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On
Women and
Leadership
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS
Boston, Massachusetts
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Copyright
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First eBook Edition: Nov 2018
ISBN: 9781633696723
eISBN: 9781633696730
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership
by Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli
Do Women Lack Ambition?
by Anna Fels
Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers
by Herminia Ibarra, Robin Ely, and Deborah Kolb
Women and the Vision Thing
by Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru
The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why
by Deborah Tannen
The Memo Every Woman Keeps in Her Desk
by Kathleen Reardon
Why Diversity Programs Fail
by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev
Now What?
by Joan C. Williams and Suzanne Lebsock
The Battle for Female Talent in Emerging Markets
by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid
Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success
by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce
BONUS
Sheryl Sandberg: The HBR Interview
An interview with Sheryl Sandberg by Adi Ignatius
About the Contributors
Index
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Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership
by Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli
IF ONE HAS MISDIAGNOSED A PROBLEM, then one is unlikely to prescribe an effective cure. This is the situation regarding the scarcity of women in top leadership. Because people with the best of intentions have misread the symptoms, the solutions that managers are investing in are not making enough of a difference.
That there is a problem is not in doubt. Despite years of progress by women in the workforce (they now occupy more than 40% of all managerial positions in the United States), within the C-suite they remain as rare as hensâ teeth. Consider the most highly paid executives of Fortune 500 companiesâthose with titles such as chairman, president, chief executive officer, and chief operating officer. Of this group, only 6% are women. Most notably, only 2% of the CEOs are women, and only 15% of the seats on the boards of directors are held by women. The situation is not much different in other industrialized countries. In the 50 largest publicly traded corporations in each nation of the European Union, women make up, on average, 11% of the top executives and 4% of the CEOs and heads of boards. Just seven companies, or 1%, of Fortune magazineâs Global 500 have female CEOs. What is to blame for the pronounced lack of women in positions of power and authority?
In 1986 the Wall Street Journalâs Carol Hymowitz and Timothy Schellhardt gave the world an answer: âEven those few women who rose steadily through the ranks eventually crashed into an invisible barrier. The executive suite seemed within their grasp, but they just couldnât break through the glass ceiling.â The metaphor, driven home by the articleâs accompanying illustration, resonated; it captured the frustration of a goal within sight but somehow unattainable. To be sure, there was a time when the barriers were absolute. Even within the career spans of 1980s-era executives, access to top posts had been explicitly denied. Consider comments made by President Richard Nixon, recorded on White House audiotapes and made public through the Freedom of Information Act. When explaining why he would not appoint a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court, Nixon said, âI donât think a woman should be in any government job whatsoever. . .mainly because they are erratic. And emotional. Men are erratic and emotional, too, but the point is a woman is more likely to be.â In a culture where such opinions were widely held, women had virtually no chance of attaining influential leadership roles.
Times have changed, however, and the glass ceiling metaphor is now more wrong than right. For one thing, it describes an absolute barrier at a specific high level in organizations. The fact that there have been female chief executives, university presidents, state governors, and presidents of nations gives the lie to that charge. At the same time, the metaphor implies that women and men have equal access to entry- and midlevel positions. They do not. The image of a transparent obstruction also suggests that women are being misled about their opportunities, because the impediment is not easy for them to see from a distance. But some impediments are not subtle. Worst of all, by depicting a single, unvarying obstacle, the glass ceiling fails to incorporate the complexity and variety of challenges that women can face in their leadership journeys. In truth, women are not turned away only as they reach the penultimate stage of a distinguished career. They disappear in various numbers at many points leading up to that stage.
Metaphors matter because they are part of the storytelling that can compel change. Believing in the existence of a glass ceiling, people emphasize certain kinds of interventions: top-to-top networking, mentoring to increase board memberships, requirements for diverse candidates in high-profile succession horse races, litigation aimed at punishing discrimination in the C-suite. None of these is counterproductive; all have a role to play. The danger arises when they draw attention and resources away from other kinds of interventions that might attack the problem more potently. If we want to make better progress, itâs time to rename the challenge.
