Tag Archives: Discrimination

Three Factors Affecting Women in Corporate Leadership

Leave a reply

Sara King

The Center for Creative Leadership’s Sara King and Northwestern University professor Alice Eagly examine the obstacles, pressures and trade-offs women face at every stage of their careers to analyze the reason that only three percent of Fortune 500 leaders are women.

Alice Eagly

King’s and Eagly’s research identified three factors affecting women in corporate leadership roles:

•    “Walking the narrow band” of acceptable behaviors: tough and demanding to be credible and effective but “easy to be with”; demonstrating the desire to succeed but not appearing “too” ambitious

•    “Owned by the job”, with the expectation of availability and productivity 24/7

•    “Traversing the Balance Beam” of conflicting role demands and limited time to fulfill them

They provide familiar suggestions:
•    Seek out mentors and advocates

•    Take risks, accept challenges to demonstrate adaptability, versatility.
Communicate willingness to change jobs and take on special projects to gain experience.
Learn from research findings that women are not viewed as promotable if they stay in one area of expertise or have a narrow functional role.

•    Communicate decisions, demand results, even if unpopular or requiring change management and persuasion

•    Project confident. Projecting an effective leadership image requires confidence. Don’t undermine good results with a weak or too modest self-image

Through the Labyrinth: The Truth About How Women Become Leaders.
Alice H. Eagly  Linda L. Carli, 2007 Harvard Business School Press.
The Center for Creative Leadership showcased related research that identified five themes among high-achieving women: agency, authenticity, connection, self-clarity and wholeness.

Agency, taking control of one’s career:
•    Analyze career steps
•    Set realistic, specific goals and develop a plan for achieving them
•    Ask for challenges outside your current functional orientation
•    Seek recognition
•    Ask for what you deserve

Authenticity, being genuine, being yourself by developing self-awareness to clarify   values, preferences, skills, acceptable trade-offs and acceptable sacrifices.

Connection, by taking time for people, to build personal and professional relationships, networking, finding a mentor, establishing a personal “board of directors” to provide support and feedback.

Self-clarity from seeking feedback and reflecting on one’s values, motivations, behaviors, strengths, weaknesses, impact on others.
This is a continuing process of evaluating changes in your needs, motivations, goals, values, while observing patterns, and being open to possibilities.

Wholeness from seeking roles beyond work or to unite different life roles, by prioritizing commitments and saying “no” to low-priority roles or obligations.

-*What solutions have you seen most effective in navigating the challenges facing women seeking leadership roles?

LinkedIn Open Group Catalyst
Twitter: @kathrynwelds
Google+
Facebook Notes:
Blog: – Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary

©Kathryn Welds

Female and Minority Supervisor Influence

3 Replies

Katherine L. Milkman

Wharton operations and information management professor Katherine L. Milkman and Harvard Business School professor Kathleen L. McGinn, investigated how race and gender affect career mobility for young professionals, especially those entering career fields where they must be promoted to remain (law firms, universities, consulting firms).

Kathleen L. McGinn

They examined five years of personnel data and employee interviews from a large national law firm and found a correlation between the number of female supervisors and the probability of promotion and retention of junior-level female employees, published in Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge as “Looking Up and Looking Out: Career Mobility Effects of Demographic Similarity among Professionals.”

The enabling benefit of demographically similar employees and supervisors was accompanied by a perhaps surprising correlation.
Work groups with a high number of same-gender or same-race underrepresented minorities had a higher attrition rate, attributed to employees’ perception that the competition reduced their chances for promotion.

Milkman and McGinn noted that placing many underrepresented employees (women and underrepresented minorities) in the same group may lead to structural marginalization, or “ghettoes” of low-power.
This effect was present in groups composed mostly of men.
In contrast, the exit decisions of white and Asian employees did not seem affected by working in groups with other white and Asian employees.

The researchers cited the massively unequal representation of women and minorities among partners in professional services organizations.
A 2009 study that showed women made up 46% of associates but 19% of partners across U.S. law firms, and racial minorities represented 20% of the lawyers across the country but only 6% of partners.

Milkman is currently analyzing data on the role that race and gender play in sponsorship or patronage in academia.
She sent emails to 6,500 professors at academic institutions across the country from purported male, female, white, or minority “students”  requesting a 10-minute meeting for one-time mentoring, either that day or next week.

She found that “female” and “minority” students received significantly fewer responses from prospective mentors, particularly when asked for assistance in the future.
She noted that these findings contrast with the popular expectation of less overt or unconscious discrimination in academic settings.

-*How have you seem race and gender affect career mobility in the past year?

LinkedIn Open Group – Diversity – A World of Change 
Twitter: @kathrynwelds
Google+
Facebook Notes:
Blog: – Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary

©Kathryn Welds