Global Percentage of Women on Boards Rises Slowly

iStock_000016909333XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Recently released research by Thomson Reuters shows that the percentage of women on boards is rising incrementally around the world. Based on the firm’s database of 4,100 firms, the majority of companies globally have at least one woman on their board.

In 2012 (the last year for which there was data), 59 percent of companies employed a woman board director. But it’s not all good news – that percentage has only risen by three percentage points since 2008, and it didn’t increase at all between 2011 and 2012.

The report [PDF], entitled “Mining the Metrics of Board Diversity,” shows that companies with women on their boards tend to outperform those with no women in terms. They also track better in relation to their index benchmark. Companies with no women have more tracking errors, the report shows, which means those firms may be more volatile.

By now, it’s old news that companies with women directors tend to do better than those without. Andre Chanavat, Product Manager, Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) at Thomson Reuters, and co-author of the report with Katharine Ramsden, Global Head, Thought Leadership at Thomson Reuters, stated, “This study suggests that the performance of companies with mixed boards matched or even slightly outperformed companies with boards comprised solely of men, further reinforcing the idea that gender equality in the workplace makes good investment and business sense.”

But, as the report shows, while the majority of companies in the study did have women board directors, very few companies had more than one token women. Approaching a critical mass of three or more women on these boards is the result that many companies will still have to keep working toward.

Chanavat said, “Over the past five years significant measures have been put into place to help increase equal opportunity and diversity and while there has been a gradual increase in the percentage of companies that have women on boards, there is still a long way to go.”

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Gender Quotas Attract More High Qualified Women Applicants

Three serious business people talking in boardroomBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding is often quoted as having said, “I don’t like quotas, but I like what they do.”

Across Europe, the prospect of introducing board quotas has produced heated debate. Following Norway’s 2004 law requiring the boards of publicly traded companies to be 40 percent women, several other countries — France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and others — have introduced similar measures, although Norway’s laws remain the strictest. When I met Arni Hole, Director General of Norway’s Royal Ministry of Children, Equality, and Social Inclusion and the architect of the quota law, a few years ago, she insisted that Norway’s program is the most comprehensive in that it is binding. A company that doesn’t comply is delisted.

At the same time, some countries have resisted implementing any flavor of quotas — the UK for example. It’s also difficult to imagine any kind of boardroom gender quota legislation taking place in the United States. Quota detractors say that affirmative action forces companies to hire less qualified candidates. Proponents say that quotas ensure qualified applicants who might normally be ignored don’t get overlooked.

In fact, Stanford University research suggests that gender quotas may actually boost the percentage of high performing women willing to apply for a position. The result is that there’s no marked decrease in quality in the person who gets hired. That is — when companies signal that they want to hire more women, more high performing women apply for jobs, and more high performing women get jobs — without companies decreasing their performance expectations.

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What’s the Real Impact of One Billion Women Entering the Workforce in the Next Decade?

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iStock_000008675366XSmallBy Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

Last fall, Booz & Company released an interesting report entitled, Empowering the Third Billion: Women and the World of Work in 2012. In this report, researchers attempt to evaluate the impact on the global economy of an estimated one billion women entering the workforce over the next ten years. By placing a value on women in the workplace, the authors of this report hope to encourage governments, business leaders, and key decision makers to invest in developing the knowledge and skills of women in order to unlock their full potential.

The authors of the Booz & Company report address one very important aspect of the problem when it comes to facilitating a career advancement path for women that leads to more leadership roles and senior level positions across all industries. They write, “Despite the admirable efforts of these women—and millions like them in rich and poor countries around the world—they need supportive systems to succeed. Governments and corporations will need to step in with smarter policies that can remove social, cultural, and professional constraints on women and foster greater economic opportunities.”

The Glass Hammer focuses on the developed world for now, so what is interesting about this research is that Booz & Company correctly identifies an issue that is rampant in the United States and Western Europe. That is, the number of women in the workforce is only the tip of the iceberg on the gender diversity issue in the workplace. The bigger question—which has been explored in research by Catalyst—is why are there so few women in executive positions in the Fortune 500?

What are the biggest issues that governments and companies must look at in order to provide meaningful support for women in the workforce? The common global challenges are as follows.

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How to Manage a Diverse Team for Employee Engagement

iStock_000016657279XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

A new employee engagement study by Gallup underscores the importance of good management. According to Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace report [PDF], employee engagement is a direct result of the quality of an employee’s manager.

In his opening letter to the report, Gallup CEO Jim Clifton writes, “Here’s something they’ll probably never teach you in business school: The single biggest decision you make in your job — bigger than all of the rest — is who you name manager. When you name the wrong person manager, nothing fixes that bad decision. Not compensation, not benefits — nothing.”

The report showed that only 30 percent of the approximately one million Americans with full time jobs are engaged, and women tend to have slightly (but significantly) higher engagement than men. Supervisors hold the key to unlocking higher engagement – ultimately boosting productivity and customer relationships – by managing employees based on their individual strengths and background.

What’s more, the report suggests, the proper selection and training of managers, with particular attention paid to managing diversity, can mean the difference between a high-performing, dynamic team – and group of employees that actively sets out to dismantle progress. Here are a few of Gallup’s tips for managing for employee engagement.

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Opportunities Abound for Shareholder Activism on Gender Diversity

Group of businesspeople having a meeting.By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

By now, the connection between women and business success is well-known. But as many times as studies have linked diverse boardrooms with better performance, companies seem to be making few moves toward gender balanced boards.

This spring, Deloitte released the third edition of its report, “Women in the boardroom: A global perspective,” which detailed the excruciatingly slow pace of progress in boardroom gender balance. Despite rapid elevation of discussion on the topic of boardroom diversity, action has been slow. Even in places like the UK, which initially put a concerted effort behind hiring more women to FTSE 100 boards, hiring of women to director seats is plateauing.

Deloitte believes that it may be possible to speed this process up. Up to now, relatively few shareholders have gotten involved in efforts to change the gender balance on the boards of the world’s largest companies. Dan Konigsburg, managing director of the Deloitte Global Center for Corporate Governance, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, comments, “Given that shareholders are the owners of the company, one might expect they should have the strongest interest in the benefits of more diverse boards, an interest that should benefit the value of their portfolios.”

So far, Deloitte says, there have been very few shareholder proposals addressing diversity in the boardroom. This is a mistake, Konigsburg says. “We see diversity as a business issue. …We also believe that greater diversity – not just in gender but in background, in experience and in diversity of thought – makes for more effective teams of people.”

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A Deeper Layer of Diversity: Exploring Multicultural LGBT Identity at Work

iStock_000006712763XSmallBy Nicki Gilmour and Michelle Clark

Being out at work has shown to be good for business, good for team performance and good for the individual’s own sense of wellbeing. Furthermore, leaders are starting to recognize the power of creating open and honest work environments.

At The Glass Hammer, we try to always take the conversation further and this week as part of our Pride series, we explore what it means to be female and multicultural and LGBT working in financial or professional services or in the Fortune 500.

Compounded identities around gender, ethnicity, and LGBT and their effect on career advancement is most evident when we look at LGBT CEOs –a quick analysis suggests that white LGBT men, like white straight men are more likely to run Fortune 500 firms, while LGBT women are seen in charge of more entrepreneurial firms.

Last year our research arm, Evolved Employer, specifically focused on LGBT women in the workplace polling LGBT women who attended our Managing Identities at work career events in both the US and the UK. Our findings suggested that gender trumps LGBT status when it comes to how women feel about career advancement opportunities, how they network, and how they feel they are perceived at work. We will explore this topic more in our Multicultural women at work series scheduled to be released later this year.

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The Glass Ceiling is Real – Why are Leaders Taking So Long to Get Rid of It?

Business woman on the phone checking watchBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

According to a survey of over 1,000 Americans by Edward Jones, women are more ambitious than men. About two-thirds of male and female respondents say that women strive harder than men when it comes to getting leadership roles at work.

But if women are so ambitious, why aren’t there more of them at the top?

The reason, according to the survey, is that the glass ceiling is alive and well. In fact, about two-thirds of respondents (65 percent) believe that women face additional barriers to advancement.

Respondents said the main factors blocking women’s advancement to leadership included male-dominated workplaces (83 percent), the juggle between work and family (73 percent), inadequate policies for women at work (62 percent), and a lack of mentoring leading up to executive levels (56 percent).

Yes, you read that right: according to this study, two-thirds of Americans believe there are structural challenges blocking women’s advancement at work. What’s more, one factor that was definitely not at the top of the list was the notion that women are not trying hard enough to get into leadership roles. In fact, based on the respondents’ views on gender and ambition, women are already leaning in pretty hard.

Here’s what business leaders can do to remove some of those barriers standing in the way of those ambitious, well-educated women – and help themselves in the process, since gender diversity has been shown time and time again to improve company’s’ performance in real, measurable results.

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Three Takeaways in Our Latest Research on Women in Tech That Will Really Make You Think

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Woman Typing on Computer Keyboard In OfficeBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Today The Glass Hammer is releasing the latest in our series of research papers: Women in Technology: Leaders of Tomorrow. Sponsored by Accenture, the report examines the next generation of women leaders in technology and the responsibility that companies have in supporting their growth and development.

At our Women in Tech career event last fall, we heard stories of success from women in senior technology roles at their companies. But afterward, during the Q&A and networking sessions, we found that our guests (junior and mid-level women technologists) still had some questions. They had a lot of ambition, but they seemed unsure of how to approach real obstacles in their climb to the top. They asked questions like how to make sure they are taken seriously and getting credit for the work they’ve done, how to deal with supervisors who just don’t seem to acknowledge their potential, and how to be seen and remembered in a field rife with turnover and near-constant reorganization.

Issues like these, we believe, are the ones that drive women to leave technology careers, rather than realize their full potential as leaders.

Yet, the solutions to these issues have little to do women themselves. They are systemic problems within organizations that push women to the side and don’t provide them with the opportunities to flex their very capable leadership muscles. With this research, we sought to find out what engages women leaders, how to support them as they advance, and what they think of leadership and themselves.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be examining more closely the findings of our report and what they mean for women in technology as well as the companies that need them. Here are three big takeaways from our report.

1. Women in Tech are Ambitious. The vast majority (85.3 percent) of the women who responded to our survey (almost 200 women in junior and mid-level technology roles around the world, but mainly focused in New York) said they hoped to get a promotion in the next three years. This is not big news – career advancement is a short term goal for a lot of people.

But our respondents’ ambition was not limited to the short term.

Almost two-thirds (62 percent) of our respondents said they hoped to make it to the C-Suite or Senior Management someday. This is higher than other similar measures that have been reported in recent years. For example, in McKinsey’s 2012 report “Unlocking the full potential of women at work,” only 41 percent of successful women executives said they were interested in a C-Suite job.

We don’t know if long-term ambition is a common characteristic of women in technology as a whole, or if it was just a common characteristic of the women who chose to take our survey. Since The Glass Hammer is a career website for women interested in leadership, it seems likely that these are the type of people who would respond. Either way, we believe this means our report provides a unique insight into what high potential women technologists are looking for in their career and company.

2. Less Than a Quarter Say Their Company “Walks the Talk” on Women’s Advancement. At many companies, it’s become fashionable for corporate leaders to talk about the “business case” for women’s advancement, and to discuss why their companies should develop more inclusive cultures that empower women. But, our survey shows, that’s not as common as we might think. Less than half of our respondents (44.6 percent) said their leaders are vocally supportive of women.

What’s more, less than a quarter of our respondents (24.5 percent) said companies “walk the talk” by following through on the values espoused by corporate leadership by providing real support for women.

A trend in our research showed that “walking the talk” is really important for igniting women’s desire to lead. Women who worked at companies that “walked the talk” were often more interested in advancing to the C-Suite someday. This points to the critical importance of companies following through on promises by providing real, tangible resources for programs designed to develop women leaders.

3. Women Believe They Have Different Core Traits than Today’s Leaders. We were curious about what women thought of today’s leaders, and we were also curious about how that compares to the way they see themselves. In our survey, we presented our respondents with a list of ten traits and asked them to pick three to describe today’s leaders. Later on, we presented the same list and asked them to pick the three that best describe themselves. The differences were striking.

Top 3 Traits for Leaders        
 Top 3 Traits to Describe Yourself
Collaborative (44%) Collaborative (50.5%)
Innovative (41.9%) Honest (47.8%)
Decisive (38.0%) Goal Oriented (44.0%)
Technically Adept (35.3%) Confident (32.1%)
Confident (33.2%) High EQ (32.1%)
High EQ (30.4%) Passionate (27.7%)
Goal Oriented (28.3%) Technically Adept (23.9%)
Passionate (23.4%) Creative (23.4%)
Honest (19.6%) Decisive (22.8%)
Creative (16.3%) Innovative (17.9%)

The number one trait women chose to describe both themselves and technology leaders was “Collaborative.” Otherwise, the lists couldn’t be more different. Women described themselves as “Honest” much more than their leaders. They also described themselves as “Goal Oriented” more frequently. On the other hand, for leaders, “Innovative” and “Decisive” were top traits, but they were at the bottom of the list of traits women used to describe themselves.

This poses an interesting question: do women anticipate growing into the traits that mark today’s leaders? Or do they expect to change what it means to be a leader tomorrow?

Our research also produced meaningful information on sponsorship, networking, role models, and more – we will explore these topics further in the coming weeks. Click here to download a full report [PDF].

We would like to thank Accenture for sponsoring this very important research. If you have any questions about how corporate leaders can use this information to better attract, retain, and develop female technologists, please contact our Founder and CEO, Nicki Gilmour at nicki@theglasshammer.com.

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The Idea Exchange: Crowdsourcing Women’s Advancement

iStock_000009030018XSmallBy Robin Madell, San Francisco

Imagine if you were able to recruit women from across the country to spend hundreds of hours debating how best to help women stay on the leadership track at American companies.

Then imagine what might happen if a small group of those women spent countless more hours distilling the resulting ideas into 78 solutions, 16 ideas for CEOs to make change in just 24 hours, and tips and advice for women themselves.

Well, Bentley Center for Women and Business (CWB) did just that. The resulting report—Idea Exchange: Advancing Women in the Workplace—helped move this type of conversation into action by sharing ways to eliminate barriers both small and large to the supports women need inside the office and at home.

The Glass Hammer spoke with Susan M. Adams, PhD, senior director for the CWB, who helped lead the Idea Exchange initiative and facilitated the writing of the report by serving as the content expert.

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As Global Mobility is on the Rise, More Women Take the Lead

iStock_000004699538XSmallBy Michelle Clark (Keene, New Hampshire)

According to a recent study by Mercer, the percentage of women assigned to international projects currently sits at 13 percent, a 3 percent increase from 2010. Mercer’s research suggests that 39 percent of companies say that employees with international experience are promoted more quickly, it is encouraging to see more women are being considered for international assignments, and subsequently accepting these roles.

The dialogue around international assignments and female expatriates has most recently been focused on the question of fairness – are women receiving equal opportunities to take advantage of the international experience that can positively impact their career trajectory? A study conducted by Catalyst last fall indicated that women, in fact, are not being equally considered for critical international experience that will enhance their career. Or, if they are chosen for an international assignment, women are most likely to receive smaller projects with small budgets and less corporate impact, compared to their male colleagues.

However, Mercer’s Global Mobility study results paint a different picture of women in international assignments. Historically, eligible women have been overlooked for international assignments due to assumptions about work-life balance constraints and the potential safety risks of sending females to work in different cultures where views of women – especially of women in dominant business roles – were not yet widely accepted. Now, 13 percent of all international assignments belong to women. This number might not feel very significant in the grand scheme of things, but is actually a solid indication that there is a very noticeable sea change taking place within the international business community.

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