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The Lack Women in Executive Leadership Positions

This paper addresses the lack of gender representation in executive positions, implying that men outpace their counterpart women in leadership responsibilities across each and every sector across the world. According to Ali and Konrad (2017), management refers to the choice of what is doable and its efficient execution. Within the business world, women leaders remain the minority, causing female gender gap within various aspects of leadership within corporate workforce (Egerová & Nosková, 2019). Studies have shown severally that there is lack of gender diversity within countries’ corporate senior management positions and the U.S. is no exception. In the last three decades, women have attained parity with the male gender in the total number of employees both workers within the labour force as well as positions in middle management (Fernando et al., 2020). Currently, women account for 57% of the total U.S. marketplace and 52% of all management responsibilities as well as professional occupations, like attorney and physicians (Hoobler et al., 2018). The account for about 60% of bachelor’s degrees that are earned from U.S. universities and equally outpace their male counterparts with respect to the number of doctorate and master’s degrees (Wilton et al., 2018). Nonetheless, at Fortune 500 companies, Perryman et al. (2016) note that women hold merely 19% pf board seats as well as 15% of executive positions officers, with the number of female Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) standing at a paltry 4%. This suggests that 4% of 500 firms represents 29 female CEOs, while male CEOs run the 480 remaining firms.

While women seem to have conquered crucial attainments within the workplace, past gender disparities, as far as representation is concerned, is still alive with us. Egerová and Nosková (2019) highlight women remain the minority in executive and senior management positions. In a study by Mckinsey & Company (2015) that used 60 U.S. companies from 2012, it was noted that regardless of the ongoing presence of the female gender in top positions of multinational and large companies, women are yet underrepresented at senior management levels of companies across the globe. Another study that focused on Brazil established the findings, indicating that few women in the country occupy positions of board director, CEO, or third executive levels (Bae & Skaggs, 2019). Bae and Skaggs (2019) showed that only 4.5% of Brazilian companies’ board of directors were women, with the average in developing countries being at 7.2%.

As a male, heterosexual, millennial, Hispanic, Catholic, the significance of these statistics along with their implications on leadership are a cause both for discussion and concern since there is a need to understand the cause of the gap that is slowly narrowing. There are several reasons that have been advanced to explain the gender gap seen in senior management and executive positions of companies across the world. One cause of the gender gap has been shown to be structural barriers. Structural barriers, according to Ali and Konrad (2017), include lack of access to crucial informal networks, like golf course, after-work drinks, and sporting events. As a millennial and business owner, worries have always been on how I can attract both the females and males to my business and for consultation services. However, in most cases, gender disparity comes into play as some services and products are only considered for particular genders. For instance, in the sports world, most participants are always males, suggesting that women assume that most sporting activities are only meant for men, and that only a few of them take part in them (Fernando et al., 2020). Globally, while women compete in various sporting activities, studies have shown that records set by women and men are to be assessed independently because of the social construction that women are “lesser” or “weaker” beings that cannot compete on similar conditions and platforms with men (Hoobler et al., 2018).  Gold has been a standard way of instituting business rapports in many industries. While many women are now playing golf, the game is yet chiefly male bastion. The implication is that if golf is the default technique of building business rapport at an organization, then it would mean that the organization would consider using their male employees mostly to win business deals (Perryman et al. 2016). This is an evidence of gender gap in companies.

Another factor associated with the gender gap in executive roles in companies is organizational mindsets, which include various gender stereotyping and bias. For instance, incongruity happens when one holds to stereotypes or beliefs regarding a group that are not consistent with the conducts that the individual thought to be important to succeed in a particular role (Wilton et al., 2018). Therefore, women are ineffective to the degree that the leader responsibility is masculinized, and men are ineffective when a role is feminized. For instance, a female can be an effective military personnel or leader, yet her team may fail to support her since she is in a duty regarded to incongruent and unrelated with femininity (Fritz & van Knippenberg, 2018). Similar cases are seen in the nursing profession. A male may be excellent in nursing practice, yet those he takes care of may negatively receive him because his role is regarded unrelated with his sex (Fritz & Knippenberg, 2020). Kubu (2018) asserts that role congruity theory makes it hard for women and men to succeed as leaders should their conducts be perceived as incongruent with their sexes or genders. While as a Catholic, I have learned to appreciate both males and females impartially, many people tend to associate leadership conducts with agent conducts, which as Kunze and Miller (2017) advance, are linked with stereotypical masculine qualities, like aggression, competitiveness, assertiveness, independence, dominance, and self-reliance.  According to Fritz and Knippenberg (2020), this association develops a conflict for the female gender when they achieve leadership positions since there are expectations about them to act as a leader (male characteristics) and as a woman (female characteristics). Therefore, for a woman to be accepted as a leader, they are often required to a walk a fine line between the two conflicting sets of anticipations.

There are also individual mindsets that continue to add life to the gender gap witnessed in the corporate and business scenes. Being a mental toughness coach and a minority Hispanic, I have noted that there are data showing that most women attain the level of directorship and remain their or select themselves out of employment (Fritz & van Knippenberg, 2018). Most women fail to pursue C-level, vice-president, or president positions for several reasons, among which include socialization pressures, risk aversion, lack of confidence, valuing life-work balance, or desire to avoid politics (Kubu, 2018). Most women, according to Kunze and Miller (2017), have opted for nonprofit, private sector, and startup companies wherein there are substantial number of leaders, female owners, and employees.

Lack of gender representation in executive positions across the world is, therefore, alarming, sparking discussions and concerns in the minds of many. Owing to the concerns and discussions arising, there is a need to address the issue lest male dominance will continue thriving despite their female counterparts rising in various careers and attaining degrees in various disciplines globally.

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