Who’s in charge: Why aren’t there more women in leadership roles?

The UBC Alumni Association hosted a panel discussion last night of why there aren't more women in leadership roles. Gloria Macarenko moderated the discussion with myself, Maninder Dhaliwal, Anne Giardini, John Montalbano & Martha Piper as panelists. We were given one minute to address the following question:

For decades women have been fighting for workplace equality, and in many sectors, progress has been made. But in boardrooms and executive offices across the country, there remains a noticeable absence of women in senior leadership positions. What lies behind this gender imbalance? Is it due to deeply-ingrained biases by those making the appointments? Or are some women choosing to forgo leadership opportunities for career paths that offer greater flexibility?

I wrote up my opening comments (below). It'd be nice to have a transcript of the other panelists' comments -- it was a great discussion! You can listen to the podcast here.

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My answer to the question of why gender imbalance in leadership continues is both deeply-ingrained biases that we all share, including those who make appointment decisions, and women choosing to forgo leadership opportunities – these biases and choices feed off of each other. It is one thing to write laws and quite another thing to change our economic structures and cultural norms. So that is really the challenge we face.

We’re born into a world run by men and quickly learn to associate leadership with men and masculinity and to value masculinity above femininity. Stereotypes of what a leader looks and acts like, what men and women are good at and what interests them, become values – what a leader should look and act like, what men and women should be good at, and what should interest them. As we social psychologists put it: the descriptive becomes prescriptive. These descriptive stereotypes – these associations we all have – drive bias in training, selection & promotion, and prescriptive stereotypes – the values component to it – drive and shape workplace culture and the treatment that employees experience.

And it all starts in childhood on the playground. You have the confident and assertive girl called a b-word, like bossy or bitch, and you have the sensitive or caregiving boy called a g-word, like girly or gay. We have boys who challenge authority and break the rules being admired by their peers – they’re the future entrepreneurs, convicts, or both. We have boys who follow the rules and authority being good sons – they’re the next promotion, or president. On the other hand, the “good girl” is placed on a pedestal -- protected, but disempowered -- and the “bad girl” is vilified and free game for sexual harassment.

This socialization directs our interests and aspirations and we carry them with us into the workplace – sometimes more subtly than on the playground. Women often face a trade-off between love and power, and most choose love – they go where they are rewarded and appreciated, into female-dominated occupations, assistant positions, or if they can afford it, the home.

Men face a different set of challenges. For men, love and power often coincide. But most men aren’t going to get to the top. What happens to those who don’t? They may find other ways to feel like a man, some healthy, some not. Today, men’s involvement is needed more than ever in the home as wives have become breadwinners, but organizational structures and norms don’t support fathers as they do mothers. At this point, men now report more work-life conflict than women.

In sum, our cultural biases and institutions continue to encourage women to choose to leave or scale back at work and men to choose to leave or scale back at home. This dynamic is mutually reinforcing. We really need to talk about men also if we’re going to solve the problem for women.