Fluent Essays

My assignment is due tomorrow and there is no extra time.  This is for my Woman gender studies in Business  Answer the following 6 questions using the attachment book and any online information you may need. Each answer should be roughly 1/2 a page or 250 words. Cite the references you have used at the end of the paper.    6 Questions:  Describe the current status of women as leaders in two (2) of the five (5) professions: management, politics, law, academia, or on boards.  Use examples of specific women in these roles in your answer. Discuss two examples of how management and leadership styles can differ between men and women. Give three examples of how organizations can integrate women into roles of leadership using the examples of the five areas covered in the text:  politics, management, law, academia, and boards. Networking, mentoring, and sponsorship each provide a different approach in career advancement.  Define each of the three areas and give an example of how they are used to further a womans career. Discuss three examples of the challenges women face in balancing leadership responsibilities and family life. Discuss the pros and cons of women starting their own businesses. W O M E N A N D L E A D E R S H I P 3 W O M E N A N D L E A D E R S H I P DEBORAH L. RHODE 3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Rhode, Deborah L., author. Title: Women and leadership / Deborah L. Rhode. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2016. Identifiers: LCCN 2016016714 (print) | LCCN 2016028435 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190614713 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190614720 (E-book) | ISBN 9780190614737 (E-book) Subjects: LCSH: Leadership in women. | Women executives. | Leadership. | Sex role. | BISAC: LAW / Discrimination. | LAW / Gender & the Law. Classification: LCC HQ1233. R463 2016 (print) | LCC HQ1233 (ebook) | DDC 305.43/30334—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016016714 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America For Barbara Kellerman C O N T E N T S 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 WOMEN IN POLITICS 35 3 WOMEN IN MANAGEMENT 56 4 WOMEN IN LAW 76 5 WOMEN IN ACADEMIA 95 6 WOMEN ON BOARDS 111 7 CONCLUSION 131 Acknowledgments 139 Notes 141 Index 235 W O M E N A N D L E A D E R S H I P 1 I N T R O D U C T I O N In the heat of the 2016 presidential campaign, Frank Bruni wrote a New York Times op-ed under the title, “If Trump Changed Genders.” Bruni concluded the thought experiment with the observation that a “woman with his personal life, public deportment and potty mouth wouldn’t last a nanosecond in a political campaign— or for that matter in a boardroom.” This campaign speaks volumes about what Bruni called the “utterly and unjustly dissimilar” standards confronting male and female leaders.1 Those double standards are longstanding. For most of recorded his- tory, women were largely excluded from leadership positions. A compre- hensive review of encyclopedia entries published just after the turn of the twentieth century identified only about 850 eminent women throughout the preceding two thousand years. In rank order, they included queens, politicians, mothers, mistresses, wives, beauties, religious figures, and “women of tragic fate.”2 Few of these women had acquired leadership po- sitions in their own right. Most exercised influence through relationships with men. Since that publication, we have witnessed a transformation in gender roles. Women now exercise leadership in virtually every part of the pri- vate and public sectors. Yet progress is only partial. Despite a half century 2 • W O M E N A N D L E A D E R S h I P of equal opportunity legislation, women’s leadership opportunities are far from equal. The most comprehensive survey finds that women occupy less than a fifth of senior leadership positions across the public and pri- vate sectors.3 In politics, women constitute over half the voting public, but only 19 percent of Congress, 12 percent of governors, and 19 percent of mayors of the nation’s one hundred largest cities.4 From a global per- spective, the United States ranks ninety-seventh in the world for women’s representation in political office, below Slovakia, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia.5 In academia, women account for a majority of college graduates and postgraduate students but only about a quarter of full professors and university presidents.6 In law, women are almost half of law school gradu- ates but only 18 percent of the equity partners of major firms, and 21 per- cent of Fortune 500 general counsels.7 In the nonprofit sector, women constitute three- quarters of staff positions but only a fifth of the leaders of large organizations.8 In business, women account for a third of MBA graduates, but only 4 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.9 At current rates of change, it could take more than a century for women to reach parity in the C suite.10 This book seeks to advance our understanding of why women remain so underrepresented in leadership roles, what strategies are most likely to change that fact, and why it matters. The discussion is aimed at sev- eral audiences: women interested in leadership positions, organizations interested in increasing their proportion of women leaders, and readers interested in the status of women. To make significant progress, the book argues that we must confront second- generation problems of gender inequality that involve not deliberate discrimination but unconscious bias, in- group favoritism, and inhospitable work- family structures. And it claims that those barriers should be dismantled, both because a just society is committed to equal opportunity and because a competitive economy cannot afford to undervalue half its talent pool. Unlike much of the popular literature concerning women and leader- ship, this analysis suggests that the problem cannot be resolved at the individual level; structural and cultural solutions are essential. Although women’s choices help account for women’s underrepresentation in lead- ership positions, conventional wisdom too often underestimates the extent to which these choices are socially constructed and constrained. I N T R O D U C T I O N • 3 Because context matters in shaping leadership challenges, constraints, and strategies, subsequent chapters explore in detail the challenges in particular fields.11 After this overview chapter describes the barriers confronting women in leadership and the societal stakes in addressing them, Chapter  2 reviews obstacles for women in politics and how best to respond. Chapter  3 focuses on women and management, Chapter  4 on women in law, Chapter 5 on women in academia, and Chapter 6 on women on corporate boards. To fill in gaps in the existing research, the discussion draws on data from a survey of approximately a hundred prominent women leaders in academia and the nonprofit sector.12 To situate the analysis, this introductory chapter explores the rationale for greater gender equity, the reasons for women’s underrepresentation in leadership, and the strategies most likely to remedy it. Equal Oppor tunit y as a Public Good Women’s unequal representation in leadership positions poses multiple concerns. For individual women, the barriers to their advancement com- promise fundamental principles of equal opportunity and social justice. These barriers impose organizational costs as well. Women are now a majority of the most well- educated Americans, and a growing share of the talent available for leadership. Organizations that lack a culture of equal opportunity are less able to attract, retain, and motivate the most qualified individuals.13 Obstacles to women’s success also decrease em- ployees’ morale, commitment, and retention, and increase the expenses associated with recruiting, training, and mentoring replacements.14 A second rationale for ensuring equal access to leadership positions is that women have distinct perspectives and capabilities to contribute. For effective performance in an increasingly competitive and multicultural environment, workplaces need individuals with diverse backgrounds, ex- periences, and styles of leadership.15 The point is not that there is some single “woman’s point of view,” or woman’s leadership style, but rather that gender differences matter in ways that should be registered in posi- tions of power. A wide array of research underscores the value of diversity in leader- ship contexts. For example, some studies indicate that diverse viewpoints 4 • W O M E N A N D L E A D E R S h I P encourage critical thinking, creative problem solving, and the search for new information; they expand the range of alternatives considered, and counteract “group think.”16 Men’s and women’s differing knowledge and experience can affect how they seek and evaluate information, which affects their decision- making processes and “collective intelligence.”17 When individuals hear dissent from someone who is different from them, it provokes more thought than when it comes from someone who looks the same.18 Some studies also find a correlation between diversity and profit- ability in law firms as well as in Fortune 500 companies.19 Having more women in top management is associated with greater market revenue.20 Of course, correlation does not establish causation. Financial success may do as much to enhance gender equity as gender equity does to en- hance financial success. Organizations that are on strong economic foot- ing are better able to invest in diversity initiatives that promote both equity and profitability.21 But whichever way causation runs, there are strong reasons to support gender equality. Inclusiveness in leadership signals a credible commitment to equal opportunity and responsiveness to diverse perspectives.22 As subsequent discussion makes clear, many policies that level the playing field for women, such as those involving work- family accommodations, mentoring, and equitable work assign- ments, are all likely to have other organizational payoffs. The societal stakes are substantial. More than three- quarters of Americans say that the country has a crisis in leadership, and confidence in leaders has fallen to the lowest level in recent memory.23 The nation can ill afford to exclude so many talented women from positions of in- fluence, particularly given the growing body of evidence suggesting that women bring distinctive strengths to these roles. The Difference “Difference” Makes Assumptions about gender differences in leadership styles and effec- tiveness are widespread, although as Alice Eagly’s pathbreaking work notes, the evidence for such assumptions is weaker than commonly supposed.24 Reviews of more than forty studies on gender in leadership find many more similarities than differences between male and female I N T R O D U C T I O N • 5 leaders.25 Not only are those gender differences small, they are smaller than the differences among women.26 So too, in the Pew Research Center’s recent survey on women and leadership, a large majority of the American public sees men and women as similar on key leadership traits such as intelligence, honesty, ambition, decisiveness, and innovation.27 The main differences that emerged were compassion and organization, and on those traits women were rated as superior to men.28 The only gender differences that are consistently supported by evidence on per- formance are that female leaders are more participatory, democratic, and interpersonally sensitive than male leaders.29 Eagly notes that women “attend more to the individuals they work with by mentoring them and taking their particular situations into account.”30 Leaders interviewed for this book often spoke of being more collaborative than their male counterparts.31 According to Debora Spar, president of Barnard College, “recent research shows that as women, we are more likely to help out in the workplace … [and] that helping behaviors can greatly improve busi- ness outcomes.”32 In effect, women are more likely than men to engage in transfor- mational leadership, which stresses inspiring and enabling followers to contribute to their organization.33 This approach holds advantages over traditional transactional leadership, which focuses on exchanges between leaders and followers that appeal to followers’ self- interest. Women tend to use a transformational style because it relies on skills associated with women, and because more autocratic approaches are viewed as less attractive in women than in men.34 A  transformational style has obvious advantages because it enables women to establish a level of trust and cooperation that is essential to effectiveness. Janet Napolitano, former Arizona governor, cabinet secretary, and currently president of the University of California, notes that one critical leader- ship characteristic is helping others accomplish their mission: “People need to know you are investing yourself in doing what you need to do so they can succeed. It is a big mistake to parachute in with a prepared plan about who will do what. I’ve seen guys do this all the time.”35 Although transformational leadership is generally viewed as the most effective approach, it does not fit all organizations.36 Some highly male- dominated settings invite a top- down style, and women who were firsts 6 • W O M E N A N D L E A D E R S h I P in those settings, such as Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, and Indira Gandhi, led in ways that were as commanding as those of men.37 Similar points are applicable to gender differences in leadership pri- orities. Women are particularly likely to cite assisting and empowering others as leadership objectives, along with promoting gender equality.38 In a 2015 Pew survey, 71 percent of women believed that having more women in top leadership positions in business and government would improve the quality of life for all women.39 Of course, not all female lead- ers are advocates on women’s issues. Some are at pains to distance them- selves from gender concerns. As Marissa Mayer famously put it, “I’m not a girl at Google, I’m a geek at Google.”40 Other women have internal- ized the values of the culture in which they have succeeded, and have little interest in promoting opportunities that they never had. They have “gotten there the hard way,” and they have “given up a lot”; if they man- aged, so can everyone else.41 On the whole, however, women’s greater commitment to women’s issues emerges in a variety of contexts. For ex- ample, most evidence indicates that female judges are more supportive than their male colleagues on gender- related issues.42 And many women judges, both through individual rulings and collective efforts in women’s judicial organizations, have addressed women’s concerns on matters such as domestic violence, child support, and gender bias training.43 The same is true of women in management and public service. For some female leaders, their own experiences of discrimination, marginalization, or work- family conflicts leave them with a desire to make life better for their successors.44 Because these women have bumped up against conven- tional assumptions and inflexible workplace structures, they can more readily question gender roles that men take for granted.45 Their perspec- tive deserves a hearing in leadership contexts. As to leadership effectiveness, most research reveals no significant gender differences. Success in leadership generally requires a combi- nation of traditionally masculine and feminine traits, including vision, ethics, interpersonal skills, technical competence, and personal capa- bilities such as self- awareness and self- control.46 Contrary to popular as- sumptions, large- scale surveys generally find that women perform equally with or slightly outperform men on all but a few measures.47 One recent study found that women scored higher than men on twelve of sixteen I N T R O D U C T I O N • 7 leadership competencies.48 Some evidence also suggests that women are less subject than men to the arrogance and overconfidence that contrib- utes to leadership failures, and are better decision makers under stress.49 Such differences prompted the quip by the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, that the global financial crisis would have played out quite differently “if Lehman Brothers had been ‘Lehman Sisters.’ ”50 However, women cannot be effective unless others accept their leadership— and context matters. One meta- analysis found that men’s effectiveness as leaders surpassed women’s in roles that were male- dominated, but that women’s effectiveness surpassed men’s in roles that were less masculine.51 Taken as a whole, these findings on gender differences should come as no surprise. Gender socialization and stereotypes play an obvious role; they push women to behave in ways that are consistent with traditional notions of femininity. Yet these differences in leadership contexts are gen- erally small because advancement often requires conformity to accepted images of leadership. And some traditional differences have been blurred by recent trends in leadership development, which have encouraged both sexes to adopt more collaborative, interpersonally sensitive approaches.52 It is also unsurprising that some studies find superior performance by women leaders, given the hurdles that they have had to surmount to reach upper- level positions and the pressures that they have faced to exceed ex- pectations.53 To the extent that female leaders gravitate toward a collabor- ative, interpersonally sensitive approach, it is because that style proves an asset in most leadership settings. Whatever else can be inferred from this research, it is clear that a society can ill afford to exclude so many talented women from its leadership ranks. Women’s Underrepresentation and Women’s Choices What accounts for this underrepresentation of women in leadership roles? One common explanation involves women’s choices. As Sheryl Sandberg has famously put it, not enough women “lean in.”54 In a widely cited cover story in the New York Times Magazine, Lisa Belkin claimed that women’s underrepresentation is less because “the workplace has failed women” than because “women are rejecting the workplace.” “Why 8 • W O M E N A N D L E A D E R S h I P don’t women run the world?” asked Belkin. “Maybe it’s because they don’t want to.”55 Harvard professor Barbara Kellerman similarly raises the possibility that many women “do not want, or at least they do not badly want what men have … Work at the top of the greasy pole takes time, saps energy, and is usually all- consuming. Maybe the women’s values are different from men’s values. Maybe the trade- offs [that] high positions entail are ones that many women do not want to make.”56 Such observations capture a partial truth. Women, including those with leadership credentials, do on average make different choices from men. In a 2015 study by McKinsey & Company and Leanin .org of nearly thirty thousand workers, 54 percent of men but only 43 percent of women wanted to be a top executive.57 In a 2015 Time mag- azine poll, only 38 percent of women, compared with 51 percent of men, described themselves as very or extremely ambitious.58 Another 2015 study by Harvard Business School researchers found that compared to men, women had more life goals, placed less importance on power, asso- ciated more negative outcomes with high- power positions, and were less likely to take advantage of opportunities for professional advancement.59 More women than men also cut back on paid employment for at least some period. In a study by the Center for Work- Life Policy of some three thousand high- achieving American women and men (defined as those with graduate or professional degrees or high- honors undergraduate de- grees), nearly four in ten women reported leaving the workforce volun- tarily at some point over their career. The same proportion chose a job with lesser compensation and fewer responsibilities than they were qual- ified to assume, in order to accommodate family responsibilities. By con- trast, only one in ten men left the workforce primarily for family- related reasons.60 Although other surveys vary in the number of women who opt out to accommodate domestic obligations, all of these studies find sub- stantial gender differences.61 Almost 20 percent of women with graduate or professional degrees are not in the labor force, compared with only 5 percent of similarly credentialed men. One in three women with MBAs are not working full- time, compared with one in twenty men.62 The over- whelming majority of these women do, however, want to return to work, and most do so, although generally not without significant career costs and difficulties.63 Increasing numbers of women appear ready to make http://Leanin.org http://Leanin.org I N T R O D U C T I O N • 9 that sacrifice. More married millennial women (42 percent) planned to interrupt their careers than baby boomers (17 percent).64 Yet women’s choices are an incomplete explanation of women’s un- derrepresentation in leadership positions. Most surveys of men and women in comparable jobs find that they desire leadership opportu- nities equally.65 In one recent study, almost the same percentage of mid- or senior- level women wanted to reach top management as men (79 vs. 81 percent).66 Moreover, to blame women’s choices for wom- en’s underrepresentation ignores the extent to which those choices are socially constructed and constrained. Before they have substan- tial caretaking responsibilities, women are not significantly less ambi- tious than men. In a recent study of Harvard MBA graduates, women’s career aspirations did not substantially differ from men’s.67 Pew survey data found that more women than men age eighteen to thirty- four say that having a successful, high- paying career is very important or the most important thing in their lives.68 In a McKinsey survey of workers age twenty- three to thirty- four, 92 percent of women and 98 percent of men expressed a desire to advance professionally. But by middle age, only 64 percent of women, compared with 78 percent of men, expressed such a desire.69 Similarly, a Bain & Company survey of one thousand women and men in a mix of American companies found that women started out with slightly more ambition than men, but for those with more than two years on the job, aspiration and confidence among the female workers plummeted.70 W hat happens in the intervening years is often a combination of women’s disproportionate family responsibilities and a workplace unwilling to accommodate them. In the Harvard study, many women who expected to have careers of equal priority with their spouses, and to share child care responsibilities equally, ended up with less egali- tarian arrangements.71 Yet even for Harvard MBAs, differences in family arrangements and the extent of labor force participation did not explain women’s lower number of leadership positions compared to men.72 Only 11 percent were full- time stay- at- home parents.73 And even the women who did leave their jobs after becoming mothers did so “reluctantly and as a last resort, because they [found] … them- selves in unfulfilling roles with dim prospects for advancement.”74 1 0 • W O M E N A N D L E A D E R S h I P One woman’s experience was typical: she quit after being “mommy tracked” when she came back from maternity leave.75 As Anne-Marie Slaughter notes, “Plenty of women have leaned in for all they ’re worth but still run up against insuperable obstacles created by the combina- tion of unpredictable life circumstances and the rigid inflexibilities of our workplaces, the lack of a public infrastructure of care, and cultural attitudes that devalue them the minute they step out or even just lean back from the workplace.”76 Explanations that focus solely on women’s choices obscure the influence of men’s choices as husbands, policy leaders, and managers. As subsequent discussion indicates, if women aren’t choosing to run the world, it may in part be because men aren’t choosing to share equally in running the household. Gender Bias Men are too aggressive when they bomb countries. Women are too ag- gressive when they put you on hold on the phone. — Laura Liswood 77 One of the most intractable barriers to women’s advancement is the mis- match between the qualities associated with leadership and the qualities associated with women. Most of the traits that people attribute to lead- ers are those traditionally viewed as masculine: dominance, authority, assertiveness.78 These do not seem attractive in women.79 Four fifths of Americans think decisiveness is essential for leaders, and over a quarter believe that women are less decisive than men (a belief unsupported by research).80 Although some evidence suggests that these stereotypes are weakening, people still more readily accept men as leaders.81 Women, particularly women of color, are often thought to lack “executive pres- ence.” In studies where people see a man seated at the head of a table for a meeting, they typically assume that he is the leader. They do not make the same assumption when a woman is in that seat.82 Most individuals prefer a male to a female boss.83 In one study, not a single legal secretary preferred working with female attorneys over their male counterparts. Half preferred working with men. Some believed that I N T R O D U C T I O N • 1 1 female lawyers were harder on their female assistants because these law- yers “feel they have something to prove to everyone.”84 Women often in- ternalize these cultural biases, which diminishes their sense of themselves as leaders and their aspirations to positions of influence.85 Women under- estimate (while men overestimate) their leadership abilities compared to ratings received from colleagues, subordinates, and supervisors.86 Women who do seek leadership positions are subject to double stan- dards and double binds. What is assertive in a man seems abrasive in a woman, and female employees risk seeming too feminine, or not feminine enough. On the one hand, they may appear too “soft”— unable or unwill- ing to make the tough calls required in positions of greatest influence. On the other hand, those who mimic the “male model” are often viewed as stri- dent and overly aggressive.87 In the words of a Catalyst research report, this competence- likeability trade- off means that women are “ ‘damned if they do and doomed if they don’t’ meet gender- stereotypic expectations.”88 An overview of more than a hundred studies finds that women are rated lower as leaders when they adopt authoritative, traditionally masculine styles, particularly when the evaluators are men, or when the role is one typically occupied by men.89 Autocratic or power- seeking behavior that is accept- able in men is penalized in women.90 Female supervisors also are disliked more than male supervisors for giving negative feedback.91 Women who come on too strong evoke labels such as “bitch,” “ice queen,” and “iron maiden.”92 The intersection of racial and gender stereotypes compounds the problem. As one Asian woman explained, “I am frequently perceived as being very demure and passive and quiet, even though I rarely fit any of those categories. When I  successfully overcome those misperceptions, I am often thrown into the ‘dragon lady’ category. It is almost impossible to be perceived as a balanced and appropriately aggressive lawyer.”93 This double bind was apparent in the unsuccessful 2015 lawsuit brought by Ellen Pao against a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Pao was faulted both for being too “passive and reticent” in board meetings, and for speaking up, demanding credit, and “always positioning” herself.94 Such assertiveness was not viewed as disabling in a male colleague who was promoted. As she testified at trial, “The frustration I have is that be- haviors that were acceptable by men were not acceptable by women.”95 1 2 • W O M E N A N D L E A D E R S h I P Attitudes toward self- promotion and negotiation reflect a related mis- match …