A serious problem that many businesses and corporations around the world face is a lack of women’s representation in the workplace. The difference between the number of women in leadership positions compared to men, especially women of color, is quite drastic. According to businessnewsdaily.com (May 2019), only 1 in 5 C-Suite offices, such as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, are women and only 1 in 30 are women of color. 40% of senior-level women reported being the only woman in the room in their place of work.
These trends start right at the beginning of a woman’s career. According to industrytoday.com (November 2020), For every 100 men, 72 women are promoted from entry-level positions, leading to women holding only 38% of managerial-level jobs (as opposed to men who hold 62%). This disparity for women in the path to leadership is referred to as the “broken rung.” Fewer women in managerial positions means fewer women to promote to senior-level positions and the same is true for promotions to the C-Suite.
This cycle is made systemic as men are more likely to promote men and women are more likely to promote women, according to a study by PayScale (May 2018). This also causes the pay gap to widen over the span of an employee’s career. By mid career, men are 70 percent more likely to be in executive roles than women. By late career, men are 142 percent more likely to be in VP or C-Suite roles. However, women are more likely to remain in individual contributor positions over the course of their career.
COVID-19 has also impacted women more severely than men. Due to the challenges created by the COVID-19 crisis, as many as two million women are considering leaving the workforce. If they do, we’ll end up with far fewer women in leadership—and far fewer women on track to be future leaders. You can reference Mckinsey.com (September 2020) to learn about several of the obstacles that women are more affected by.
The pressures of the pandemic are causing some employees—especially women—to consider downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce. These factors include, but are not limited to; lack of flexibility and feeling like they have to work all hours, caregiving burdens followed by the negative stigma that come with, and difficulty sharing with their teammates or managers the challenges they are facing.
Although these factors hurt all employees, women experience these challenges at higher rates. For example, mothers are more likely than fathers to worry that their performance is being negatively judged due to their caregiving responsibilities. Women in senior-leadership roles are more likely than men at the same level to feel as though they are “always on.” And women of color are more negatively affected by these things compared white women.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to read the other articles: Pink Tax, Beauty Standards, and Catcalling.