Women comprise 24% of senior management roles globally and 22% in the US, per a Grant Thornton International Business Report which draws on approximately 6,700 respondents.
Female board members and the bottom line
As of April 2012, 15% of Fortune 500 boards have one or more female members. Organizations with boards which are characterized by 30% gender diversity “outperform those with no women by a wide margin measured through multiple metrics” [Source: SmartBlog on Leadership].
This poses a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum: are organizations more efficacious because of their gender-diverse boards or are more efficacious organizations more likely to be more equitable in their recruitment of board members?
1 billion women
“Almost 1 billion women will enter the global economy for the first time in the coming decade…fundamentally shifting how the world works.”
From, “How one billion women will shake the business world.”
Promoting Women (Promoting Themselves)
Women are not promoted as frequently or as far as men are. How much of this is attributable to circumstance, prejudice, or women’s preference?
“Women who are offered promotions ‘generally feel they need to know 80% to 90% of their current job before they feel ready to step up into a new role,’ she says. But if you are smart and knowledgeable, “probably somewhere closer to 40% to 50%” is all that you need. Men, on the other hand, feel no such constraints.”
“The Journal report was based on the comments of a task force set up to study the obstacles that women continue to face in the workplace. According to a McKinsey study quoted in the article, women get 53% of entry level jobs and ‘make it to ‘the belly of the beast’ in large numbers.’ But then ‘female presence’ drops sharply, ‘to 35% at the director level, 24% among senior vice presidents and 19% in the C-suite.'”