The Latest Insights from Leading NOW

We use this blog to track the research into the correlation between the % of women in senior management and on boards and measurable business performance. It is updated as research comes in. You'll find related information on correlation v. causation here.

Sitting in a talent discussion a manager says, "She wouldn't want that assignment, she has young kids." Sound far fetched in the 21st century? It isn't! Our research finds that barriers created by mindsets like this are reported by women's focus groups in countries including the US, Canada, Brazil and India and focus groups of male managers in countries such as Belgium, China, Italy and Mexico.

Today, Tuesday, April 12, is Equal Pay Day in the United States. Equal Pay Day is day when women’s earnings finally “catch up” to men’s earnings from the previous year. Want to know how best to "celebrate" Equal Pay Day this year? Try these: Ask your HR team when the next wage equity audit will be conducted - and encourage your colleagues to do the same. Share well-researched information about the wage gap. For example: the WEF Global Gender Gap Report and Glassdoor report or any of the other articles listed below. Urge your elected officials to support wage equity. If you can self-nominate for advancement, do so. Contact Leading Women to see how we can help your company close the gender gap!

Most executives believe the "gender problem" isn't real. And many wonder why we're still talking about it. I recently read two reports on Gender Diversity published by McKinsey& Company: Women in the Workplace 2015, and The CEO’s Guide to Gender Diversity, that illustrate how real it is and why it hasn't been fixed.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) released its 2015 Gender Gap Report, so we thought we'd take a look at the 10 year trend in the US and in some of the countries where our clients are working to close the gender gap in their companies. While progress is slow, many nations are making progress - and we are grateful for the improvements they are making in the lives of women.

Recently I read an article about Fortune Magazine’s Pattie Sellers moderating a discussion with execs from Facebook, Coca-Cola and FCB Worldwide on how their companies were attacking the problem of unconscious bias. When referring to unconscious bias, Maxine Williams, global director of diversity at Facebook spoke about “a problem that, as increasing numbers of companies are realizing, prevents them from improving their workforce diversity and typically interferes with the productivity of their employees.” When Seller asked the audience of 200 executives whether they had unconscious bias training programs within their company, only a dozen raised their hands. When asked how many would like to have a program, practically the entire room raised their hands. Huh. If unconscious bias is as big a problem as it seems, why don’t more companies have a plan to deal with it?

When it comes to overcoming mindsets that cause the leadership gender gap, one of the practices that we recommend is to require recruiters (internal and external) to deliver diverse slates of candidates for key positions. While companies often focus on senior positions, we recommend this practice be implemented for positions above the diverging point (the point at which the % of women begins to decline and that of men increases).

At Leading Women we use the term gender dynamics to mean the impact of managers' mindsets on their talent development and talent advancement actions. For years, we've been studying 11 of these mindsets and their impacts around the globe.

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