I’ve been tracking research on women in leadership for over a decade now. It started when I first began coaching and wanted to get smart on leadership in general. I kept coming across intriguing articles on the good impacts women had on organizations when they were in leadership positions. The research told me that some of what I thought were liabilities in my own leadership style were actually benefits. I’d never heard this before, from mentors, colleagues or business magazines. So I started exploring more deeply.
It turns out that when research challenges stereotypes, we learn things and expand our thinking. Ten years later I’m still learning.
We now catalog the most important research on women in leadership in the Guide to Women’s Leadership and update it about twice a year. Thanks for my colleague, Jennifer V. Miller we keep this extensive documentation pretty current. The guide now includes 109 citations in four categories and 27 subcategories :
- The Facts on Women in Leadership
- Mentoring Tips
- Coaching Tips
- Personal Brand and Career Advice
Updates to the Research on Women in Leadership
This time we have a pretty meaty update. Here are the main additions and updates to the Guide as of September 2022:
- Although public boards of directors have made strides in female representation, this progress in public companies is not matched by large privately held organizations, 49% of which have zero female board representation.
- Women looking to get into the most senior management and executive level roles benefit from cultivating smaller and deeper networks of women that provide peer mentoring on how to work effectively within business cultures that often stereotype women and present other obstacles.
- Many efforts to help women get into leadership—promoted by both women and men with good intentions—often focus on fixing the women instead of shifting the culture in ways that would hold men more accountable for their behaviors.
- The pay gap widens as women age.
- In the wake of #MeToo, many senior men have become reluctant to mentor women for fear of being accused of inappropriate behavior.
- Lots of interesting stats from AAUW on the women and the pay gap, including how it affects women of color in disproportionate ways.
- Because humans carry gender biases with them everywhere they go, such biases become pervasive in the culture, even making their way into the systems we create, such as artificial intelligence and personality tests, both of which we rely on for gender-neutral information.
- Females vying for CEO job face greater scrutiny from their boards, taking on more assignments prior to being considered and with boards taking 30% longer to vet a women under consideration
- Visibility matters: women underrepresented in industry presentations, with only 34% female representation on the speaking roster
Obviously there’s a lot out there! We’re sure to miss some good references so if you know of any research you think we should include, please contact us and let us know.
View the entire guide and download a PDF version with all the most recent research on women in leadership ====> HERE.
Free Advice for Mentoring Women
Tropes and truths to help mentors and proteges navigate workplace biases and outdated advice.
