5 Reasons For: The Women's Leadership Gap

Women currently hold 20 (or 4.0%) CEO positions at S&P 500 companies. In the U.S 22% of senior roles are occupied by women. Women hold only 12% of the world’s board seats. They are only 6 percent of partners in venture capital firms—down from 10 percent in 1999. Nearly 47 percent of the 150 highest-earning public companies in Silicon Valley have no female executive officers at all. 

I mean yes we can be thankful that we don't live in the world our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited. I am thankful to be born in a country where women have basic civil rights, and amazingly, that is not a casualness in some places still. But let's put all that aside and look at an existing problem in Germany, in the U.S and anywhere else in the world: Women are not making it to the top of any profession.

This is something I have always wondered about... Why is it that males strongly dominate leadership roles on a global scale and progress on shortening the gap is so slow? Obviously the subject matter is very complex and there are books that go deep into history and the evolution of mankind and there are lots of approaches one could take. I am also not a big fan of generalizing and speaking of ALL women or men, so I'm just looking at the average numbers. I want to take a look at some facts, characteristics that have proven to be more prominent in women and that I believe are an essential part to the answer of this question. 

I am very certain that it has nothing to do with capability, talent or ability, but a whole lot with mindset!

I want to give you 5 simple reasons that have to do with the mindset of women (on average) and you will notice they all go hand-in-hand with each other:

1. Perfectionism

Women don't even participate. They hide their ideas, visions, leadership skills and creative talents. Too many women seem to still believe that they should not even try, as long as their work isn't perfect and safe from criticism. Meanwhile an "alright performance" does not keep men from participating at all and I like that quality, it's a huge advantage men have - their absurd self-evaluation, thinking "Well, I am 41% qualified for this job, so give it to me!" Yes, the result might turn out to be ridiculous or catastrophic, but sometimes it does work - a man who actually isn't ready, who doesn't seem qualified, will realize his potential, just because the confidence that gave him trust in the first place.

Women on the other hand tend to do the opposite. There are so many brilliant, talented and creative women who will say "I am 99,8% qualified for this job, but until I reach the last bit, I will withhold, just to be safe."

Now obviously the force of perfection deeply roots within women. The idea that a woman has to be perfect in order to be loved or successful, thanks to society, has existed as long as the human race. As long as we women do not make the decision to break that convention, declare war on the force to be perfect, realize that it does nothing, but harm our lives and eats up our time, accept that we cannot always be perfect at everything and move on, nothing will change.

Women are more likely than men to be perfectionists, holding themselves back from answering a question, applying for a new job, asking for a raise, until they’re absolutely 100 percent sure they can predict the outcome. A study showed, women on average, applied for a promotion only when they met 100 percent of the qualifications. Men applied when they met 50 percent. Women are a quarter as likely as men to negotiate a raise. We doubt our opinions and begin our sentences with “I don’t know if this is right, but...” We overthink and overanalyze which causes worrying, which is the biggest enemy of taking action and keeps you from getting results in any area.

2.  Fear of Failure & Criticism

Huge Part of perfectionism: Fear of criticism. Women more afraid of failure than men and they will also take it more personal when something goes wrong, dwell on a mistake instead of moving on. For example, a woman could have completed 4 exercises out of 5, and still feel bad because of that one exercise she didn't manage to do. Women worry more than men, about anything. We tend to be more afraid of failure, than we are excited about the possibility of success. Mostly not because of the failure itself, but judgement from others and the feeling of "not being good enough". 

Nothing great ever came without criticism, so it is necessary to face those fears and learn not to fight them, but understand and work around them. It is important for a woman to learn that criticism isn't bad and should not affect you personally, especially if it is negative criticism from so called "haters", people who want to do nothing but put you down. Any successful person in order to stay alive has learned to not let negativity affect them and accept judgement from others, without letting it enter their mind.

3. Lack of Confidence

Self esteem is different from confidence. Yes self-esteem and society standards are another huge problem of women, but let's assume that wasn't the issue. You can be a woman with high standards and you value yourself (self-esteem), but you still lack confidence. You think you ARE worthy, but you lack confidence in your ability which limits your actions. I remember Katty Kay defining confidence in an interview as "that stuff that turns thoughts into actions" and I like that perspective. I would add to that, that confidence also means taking action without validation. I mean all humans seek validation, it is in our nature. Actually most people are obsessed with it and will live a life for validation (which is very unhealthy). But any successful person at some point had the courage and confidence to do something. Confidence is as important to professional success as competence.

I read that a set of research on gender has found something across cultures and across ages called the “male hubris, female humility” effect. It concludes that women have lower levels of hubris than men — they systematically underestimate their own abilities and are less likely to be overconfident. Another study showed that in the last two years of people entering the workforce it showed that 57 percent of males are negotiating their first salary, and only seven percent of women do. What a huge difference right? And that doesn't mean you should be cocky, nobody likes people who think they rule the world and know everything better, and I also think a woman should never give up her feminine qualities, such as empathy, care and communication, but at the same time be confident in her own being and work, stop looking for validation and let the world know what you deserve.

Source: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-art-and-science-of-self-assurance/

4. Risk Reluctant

This point again is a result of the above. If you don't believe in yourself, you are afraid of failure and criticism and you won't do something if the outcome is uncertain that means you will do everything you can to avoid risks and stay on the safe side, always. Being afraid of potential risks also means being stuck in your comfort zone, which limits you to exactly where you are at simply because nothing unordinary great ever came from a place of the ordinary. 

"Women are less likely to die and they are less likely to succeed". 

This presents pretty well the positive and negative aspect of being a risk-taker. 

High risks, never result in an average outcome! You might die, you might fly.

Men, because they are less afraid of failure and more excited about the possibility of success, are more likely to take risks and participate, which increases the possibility of success. Also women will rather go the safe road (which can be a good thing) and they would rather think through one action for a year, before taking it to make sure the risk is as low as possible, meanwhile men would in that year make 30 moves, 29 which may fail but they don't give up and try until they get it right. That means, women don't recover as easily from a failure, which is why they rather take their time and not act straight away, which can result in loss of opportunity.

5. SOCIETY'S NEGATIVE IMAGE

In the Ted X Talk of Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) about why we have too few women leaders, I found one point she raised particularly interesting. The sentence with which she closes her talk is:

There's a famous Harvard Business School study on a woman named Heidi Roizen. She's an operator in a company in Silicon Valley, and she uses her contacts to become a very successful venture capitalist. A professor took that case and made it [Howard] Roizen. He gave the case out, both of them, to two groups of students. He changed exactly one word: "Heidi" to "Howard." But that one word made a really big difference. He then surveyed the students, and the good news was the students, both men and women, thought Heidi and Howard were equally competent, and that's good. The bad news was that everyone liked Howard. He's a great guy. You want to work for him. You want to spend the day fishing with him. But Heidi? Not so sure. She's too aggressive, a little out for herself. She's a little political. You're not sure you'd want to work for her. 

Women are expected to be nice, warm, friendly, and nurturing. Thus, if a woman acts rational or competitively, if she pushes her team to perform, if she exhibits decisive and forceful leadership, she detaches from the social script that dictates how she “should” behave and it seems unnatural. By violating beliefs about what women are like, successful women get called out for being insufficiently feminine and too masculine.
If you are an ambitious woman descriptions like “Ice Queen,” and “Ballbuster” are something you can expect to hear quite often. Of course this does not apply to all men, I work with some who are the opposite way, but you will meet some who are deeply uncomfortable with powerful women and don’t really like them. 

Stereotypes are holding women back from taking powerful positions! 

Let me know what you think about this topic and whether or not it would matter to you if your boss was a woman?

_________

Much love,

- Mrs.Steemit