Leadership and Gender Differences

Before speaking about women's leadership, it is useful to analyze women's relationship with their own career paths, as presented in several recent studies conducted around the world.

In the past few years, women have increasingly expressed a desire to develop their careers, and the percentage of working women has risen. At the same time, there have been favorable changes in their presence in domains that, until recently, women could access only with difficulty.

A survey conducted by the ILO's Bureau for Employers' Activities (ACT/EMP) (2013) among roughly 1,300 private-sector companies in 39 developing countries showed the extent to which companies have policies and measures in place to promote women in management. These policies were not created merely to minimize problems caused by gender discrimination; rather, they reflect a growing and important awareness that women achieve strong results in the organizations they lead. This helps explain the conclusion of a Catalyst study (2008): the percentage of women in managerial positions rose steadily from 13.8% in 1950, to 26.1% in 1980, to more than 50% today.

Still, in reality, when women are part of management, they usually find themselves in the middle of the pyramid and rarely at the top. They are underrepresented in the well-paid job sector, and it will take time for this imbalance to change. There also remains a considerable gap between men's and women's earnings. Although some authors have argued that women and men are equal in education across many occupational fields, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics still shows that women earn only 80% of men's incomes. This inequality affects women at various professional levels: at the highest levels, women are less preferred for managerial and professional positions and for roles involving decision-making about company policy.

On a global level, women's involvement in management structures is shown in Table 1. The results indicate that in just four countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom) women represent over 20% of board members; in 13 countries, between 10% and 20%; in 14 countries, between 5% and 10%; and in 13 countries, fewer than 5%.

We can also look at the percentage of men and women in management positions across different sectors, as shown in Table 2.

It is easy to observe that women make up a large share of management in HR, Public Relations, and Communications; there is a fairly balanced split in Finance and Administration; and women are a minority in Research and Development of new products, and especially in Sales and Operations. The table also shows a strong imbalance against women in the General Manager position.

This kind of gender difference can be traced back to the education system. By looking at young people's choices of university degrees and their trends, we can anticipate future trends. Figure 1 presents some key information on the distribution of graduates across countries around the world.

As Figure 1 shows, the positive evolution recorded over the past few years—an increased involvement of women in business and management—has not yet produced a perfect overall balance. It is therefore reasonable to expect this phenomenon to keep accelerating in the future.

We have presented this situation not only to characterize a facet of the current business environment, but also to show that women's presence, scarce as it is, has allowed specialists to observe how women behave in leadership roles, along with their competencies and potential in such positions. We did not expect to see high percentages of women as leaders. We also consider that gender stereotypes remain part of global culture and are a major reason for the current situation, a conclusion supported by both practice and other studies.

The feeling that we are unable to actively help solve this gender imbalance in leadership positions is not a comfortable one, which is why it is useful to share some findings that validate women's results as leaders. It is quite revealing that, according to many analyses, employees rate female leaders more highly than male leaders on several characteristics of transformational leadership (charisma, motivational skills, creativity, problem-solving, and other key skills that indicate leadership effectiveness). Furthermore, Eagly has shown that, according to research, teams with a female leader are more willing to make an extra effort and are more satisfied with their leader, and that such teams are in many cases more efficient than teams with a male manager. Yet all this information about women's ability to lead effectively still does not answer one question: why is there still so much data showing a serious discrepancy between genders in leadership, when female leaders are currently viewed far more favorably by management than before—perhaps even more favorably than their male counterparts? This paradox seems to reflect our current historical context and shows that, although the social roles of women are changing rapidly, a traditional cultural expectation still persists as the norm.