Senior men and senior women – choice versus opportunity

Research just published by Columbia Business School in New York contradicts the long standing view that senior women actively work to prevent other women progressing to senior level roles, and are harsher in their management of female subordinates than men.

Columbia’s findings from their 20 year project were that when a woman had been appointed to the CEO role, other women were more likely to attain senior positions. However when a woman had been appointed to a senior role that was not the top job, the likelihood of other women following them to executive levels fell by 50%. The Columbia researchers believe the most likely explanation for the failure of more women to break through was a desire among men to exclude them from the boardroom.

This reinforces the charge that “Pale, Male, and Stale” executives are actively resisting sustainable advancement of women into senior level roles, and do not wish to go beyond token appointments of women. Furthermore the 2015 update on Women on Boards - Davies Review, reported that whilst female take up of FTSE 100 Board positions reached 23.5% this was largely driven by the appointment of women into Non Executive Director roles, with the proportion of women occupying Executive roles only increasing to 8.6% - an unsustainable trend.

These various data points will no doubt amplify the calls for something to be done about (i.e. against) the Pale, Male, and Stale executives, i.e. punitive actions. Could the key to positively helping women into the boardroom be to help men out of the boardroom – but in a positive way?

As a male who has occupied senior executive roles in a global successful company, and probably regarded as pale, male and stale, I can empathise with women who are frustrated about lack of progress. I can also empathise with senior men who want more flexibility in how they operate their work life balance operate.

The key to helping men and women positively is to properly address the choice versus opportunity challenge. Women now feel after many years focus on flexibility in employment that they have a choice on work, life and family factors, e.g. when to step out of work, when to return to work, or whether to work part time. However women do not feel they have the same opportunity to progress to senior roles. Conversely men feel they have the opportunity to progress to senior roles, but do not have the choice to do anything other than work full-time for all of their career – indeed they feel stuck on the hamster wheel 24/365, even when on holiday. This is compounded by men’s self-confidence being significantly linked to their ability to deliver for their family - a legacy of the hunter gatherer role, you could say. Could the key to sustainable advancement of women into the boardroom be to open a door through the glass ceiling for women by finding ways to help men out, so that they are more willing to help women into the senior roles? To do so we need to take a number of measures to change both the culture and climate in senior leadership teams so that men can ask for flexibility without the fear of it adversely impacting their career.

This will require us to deploy many of the initiatives we have previously used to create choice for women – creating role models who demonstrate the new way of operating whilst continuing to succeed, and introducing programmes to enable men to work part-time or job share in senior roles.

However for these to be successful we need brave and visionary CEOs who are willing to set the new direction, demonstrably support the early adopters, and create a culture of sustainable diversity. When we have done that, we will automatically create more space and a more open climate for women to feel they can have true opportunity.

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