Although over the last three decades women have achieved parity with men in almost all sectors of society, there are still barriers that prevent women from holding leadership positions.
Is society still not ready for that? What do men fear? Is there something that women worry about in leadership as well?
Enhancing women’s leadership will contribute to building better societies. Patriarchal institutions need the maternal side as well. Women leaders are a stepping stone towards more equal communities.
According to the doctorate dissertation of Dr. Shawn Andrews, Gender Barriers and Solutions to Leadership, “Women represent a full 60% of bachelor’s degrees earned at U.S. universities and also outpace men in the total number of master’s and doctorate degrees.”
So why do women constitute only 7.2% of the total Fortune 500 companies’ leadership? What hinders women from leadership roles?
According to Dr. Andrews, there are three main barriers:
Institutional and individual mindsets (bias and stereotypes), lack of flexibility balancing family and work, and women’s exclusions from social events such as golf courses and simple after-work drinks.
Stereotypes and biases are the most difficult barriers to address. In effect, they have an old origin and are rooted in people’s mindsets.
For instance, there are very few commercials that depict women as leaders. There are still some jobs that people stereotypically prefer a specific gender, such as nursing. Take the case of a nurse, people still picture in their minds that a nurse must be a woman but why not a man instead?
The same happens with women leaders. People still expect to find a man in that role.
Furthermore, women have more difficulties managing family duties and work. This is because society still associates women with house chores and care of the children.
Since women’s emancipation, they bear more responsibilities at work, that combined with family commitments, prevent them from leadership roles.
Finally, golf courses and informal meetings have become main social events where men gather and establish important relationships with CEOs and head company members.
However, often men assume that women don’t want to take part in these types of events, so they don’t invite them
Dr. Andrews wrote.
In this way, women are excluded from opportunities to be better known by head company members.
Solutions to these barriers are in women’s hands.
For instance, to overcome men colleagues’ stereotypes, women might consistently “communicate their desire to advance, travel or take a new assignment. This type of communication will put to rest any assumption made about them,” Dr. Andrews wrote.
Another strategy that women may adopt to change individual mindsets is not to volunteer in every home chores activity. They might let others, including men, contributing to those tasks.
Moreover, women should promote in their company new policies that facilitate managing family-work tasks.