What Mancession? Number of Women Senior Managers Decreases Globally

Contributed by Liz O’Donnell, Author of HelloLadies.com

Remember those reports of the “man-cession” and the “she-conomy” over the last couple of last years? It seems they may have been premature. According to a recent study from global accounting and consulting firm Grant Thornton International, the number of women in senior management positions globally decreased to from 24 percent in 2004 to 20 percent in 2009. Furthermore, the percentage of privately held businesses with no women at all in their senior management ranks has risen to 38 percent, up from 35 percent in 2009.

This decrease has surprised those who believed the recession was “The End of Men.” In the United States, economists had predicted the number of women on the national payroll would surpass the number of men in 2009 because 82 percent of recession-related job losses had impacted men.

While that prediction came close to reality in the fourth quarter of 2009, women never actually surpassed men and the numbers started gradually dropping off again by early 2010. In addition to that prediction, Wall Street-watchers were asking whether or not corporate diversity and more gender-balanced leadership was the key to a recovery.

Global Outlook on Gender Balance

The Grant Thornton study shows that, in terms of gender balance, in fact, the worlds largest economies are not keeping up with the rest of the world – only sixteen percent of senior executive roles in the Group of Seven (the world’s seven largest economies) were held by women, compared with a global average of 20 percent.

In Thailand 45 percent of senior management positions are held by women – the largest percentage of any country. Georgia follows with forty percent, then Russia with 36 percent, and Hong Kong and the Philippines both with 35 percent. The countries with the lowest percentage of women at the top of organizations are India, the United Arab Emirates and Japan, all of which have fewer than 10 percent of women at the top.

Of those companies that do have women in senior management positions, they tend to be financial positions followed by human resources, marketing and sales. Just eight percent of the companies with women in senior management have a woman CEO.

Women Need to Lead Push for Parity

Across the globe, several countries including Norway, the Netherlands, France and Spain have instituted a quota for gender diversity at the top of business and other countries like the United Kingdom, have examined the possibility.

But gender quotas alone won’t tip the scales toward gender parity; nor are they likely to be implemented in every country. What can women do to get to the top in the absence of such programs?

Gloria Feldt, author of No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change the Way We Think About Power, says the opportunity for change is there, but that it is up to women to push for parity. “Power structures don’t change of their own accord,” says Feldt.

“Why should women expect business practices to change if we don’t make them change? In ‘No Excuses,’ I urge women to use the opportunity of economic chaos–the openness to try new models and give previously untapped resources (aka women) a chance to solve problems that seem intractable. Remember when everyone was asking, ‘What if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters?’”

Indeed there is an impressive amount of research supporting the notion that gender diversity at the top of an organization leads to a stronger bottom line. But the global trends reported by Grant Thornton seem to indicate businesses have fallen back into old, pre-recession habits.

Dr. Ann Perschel, a leadership and business psychologist and the president and founder of Germane Consulting, says she sees a failure to learn and put new business models in place. “It’s as if the recession was a blip on the screen versus a signal that substantive change is needed. I’m now seeing increased spending and headcount, although with more caution than in the past. During and for some time after the recession the response included the usual belt-tightening, budget cutting and head count reduction of the past, but there has not been a fundamental shift in thinking from profitability to value creation.”

Firms need to realize that a return to business as usual won’t pull us out of the economic downturn faster – for real innovation, the traditional face of leadership needs to be reconsidered.