Breaking the glass ceiling was the one-time goal of the droves of women entering the professional workplace in the late 1980s and all of the 1990s. The past 11 years, women seem to have lost steam and most certainly precious ground on the way to the top of the corporate ladder.
Why? What events or reasons have slowed their progress? One recent survey conducted by McKinsey & Company showed that women needed more career development and training. Those experts speaking at the conference reported several other reasons.
Barriers to Women Advancing to Senior-Level Management
The Wall Street Journal’s report ("Where Are All the Senior-Level Women?", Monday, April 11, 2011) listed four major barriers to women advancing to the top management tier including:
- Structural barriers, such as a lack of women role models, being excluded from informal networks, and missing sponsorship.
- Lifestyle issues, such as travel problems and the 24/7 lifestyle of high-profile executives.
- The fear of putting a female in a high-level management position and then that woman takes a leave of absence.
- Individual mindsets of women as they age and their desire to move up the corporate ladder lessens.
In a previous article by The Wall Street Journal ("Coaching Urged for Women", Joann S. Lublin, Monday, April 4, 2011), findings showed that many women just didn’t encounter the distinct advantage of career development given to men by their companies. The article reported that companies were not “systemically watching women at the middle management level and putting in programs that would help them get over the next promotion hurdle.”
Women’s Professional Goals
There are more and more reports of middle or senior management level women leaving behind the corporate world and starting businesses of their own. A recent piece in the Entrepreneur magazine ("A Refined Taste", Jennifer Wang, April 2011) profiled a female executive who started her own cupcake company after being passed over for a promotion in 2005. Her new entrepreneurial venture has been highly successful.
Two perfect case studies of how women’s professional goals seem to have taken an about face in the 21st Century include Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay from 1998 to 2008, and Carly Fiorina, one-time CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005. Both women had extreme successes and more than a few failures. Each have went on to other careers with continued success but in much less corporate positions such as running for political offices in 2010.
Women Advancing to the Top in Corporations
All is not lost. There are feasible practices and procedures that can be implemented to help place women in higher management positions. Just a few of the solutions that were developed by the expert panels and groups at the WSJ conference included:
- Advising corporations to do a culture audit to find ways to change the norms and processes of advancement.
- New business models should be created and implemented for the traditional corporate ladder structure.
- Implement 21st-Century workplace practices, such as flex time and telecommuting.
- Companies should start actively recruiting more women for upper management via social media and universities.
Lack of female top executives has been generating much attention as of late and rightly so. The problem is that women are not making it all the way to the top of the corporate ladder, be it lack of practical design within the corporation or by the women deciding to get off the fast track.
Now that a few reasons have been identified, practical solutions can be developed and applied. Hopefully, the attention will remain long enough for those solutions to evolve.
Sources
The Wall Street Journal, Where Are All the Senior-Level Women?", Monday, April 11, 2011
Entrepreneur magazine, "A Refined Taste", Jennifer Wang, April 2011
The Wall Street Journal, Coaching Urged for Women, Joann S. Lublin, Monday, April 4, 2011
Carly Fiorina, carlyfiorina.com
Meg Whitman, noteablebiographies.com
