While investigating the underlying reasons behind the lack of women that occupy C-suite positions in corporate America, there are a number of things that stand out as significant and noteworthy. To preface this, it’s important to highlight that the 2021 reports from Catalyst.org show women make up 57.7 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 52 percent of managerial positions in the workforce. Despite this superficial equity, there are only 44 female CEOs among the top 500 companies in terms of net worth, making up just 8.8 percent of the CEO landscape.
Through my research, two key factors into why there are fewer women CEOs are gender-based stereotypes about women’s roles and the lack of leadership opportunities women have as a result of these biases in childhood and through the early stages of their careers. In early life, women who are taught to conform to traditional gender norms are found to be less independent, and less likely to find themselves in situations that could develop their leadership abilities. Women leaders facing a double bind has also been found to hold women leaders back, as they often face criticism regardless of the leadership style they choose and its effectiveness.
Though some programs and policies have been put in place to help women move up the corporate ranks, there is definitely a lot more that work can be done. Some of this work I am referencing are the programs that many industries have adopted to ensure there are women in entry-level positions. For example, many banks on Wall Street have developed internship programs that are strictly for women and minority groups. Despite these small steps, there are policy changes that could be made to tighten the gap. One thing that comes to mind for me is mandated diversity among corporate boards. Given that these boards ultimately decide on which employees become executives, a policy change to enforce an equal number of men and women board members would mean equal representation for both genders on major decisions. Continued education is also extremely important in my opinion. It would be a great step forward if gender discrimination education was required for corporate employees and board members.
While doing this research, two questions continued to resurface for me. The first of which being; if we, as a society, were to not make any policy changes to help more women become executives, would we see the gap close marginally over time? I personally think we would see it close a little bit over time due to the way people my age are being educated and trained to identify their inherent biases and not act upon them, and also because more women my age are getting degrees and occupying leadership roles. Regardless, policy changes are necessary. The other idea for future research I would love to see explored is to study how impactful childhood leadership development is for women on their confidence and future leadership abilities, and also how the exposure to gender stereotypes on childhood impacts women’s confidence in their abilities.
This class and this project have well-educated me on some of the issues we have today in terms of gender inequality. I understand now how hard it has been for women with high career aspirations to achieve their goals and the barriers that women face in trying to break the “glass ceiling.” I believe the most important thing I took from this class is the ability to identify gender-based stereotyping and inequality, and hopefully be able to educate others on what I learned when I inevitably witness some sort of gender discrimination or bias.
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