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Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

by Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli

Included with this full-text

Harvard Business Review

article:

The Idea in Brief—the core idea

The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work

Article Summary

Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further

exploration of the article’s ideas and applications

Further Reading

When you put all the pieces

together, a new picture

emerges for why women don’t

make it into the C-suite. It’s

not the glass ceiling, but the

sum of many obstacles along

the way.

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Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

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The Idea in Brief The Idea in Practice

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Women occupy 40% of all managerial posi- tions in the United States. But only 6% of the Fortune 500’s top executives are female. And just 2% of those firms have women CEOs.

We’ve long blamed such numbers on the “glass ceiling,” the notion that women suc- cessfully climb the corporate hierarchy until they’re blocked just below the summit. But the problem stems from discrimination op- erating at all ranks, not just the top, say Eagly and Carli.

Therefore, to move more women into your company’s executive suite, you must attack all barriers to advancement simulta- neously. For example, prepare women for line management with demanding assign- ments. Use objective criteria to measure performance. And give working mothers additional time to prove themselves worthy of promotion.

Women’s leadership style—characterized by innovating, building trust and empower- ing followers—is ideally suited to today’s business challenges. Tackle the obstacles to women’s progress, and you’ll increase your firm’s competitive prowess.

Eagly and Carli recommend these strategies for increasing the number of women in top positions in your firm:

UNDERSTAND THE CAREER BARRIERS WOMEN ENCOUNTER

Extensive academic and government research studies identify these obstacles:

•

Prejudice:

Men are promoted more quickly than women with equivalent qualifica- tions, even in traditionally female settings such as nursing and education.

• Resistance to women’s leadership: People view successful female managers as more deceitful, pushy, selfish, and abrasive than successful male managers.

• Leadership style issues: Many female lead- ers struggle to reconcile qualities people prefer in women (compassion for others) with qualities people think leaders need to succeed (assertion and control).

• Family demands: Women are still the ones who interrupt their careers to handle work/ family trade-offs. Overloaded, they lack time to engage in the social networking es- sential to advancement.

INTERVENE ON MULTIPLE FRONTS

Because of the interconnectedness of obsta- cles women face, companies that want more women leaders need to apply a variety of tac- tics simultaneously:

• Evaluate and reward women’s productivity by objective results, not by “number of hours at work.”

• Make performance-evaluation criteria ex- plicit, and design evaluation processes to limit the influence of evaluators’ biases.

• Instead of relying on informal social net- works and referrals to fill positions, use open-recruitment tools such as advertising and employment agencies.

• Avoid having a sole female member on any team. Outnumbered, women tend to be ignored by men.

• Encourage well-placed, widely esteemed individuals to mentor women.

• Ensure a critical mass of women in execu- tive positions to head off problems that come with tokenism. Women’s identities as women will become less salient to col- leagues than their individual competencies.

• Give women demanding developmental job experiences to train them for leadership positions.

• Establish family-friendly HR practices (in- cluding flextime, job sharing, and tele- commuting). You’ll help women stay in their jobs while rearing children, allow them to build social capital, and enable them eventually to compete for higher positions. Encourage men to participate in family-friendly benefits, too (for example, by providing paternity leave). When only women participate, their careers suffer be- cause companies expect them to be off the job while exercising those options.

• Give employees with significant parental responsibilities more time to show they’re qualified for promotion. Parents may need a year or two more than childless professionals.

• Establish alumni programs for women who need to step away from the work- force. Then tap their expertise to show that returning is possible. Consulting giant Booz Allen, for example, sees its alumni as a source of subcontractors.

This document is authorized for use only in Prof. Paul Arntson's MSC 496-0 at Northwestern University from Sep 2017 to Mar 2018.

Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

by Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli

harvard business review • september 2007 page 2

C O

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When you put all the pieces together, a new picture emerges for why

women don’t make it into the C-suite. It’s not the glass ceiling, but the

sum of many obstacles along the way.

If one has misdiagnosed a problem, then one is unlikely to prescribe an effective cure. This is the situation regarding the scarcity of women in top leadership. Because people with the best of intentions have misread the symptoms, the solutions that managers are investing in are not making enough of a difference.

That there is a problem is not in doubt. De- spite years of progress by women in the work- force (they now occupy more than 40% of all managerial positions in the United States), within the C-suite they remain as rare as hens’ teeth. Consider the most highly paid execu- tives of Fortune 500 companies—those with titles such as chairman, president, chief exec- utive officer, and chief operating officer. Of this group, only 6% are women. Most notably, only 2% of the CEOs are women, and only 15% of the seats on the boards of directors are held by women. The situation is not much different in other industrialized countries. In the 50 largest publicly traded corporations in each nation of the European Union, women

make up, on average, 11% of the top execu- tives and 4% of the CEOs and heads of boards. Just seven companies, or 1%, of Fortune maga- zine’s Global 500 have female CEOs. What is to blame for the pronounced lack of women in positions of power and authority?

In 1986 the Wall Street Journal’s Carol Hy- mowitz and Timothy Schellhardt gave the world an answer: “Even those few women who rose steadily through the ranks eventually crashed into an invisible barrier. The executive suite seemed within their grasp, but they just couldn’t break through the glass ceiling.” The metaphor, driven home by the article’s accom- panying illustration, resonated; it captured the frustration of a goal within sight but somehow unattainable. To be sure, there was a time when the barriers were absolute. Even within the career spans of 1980s-era executives, access to top posts had been explicitly denied. Con- sider comments made by President Richard Nixon, recorded on White House audiotapes and made public through the Freedom of In- formation Act. When explaining why he would

This document is authorized for use only in Prof. Paul Arntson's MSC 496-0 at Northwestern University from Sep 2017 to Mar 2018.

Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

harvard business review • september 2007 page 3

not appoint a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court, Nixon said, “I don’t think a woman should be in any government job whatso- ever…mainly because they are erratic. And emotional. Men are erratic and emotional, too, but the point is a woman is more likely to be.” In a culture where such opinions were widely held, women had virtually no chance of attain- ing influential leadership roles.

Times have changed, however, and the glass ceiling metaphor is now more wrong than right. For one thing, it describes an ab- solute barrier at a specific high level in organi- zations. The fact that there have been female chief executives, university presidents, state governors, and presidents of nations gives the lie to that charge. At the same time, the metaphor implies that women and men have equal access to entry- and midlevel positions. They do not. The image of a transparent ob- struction also suggests that women are being misled about their opportunities, because the impediment is not easy for them to see from a distance. But some impediments are not subtle. Worst of all, by depicting a single, unvarying obstacle, the glass ceiling fails to incorporate the complexity and variety of challenges that women can face in their lead- ership journeys. In truth, women are not turned away only as they reach the penulti- mate stage of a distinguished career. They dis- appear in various numbers at many points leading up to that stage.

Metaphors matter because they are part of the storytelling that can compel change. Be- lieving in the existence of a glass ceiling, people emphasize certain kinds of interven- tions: top-to-top networking, mentoring to increase board memberships, requirements for diverse candidates in high-profile succes- sion horse races, litigation aimed at punish- ing discrimination in the C-suite. None of these is counterproductive; all have a role to play. The danger arises when they draw atten- tion and resources away from other kinds of interventions that might attack the problem more potently. If we want to make better progress, it’s time to rename the challenge.

Walls All Around

A better metaphor for what confronts women in their professional endeavors is the laby- rinth. It’s an image with a long and varied his- tory in ancient Greece, India, Nepal, native

North and South America, medieval Europe, and elsewhere. As a contemporary symbol, it conveys the idea of a complex journey toward a goal worth striving for. Passage through a labyrinth is not simple or direct, but requires persistence, awareness of one’s progress, and a careful analysis of the puzzles that lie ahead. It is this meaning that we intend to convey. For women who aspire to top leadership, routes exist but are full of twists and turns, both unexpected and expected. Because all labyrinths have a viable route to the center, it is understood that goals are attainable. The metaphor acknowledges obstacles but is not ultimately discouraging.

If we can understand the various barriers that make up this labyrinth, and how some women find their way around them, we can work more effectively to improve the situa- tion. What are the obstructions that women run up against? Let’s explore them in turn.

Vestiges of prejudice. It is a well-established fact that men as a group still have the benefit of higher wages and faster promotions. In the United States in 2005, for example, women employed full-time earned 81 cents for every dollar that men earned. Is this true because of discrimination or simply because, with fewer family demands placed on them and longer ca- reers on average, men are able to gain superior qualifications? Literally hundreds of correla- tional studies by economists and sociologists have attempted to find the answer.

One of the most comprehensive of these studies was conducted by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The study was based on survey data from 1983 through 2000 from a representative sample of Americans. Because the same people responded to the survey re- peatedly over the years, the study provided accurate estimates of past work experience, which is important for explaining later wages.

The GAO researchers tested whether indi- viduals’ total wages could be predicted by sex and other characteristics. They included part-time and full-time employees in the sur- veys and took into account all the factors that they could estimate and that might affect earnings, such as education and work experi- ence. Without controls for these variables, the data showed that women earned about 44% less than men, averaged over the entire period from 1983 to 2000. With these controls in place, the gap was only about half as

Alice H. Eagly

(eagly@northwestern .edu) is a professor of psychology and holds the James Padilla Chair of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern Univer- sity, in Evanston, Illinois; she is also a faculty fellow at Northwestern’s Insti- tute for Policy Research. Linda L. Carli (lcarli@wellesley.edu) is an associate professor of psychology at Wellesley College, in Massachusetts; her current research focus is on gender discrimina- tion and other challenges faced by professional women. The two are co- authors of Through the Labyrinth: The Truth About How Women Become Leaders (Harvard Business School Press, forthcoming in October), from which this article is adapted.

This document is authorized for use only in Prof. Paul Arntson's MSC 496-0 at Northwestern University from Sep 2017 to Mar 2018.

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mailto:lcarli@wellesley.edu

Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

harvard business review • september 2007 page 4

large, but still substantial. The control factors that reduced the wage gap most were the dif- ferent employment patterns of men and women: Men undertook more hours of paid labor per year than women and had more years of job experience.

Although most variables affected the wages of men and women similarly, there were ex- ceptions. Marriage and parenthood, for in- stance, were associated with higher wages for men but not for women. In contrast, other characteristics, especially years of education, had a more positive effect on women’s wages than on men’s. Even after adjusting wages for all of the ways men and women differ, the GAO study, like similar studies, showed that women’s wages remained lower than men’s. The unexplained gender gap is consistent with the presence of wage discrimination.

Similar methods have been applied to the question of whether discrimination affects promotions. Evidently it does. Promotions come more slowly for women than for men with equivalent qualifications. One illustrative national study followed workers from 1980 to 1992 and found that white men were more likely to attain managerial positions than white women, black men, and black women. Controlling for other characteristics, such as education and hours worked per year, the study showed that white men were ahead of the other groups when entering the labor market and that their advantage in attaining managerial positions grew throughout their careers. Other research has underscored these findings. Even in culturally feminine settings such as nursing, librarianship, elementary education, and social work (all specifically studied by sociologist Christine Williams), men ascend to supervisory and administrative posi- tions more quickly than women.

The findings of correlational studies are supported by experimental research, in which subjects are asked to evaluate hypothetical in- dividuals as managers or job candidates, and all characteristics of these individuals are held constant except for their sex. Such efforts continue the tradition of the Goldberg para- digm, named for a 1968 experiment by Philip Goldberg. His simple, elegant study had stu- dent participants evaluate written essays that were identical except for the attached male or female name. The students were unaware that other students had received identical

material ascribed to a writer of the other sex. This initial experiment demonstrated an overall gender bias: Women received lower evaluations unless the essay was on a femi- nine topic. Some 40 years later, unfortu- nately, experiments continue to reveal the same kind of bias in work settings. Men are advantaged over equivalent women as candi- dates for jobs traditionally held by men as well as for more gender-integrated jobs. Similarly, male leaders receive somewhat more favorable evaluations than equivalent female leaders, especially in roles usually occupied by men.

Interestingly, however, there is little evi- dence from either the correlational or the experimental studies that the odds are stacked higher against women with each step up the ladder—that is, that women’s promo- tions become progressively less likely than men’s at higher levels within organizations. Instead, a general bias against women ap- pears to operate with approximately equal strength at all levels. The scarcity of female corporate officers is the sum of discrimination that has operated at all ranks, not evidence of a particular obstacle to advancement as women approach the top. The problem, in other words, is not a glass ceiling.

Resistance to women’s leadership. What’s behind the discrimination we’ve been describ- ing? Essentially, a set of widely shared con- scious and unconscious mental associations about women, men, and leaders. Study after study has affirmed that people associate women and men with different traits and link men with more of the traits that connote leadership. Kim Campbell, who briefly served as the prime minister of Canada in 1993, de- scribed the tension that results:

I don’t have a traditionally female way of speaking….I’m quite assertive. If I didn’t speak the way I do, I wouldn’t have been seen as a leader. But my way of speaking may have grated on people who were not used to hear- ing it from a woman. It was the right way for a leader to speak, but it wasn’t the right way for a woman to speak. It goes against type. In the language of psychologists, the clash

is between two sets of associations: commu- nal and agentic. Women are associated with communal qualities, which convey a concern for the compassionate treatment of others. They include being especially affectionate,

Marriage and

parenthood are

associated with higher

wages for men but not for

women.

This document is authorized for use only in Prof. Paul Arntson's MSC 496-0 at Northwestern University from Sep 2017 to Mar 2018.

Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

harvard business review • september 2007 page 5

helpful, friendly, kind, and sympathetic, as well as interpersonally sensitive, gentle, and soft-spoken. In contrast, men are associated with agentic qualities, which convey assertion and control. They include being especially aggressive, ambitious, dominant, self-confident, and forceful, as well as self-reliant and indi- vidualistic. The agentic traits are also associ- ated in most people’s minds with effective leadership—perhaps because a long history of male domination of leadership roles has made it difficult to separate the leader associ- ations from the male associations.

As a result, women leaders find themselves in a double bind. If they are highly commu- nal, they may be criticized for not being agen- tic enough. But if they are highly agentic, they may be criticized for lacking commun- ion. Either way, they may leave the impres- sion that they don’t have “the right stuff” for powerful jobs.

Given this double bind, it is hardly sur- prising that people are more resistant to women’s influence than to men’s. For exam- ple, in meetings at a global retail company, people responded more favorably to men’s overt attempts at influence than to women’s. In the words of one of this company’s female executives, “People often had to speak up to defend their turf, but when women did so, they were vilified. They were labeled ‘control freaks’; men acting the same way were called ‘passionate.’”

Studies have gauged reactions to men and women engaging in various types of domi- nant behavior. The findings are quite consis- tent. Nonverbal dominance, such as staring at others while speaking to them or pointing at people, is a more damaging behavior for women than for men. Verbally intimidating others can undermine a woman’s influence, and assertive behavior can reduce her chances of getting a job or advancing in her career. Simply disagreeing can sometimes get women into trouble. Men who disagree or otherwise act dominant get away with it more often than women do.

Self-promotion is similarly risky for women. Although it can convey status and competence, it is not at all communal. So while men can use bluster to get themselves noticed, modesty is expected even of highly accomplished women. Linguistics professor Deborah Tannen tells a story from her experience: “This [need for

modesty] was evident, for example, at a faculty meeting devoted to promotions, at which a woman professor’s success was described: She was extremely well published and well known in the field. A man commented with approval, ‘She wears it well.’ In other words, she was praised for not acting as successful as she was.”

Another way the double bind penalizes women is by denying them the full benefits of being warm and considerate. Because people expect it of women, nice behavior that seems noteworthy in men seems unimpressive in women. For example, in one study, helpful men reaped a lot of approval, but helpful women did not. Likewise, men got away with being unhelpful, but women did not. A differ- ent study found that male employees received more promotions when they reported higher levels of helpfulness to coworkers. But female employees’ promotions were not related to such altruism.

While one might suppose that men would have a double bind of their own, they in fact have more freedom. Several experiments and organizational studies have assessed reactions to behavior that is warm and friendly versus dominant and assertive. The findings show that men can communicate in a warm or a dominant manner, with no penalty either way. People like men equally well and are equally influenced by them regardless of their warmth.

It all amounts to a clash of assumptions when the average person confronts a woman in management. Perhaps this is why respon- dents in one study characterized the group “successful female managers” as more deceit- ful, pushy, selfish, and abrasive than “successful male managers.” In the absence of any evi- dence to the contrary, people suspect that such highly effective women must not be very likable or nice.

Issues of leadership style. In response to the challenges presented by the double bind, female leaders often struggle to cultivate an appropriate and effective leadership style— one that reconciles the communal qualities people prefer in women with the agentic qualities people think leaders need to succeed. Here, for instance, is how Marietta Nien-hwa Cheng described her transition to the role of symphony conductor:

I used to speak more softly, with a higher pitch. Sometimes my vocal cadences went up instead of down. I realized that these

Verbally intimidating

others can undermine a

woman’s influence, and

assertive behavior can

reduce her chances of

getting a job or

advancing in her career.

This document is authorized for use only in Prof. Paul Arntson's MSC 496-0 at Northwestern University from Sep 2017 to Mar 2018.

Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

harvard business review • september 2007 page 6

mannerisms lack the sense of authority. I strengthened my voice. The pitch has dropped….I have stopped trying to be ev- eryone’s friend. Leadership is not synony- mous with socializing. It’s difficult to pull off such a transforma-

tion while maintaining a sense of authenticity as a leader. Sometimes the whole effort can backfire. In the words of another female leader, “I think that there is a real penalty for a woman who behaves like a man. The men don’t like her and the women don’t either.” Women leaders worry a lot about these things, complicating the labyrinth that they negotiate. For example, Catalyst’s study of Fortune 1000 female executives found that 96% of them rated as critical or fairly impor- tant that they develop “a style with which male managers are comfortable.”

Does a distinct “female” leadership style exist? There seems to be a popular consensus

that it does. Consider, for example, journalist Michael Sokolove’s profile of Mike Krzyze- wski, head coach of the highly successful Duke University men’s basketball team. As Sokolove put it, “So what is the secret to Krzyzewski’s success? For starters, he coaches the way a woman would. Really.” Sokolove proceeded to describe Krzyzewski’s mentor- ing, interpersonally sensitive, and highly effective coaching style.

More scientifically, a recent meta-analysis integrated the results of 45 studies address- ing the question. To compare leadership skills, the researchers adopted a framework introduced by leadership scholar James MacGregor Burns that distinguishes be- tween transformational leadership and trans- actional leadership. Transformational leaders establish themselves as role models by gain- ing followers’ trust and confidence. They state future goals, develop plans to achieve those goals, and innovate, even when their organi- zations are generally successful. Such leaders mentor and empower followers, encouraging them to develop their full potential and thus to contribute more effectively to their organi- zations. By contrast, transactional leaders es- tablish give-and-take relationships that appeal to subordinates’ self-interest. Such leaders manage in the conventional manner of clari- fying subordinates’ responsibilities, rewarding them for meeting objectives, and correcting them for failing to meet objectives. Although transformational and transactional leadership styles are different, most leaders adopt at least some behaviors of both types. The re- searchers also allowed for a third category, called the laissez-faire style—a sort of non- leadership that concerns itself with none of the above, despite rank authority.

The meta-analysis found that, in general, female leaders were somewhat more transfor- mational than male leaders, especially when it came to giving support and encouragement to subordinates. They also engaged in more of the rewarding behaviors that are one aspect of transactional leadership. Meanwhile, men exceeded women on the aspects of transac- tional leadership involving corrective and disciplinary actions that are either active (timely) or passive (belated). Men were also more likely than women to be laissez-faire leaders, who take little responsibility for managing. These findings add up to a star-

Is It Only a Question of Time?

It is a common perception that women will steadily gain greater access to leader- ship roles, including elite positions. For example, university students who are queried about the future power of men and women say that women’s power will increase. Polls have shown that most Americans expect a woman to be elected president or vice president within their lifetimes. Both groups are extrapolating women’s recent gains into the future, as if our society were on a continuous march toward gender equality.

But social change does not proceed without struggle and conflict. As women gain greater equality, a portion of people react against it. They long for traditional roles. In fact, signs of a pause in progress toward gender equality have appeared on many fronts. A review of longitudinal studies reveals several areas in which a sharp upward trend in the 1970s and 1980s has been followed by a slowing and flattening in recent years (for instance, in the percentage of managers who are women). The pause is also evident in some attitudinal data—like the percent- age of people who approve of female

bosses and who believe that women are at least as well suited as men for politics.

Social scientists have proposed vari- ous theories to explain this pause. Some, such as social psychologist Cecilia Ridgeway, believe that social change is activating “people’s deep seated inter- ests in maintaining clear cultural under- standings of gender difference.” Others believe progress has reached its limit given the continuing organization of family life by gender, coupled with em- ployer policies that favor those who are not hampered by primary responsibility for child rearing.

It may simply be that women are col- lectively catching their breath before pressing for more change. In the past century, feminist activism arose when women came to view themselves as col- lectively subjected to illegitimate and unfair treatment. But recent polls show less conviction about the presence of discrimination, and feminism does not have the cultural relevance it once had. The lessening of activism on behalf of all women puts pressure on each woman to find her own way.

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Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

harvard business review • september 2007 page 7

tling conclusion, given that most leadership research has found the transformational style (along with the rewards and positive incen- tives associated with the transactional style) to be more suited to leading the modern or- ganization. The research tells us not only that men and women do have somewhat different leadership styles, but also that women’s ap- proaches are the more generally effective— while men’s often are only somewhat effective or actually hinder effectiveness.

Another part of this picture, based on a sep- arate meta-analysis, is that women adopt a more participative and collaborative style than men typically favor. The reason for this differ- ence is unlikely to be genetic. Rather, it may be that collaboration can get results without seeming particularly masculine. As women navigate their way through the double bind, they seek ways to project authority without re- lying on the autocratic behaviors that people find so jarring in women. A viable path is to bring others into decision making and to lead as an encouraging teacher and positive role model. (However, if there is not a critical mass of other women to affirm the legitimacy of a participative style, female leaders usually con- form to whatever style is typical of the men— and that is sometimes autocratic.)

Demands of family life. For many women, the most fateful turns in the labyrinth are the ones taken under pressure of family responsi- bilities. Women continue to be the ones who interrupt their careers, take more days off, and work part-time. As a result, they have fewer years of job experience and fewer hours of employment per year, which slows their ca- reer progress and reduces their earnings.

In one study of Chicago lawyers, researchers sought to understand why women were much less likely than men to hold the leadership po- sitions in large law firms—the positions that are most highly paid and that confer (argu- ably) the highest prestige. They found that women were no less likely than men to begin their careers at such firms but were more likely to leave them for positions in the public sector or corporate positions. The reasons for their departures were concentrated in work/family trade-offs. Among the relatively few women who did become partner in a firm, 60% had no children, and the minority who had chil- dren generally had delayed childbearing until attaining partner status.

There is no question that, while men in- creasingly share housework and child rearing, the bulk of domestic work still falls on women’s shoulders. We know this from time- diary studies, in which people record what they are doing during each hour of a 24-hour day. So, for example, in the United States married women devoted 19 hours per week on average to housework in 2005, while mar- ried men contributed 11 hours. That’s a huge improvement over 1965 numbers, when women spent a whopping 34 hours per week to men’s five, but it is still a major inequity. And the situation looks worse when child care hours are added.

Although it is common knowledge that mothers provide more child care than fathers, few people realize that mothers provide more than they did in earlier generations—despite the fact that fathers are putting in a lot more time than in the past. National studies have compared mothers and fathers on the amount of their primary child care, which consists of close interaction not combined with housekeeping or other activities. Mar- ried mothers increased their hours per week from 10.6 in 1965 to 12.9 in 2000, and married fathers increased theirs from 2.6 to 6.5. Thus, though husbands have taken on more domes- tic work, the work/family conflict has not eased for women; the gain has been offset by escalating pressures for intensive parenting and the increasing time demands of most high-level careers.

Even women who have found a way to re- lieve pressures from the home front by shar- ing child care with husbands, other family members, or paid workers may not enjoy the full workplace benefit of having done so. Decision makers often assume that mothers have domestic responsibilities that make it inappropriate to promote them to demanding positions. As one participant in a study of the federal workforce explained, “I mean, there were 2 or 3 names [of women] in the hat, and they said, ‘I don’t want to talk about her be- cause she has children who are still home in these [evening] hours.’ Now they don’t pose that thing about men on the list, many of whom also have children in that age group.”

Underinvestment in social capital. Perhaps the most destructive result of the work/family balancing act so many women must perform is that it leaves very little time for socializing

Mothers provide more

child care hours than

they did in earlier

generations—despite the

fact that fathers are

putting in a lot more time

than in the past.

This document is authorized for use only in Prof. Paul Arntson's MSC 496-0 at Northwestern University from Sep 2017 to Mar 2018.

Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

harvard business review • september 2007 page 8

with colleagues and building professional net- works. The social capital that accrues from such “nonessential” parts of work turns out to be quite essential indeed. One study yielded the following description of managers who advanced rapidly in hierarchies: Fast-track managers “spent relatively more time and effort socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders than did their less successful counterparts…[and] did not give much time or attention to the traditional management activities of planning, decision making, and controlling or to the human resource manage- ment activities of motivating/reinforcing, staffing, training/developing, and managing conflict.” This suggests that social capital is even more necessary to managers’ advance- ment than skillful performance of traditional managerial tasks.

Even given sufficient time, women can find it difficult to engage in and benefit from in- formal networking if they are a small minor- ity. In such settings, the influential networks are composed entirely or almost entirely of men. Breaking into those male networks can be hard, especially when men center their networks on masculine activities. The recent gender discrimination lawsuit against Wal- Mart provides examples of this. For instance, an executive retreat took the form of a quail- hunting expedition at Sam Walton’s ranch in Texas. Middle managers’ meetings included visits to strip clubs and Hooters restaurants, and a sales conference attended by thousands of store managers featured a football theme. One executive received feedback that she probably would not advance in the company because she didn’t hunt or fish.

Management Interventions That Work

Taking the measure of the labyrinth that con- fronts women leaders, we see that it begins with prejudices that benefit men and penalize women, continues with particular resistance to women’s leadership, includes questions of leadership style and authenticity, and—most dramatically for many women—features the challenge of balancing work and family re- sponsibilities. It becomes clear that a woman’s situation as she reaches her peak career years is the result of many turns at many challeng- ing junctures. Only a few individual women have made the right combination of moves to

land at the center of power—but as for the rest, there is usually no single turning point where their progress was diverted and the prize was lost.

What’s to be done in the face of such a multifaceted problem? A solution that is often proposed is for governments to imple- ment and enforce antidiscrimination legisla- tion and thereby require organizations to eliminate inequitable practices. However, analysis of discrimination cases that have gone to court has shown that legal remedies can be elusive when gender inequality results from norms embedded in organizational structure and culture. The more effective ap- proach is for organizations to appreciate the subtlety and complexity of the problem and to attack its many roots simultaneously. More specifically, if a company wants to see more women arrive in its executive suite, it should do the following:

Increase people’s awareness of the psycho- logical drivers of prejudice toward female leaders, and work to dispel those percep- tions. Raising awareness of ingrained bias has been the aim of many diversity-training initi- atives, and no doubt they have been more helpful than harmful. There is the danger they will be undermined, however, if their lessons are not underscored by what managers say and do in the course of day-to-day work.

Change the long-hours norm. Especially in the context of knowledge work, it can be hard to assess individuals’ relative contributions, and managers may resort to “hours spent at work” as the prime indicator of someone’s worth to the organization. To the extent an or- ganization can shift the focus to objective measures of productivity, women with family demands on their time but highly productive work habits will receive the rewards and en- couragement they deserve.

Reduce the subjectivity of performance evaluation. Greater objectivity in evalua- tions also combats the effects of lingering prejudice in both hiring and promotion. To ensure fairness, criteria should be explicit and evaluation processes designed to limit the influence of decision makers’ conscious and unconscious biases.

Use open-recruitment tools, such as adver- tising and employment agencies, rather than relying on informal social networks and refer- rals to fill positions. Recruitment from within

One study suggests that

social capital is even

more necessary to

managers’ advancement

than skillful

performance of

traditional managerial

tasks.

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Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

harvard business review • september 2007 page 9

organizations also should be transparent, with postings of open positions in appropriate venues. Research has shown that such person- nel practices increase the numbers of women in managerial roles.

Ensure a critical mass of women in execu- tive positions—not just one or two women— to head off the problems that come with tokenism. Token women tend to be pegged into narrow stereotypical roles such as “seduc- tress,” “mother,” “pet,” or “iron maiden.” (Or more colorfully, as one woman banker put it, “When you start out in banking, you are a slut or a geisha.”) Pigeonholing like this limits women’s options and makes it difficult for them to rise to positions of responsibility. When women are not a small minority, their identities as women become less salient, and colleagues are more likely to react to them in terms of their individual competencies.

Avoid having a sole female member of any team. Top management tends to divide its small population of women managers among many projects in the interests of introducing diversity to them all. But several studies have found that, so outnumbered, the women tend to be ignored by the men. A female vice presi- dent of a manufacturing company described how, when she or another woman ventures an idea in a meeting, it tends to be overlooked: “It immediately gets lost in the conversation. Then two minutes later, a man makes the same suggestion, and it’s ‘Wow! What a great idea!’ And you sit there and think, ‘What just happened?’” As women reach positions of higher power and authority, they increas- ingly find themselves in gender-imbalanced groups—and some find themselves, for the first time, seriously marginalized. This is part of the reason that the glass ceiling metaphor resonates with so many. But in fact, the prob- lem can be present at any level.

Help shore up social capital. As we’ve dis- cussed, the call of family responsibilities is mainly to blame for women’s underinvestment in networking. When time is scarce, this social activity is the first thing to go by the wayside. Organizations can help women appreciate why it deserves more attention. In particular, women gain from strong and supportive men- toring relationships and connections with powerful networks. When a well-placed indi- vidual who possesses greater legitimacy (often a man) takes an interest in a woman’s career,

her efforts to build social capital can proceed far more efficiently.

Prepare women for line management with appropriately demanding assignments. Women, like men, must have the benefit of developmental job experiences if they are to qualify for promotions. But, as one woman executive wrote, “Women have been shunted off into support areas for the last 30 years, rather than being in the business of doing business, so the pool of women trained to as- sume leadership positions in any large com- pany is very small.” Her point was that women should be taught in business school to insist on line jobs when they enter the workforce. One company that has taken up the challenge has been Procter & Gamble. According to a report by Claudia Deutsch in the New York Times, the company was experiencing an exec- utive attrition rate that was twice as high for women as for men. Some of the women re- ported having to change companies to land jobs that provided challenging work. P&G’s subsequent efforts to bring more women into line management both improved its overall retention of women and increased the num- ber of women in senior management.

Establish family-friendly human resources practices. These may include flextime, job sharing, telecommuting, elder care provisions, adoption benefits, dependent child care op- tions, and employee-sponsored on-site child care. Such support can allow women to stay in their jobs during the most demanding years of child rearing, build social capital, keep up to date in their fields, and eventually compete for higher positions. A study of 72 large U.S. firms showed (controlling for other variables) that family-friendly HR practices in place in 1994 increased the proportion of women in senior management over the subsequent five years.

Allow employees who have significant parental responsibility more time to prove themselves worthy of promotion. This rec- ommendation is particularly directed to organi- zations, many of them professional services firms, that have established “up or out” career progressions. People not ready for promotion at the same time as the top performers in their cohort aren’t simply left in place— they’re asked to leave. But many parents (most often mothers), while fully capable of reaching that level of achievement, need extra time— perhaps a year or two—to get there. Forcing

This document is authorized for use only in Prof. Paul Arntson's MSC 496-0 at Northwestern University from Sep 2017 to Mar 2018.

Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

harvard business review • september 2007 page 10

them off the promotion path not only reduces the number of women reaching top manage- ment positions, but also constitutes a failure by the firm to capitalize on its early investment in them.

Welcome women back. It makes sense to give highperforming women who step away from the workforce an opportunity to return to responsible positions when their circumstances change. Some companies have established “alumni” programs, often because they see former employees as potential sources of new business. A few companies have gone further to activate these networks for other purposes, as well. (Procter & Gamble taps alumni for inno- vation purposes; Booz Allen sees its alumni ranks as a source of subcontractors.) Keeping lines of communication open can convey the message that a return may be possible.

Encourage male participation in family- friendly benefits. Dangers lurk in family- friendly benefits that are used only by women. Exercising options such as generous parental leave and part-time work slows down women’s careers. More profoundly, having many more women than men take such benefits can harm the careers of women in general because of the expectation that they may well exercise those options. Any effort toward greater family friendliness should actively recruit male participation to avoid inadvertently making it harder for women to gain access to essential managerial roles.

Managers can be forgiven if they find the foregoing list a tall order. It’s a wide-ranging set of interventions and still far from exhaus- tive. The point, however, is just that: Organiza- tions will succeed in filling half their top management slots with women—and women who are the true performance equals of their male counterparts—only by attacking all the reasons they are absent today. Glass ceiling– inspired programs and projects can do just so

much if the leakage of talented women is hap- pening on every lower floor of the building. In- dividually, each of these interventions has been shown to make a difference. Collectively, we believe, they can make all the difference.

The View from Above

Imagine visiting a formal garden and finding within it a high hedgerow. At a point along its vertical face, you spot a rectangle—a neatly pruned and inviting doorway. Are you aware as you step through that you are entering a labyrinth? And, three doorways later, as the reality of the puzzle settles in, do you have any idea how to proceed? This is the situation in which many women find themselves in their career endeavors. Ground-level perplexity and frustration make every move uncertain.

Labyrinths become infinitely more tracta- ble when seen from above. When the eye can take in the whole of the puzzle—the starting position, the goal, and the maze of walls— solutions begin to suggest themselves. This has been the goal of our research. Our hope is that women, equipped with a map of the barriers they will confront on their path to professional achievement, will make more informed choices. We hope that managers, too, will understand where their efforts can facilitate the progress of women. If women are to achieve equality, women and men will have to share leadership equally. With a greater understanding of what stands in the way of gender-balanced leadership, we draw nearer to attaining it in our time.

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When the eye can take in

the whole of the puzzle—

the starting position, the

goal, and the maze of

walls—solutions begin to

suggest themselves.

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