these women. Each company and each industry have specific challenges that must be uncovered and overcome. The demographics of women in each company is also unique. Programs that are not based on the specific needs of this talent pool are destined to fail.

Our findings show that when ambitious women are not supported by their companies, it leads to a waning of their corporate leadership aspirations. Companies must identify these high potential women early when they are most ambitious and offer them individualized leadership tracks along with ongoing managerial and coaching support.

What my co-author and I learned from our research is that women display ambition differently at different times in the career cycle, and though women’s ambition diminishes over time, in early career, their ambition levels are greatest. This suggests that career pathing of women should start early, before women have children, to build leadership experience on the line.

Companies must leverage innovative workplace practices and modern career paths to sustain women’s ambition. Contemporary career paths can no longer be linear. Instead, they should involve diagonal moves across divisions, lateral moves to gain skills and experience, and downward moves to learn responsibility and new ways of working. If a woman needs a break or to cut back, there should be support in place for her to accomplish project based work that does not require face time in the office. When she is ready to return full time, that woman can once again be fast tracked as her leadership potential has not changed.

In this manner, that woman will feel supported to continue to pursue her career with that company. According to a Center for Work Life Policy report, almost 70% report of women say they would not have left their firms if their companies had offered flexible work options such as reduced hour schedules, job sharing part time career tracks or short unpaid sabbaticals. It is also critical that managers be trained on contemporary career development and incentivized on flexible work options.

Caprino: Why aren’t companies doing this? What gets in the way?

Marcus:

I believe that many companies pay lip service to gender diversity. Perhaps they set up a women’s network or a leadership program and feel they’ve checked that box.

Surprise! These off the shelf initiatives don’t work because they’re generic in approach and content and don’t address all the needs of the women in their work environment. But I also believe there are many companies who want in earnest to change the cultural landscape of their company and have tried with the best intentions to advance and promote women. Unfortunately, these companies often don’t have the information they need to develop and design effective programs because they are making assumptions about what the women need or they are looking for quick solutions to a very complex problem.

Any effective diversity initiative needs to start with good information, not generalizations, about the specific demographic in the company, and I believe programs that make a difference start with an assessment of the female talent pool that is then analyzed and segmented by age, position, and tenure along with interviews in parallel to a study of the data relative to how long women stay, when they leave, how often they advance etc.  It is clear that women need different types of support and training at different stages of their career, and if companies want to retain and promote these women, they need to understand this and create programs that will nurture women’s leadership potential over time.

Many companies are hoping for a simple quick fix to a complex problem. You aren’t going to solve the gender gap in leadership with offering one or two training programs. Companies need to engage early with their high potential women and offer long range career paths that demonstrate they’re invested and committed to these future leaders for the long haul.

A potential barrier to this approach could be budget. Many diversity programs are underfunded. But there is a strong business case, not only for increasing female representation in leadership, but also for retaining female talent. Since it’s a standard rule of thumb that it costs 1.5 times a person’s salary to replace them (including recruitment and training, etc.). Do the math. If a high potential women earns $100K and she leaves, that costs the organization $150K to replace her. Multiply that times how many women leave the company each year because they aren’t supported. Depending on the size of the company, if 5 women leave that $750K. Even if only 3 leave, that’s $450K. If 2 leave that’s $300K, and that’s more than enough to design and offer customized programs that will retain these women over time.

Caprino: Another issue I see every day, Bonnie, is that leaders and managers unfortunately rely only on corporate initiatives and programs to "get gender equality done." The problem is that programs alone won't and can't do this. We need every individual - male and female - every leader, manager and contributor - to embrace gender equality in their hearts, minds, beliefs and behaviors. What can individuals do, outside of formalized programs, to support women to leadership and pave the way to gender equality?

Marcus: It’s important for men and women as individuals to address this issue head on. Women need to support other women. Women who have successfully reached leadership positions need to sponsor, mentor, and support emerging women leaders, and serve as positive role models. Women need to support one another in meetings so their voices are heard and respected, and abandon the fears that accompany competition and lack of opportunity.

Executive men need to champion, sponsor and mentor high potential women and publically declare their commitment to gender diversity as an example for their colleagues. They need to be educated so that they understand the diversity issue is not “taken care of.”

A recent McKinsey study addresses the issue that men don’t feel it is more challenging for women than men to reach executive status, and they don’t value gender diversity.

Clearly, the business case for increased diversity in leadership needs to be consistently and powerfully communicated throughout the organization.

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I wholeheartedly agree with Bonnie’s views above. And I’d go one step further. If you -- as an individual, a manager or a leader -- actually need to see a “business case” to convince you that gender equality is critical, then you need some additional training, learning and hands-on experience to deeply understand what women face every day in the workplace. You'll personally see then that new pathways to equal opportunity and growth is essential for the success of the entire human race. 

For more information, visit Bonnie Marcus and the new study Lost Leaders in the Pipeline: Capitalizing on Women’s Ambition to Offset the Future Leadership Shortage.

To build a happier, more rewarding and successful career, visit kathycaprino.com, The Amazing Career Project, and my weekly podcast Best Work/Best Life with Coach Mo Faul.