So you think it’s over? – why I am still banging on about women in leadership

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Is anyone else bored with why there are still not more women in leadership? No one is doing the business case anymore, that was decades ago done and is now a given.  Most organisations are actively engaged in getting all their leadership talent to the table. Yet I am wondering if like me, you are getting tired of why there aren’t more women in leadership.  And I have been banging on about it for more years than I can count, yet

McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2023 research still shows 52% of those at entry-level are men and 48% women, yet by the time they get to C-suite, 71% are men compared to 28% women. The shift is glacial.

This broken rung for women as we progress up the organisation seems intractable.  And 20 years ago we thought it was done, women excelling at university, becoming managers and it would just be a matter of time surely before they made their way up the pyramid to become leaders? Nope. Women keep disproportionately falling out, year after year – this broken rung, this leaky leadership pipeline that costs our businesses and our women dearly.

So if this is old news why aren’t there more women in leadership roles? There are so many myths out there. I hear them all the time, usually revolving around women aren’t up to it, or they’re not up for it. They’re not ambitious, they’re not confident, they overexplain, they don’t have gravitas, they don’t apply for jobs unless 100% qualified, they don’t know how to negotiate, they opt out when they have kids… But not being up for it, or up to it, is not the problem. The women don’t need fixing, and we know just as in our businesses if we try fixing the wrong problem, we come up with the wrong solutions.

Here is some data for you. Great performance doesn’t result in high potential ratings for women, confident women aren’t seen as the leadership material men are, women’s expertise is challenged more, women are penalised for negotiating for themselves, they’re interrupted more, mentors can see sponsoring women as risky, women pay a modesty penalty if they talk about their achievements, successful women are not liked as much as successful men, and men are assumed to be competent until proven otherwise, it’s not the case for women. Didn’t learn that at business school! What do you think the impact of those facts is on a women’s leadership career and ambition?

And the reason this happens is because leadership is still endowed with masculinity in our minds. ‘Think leader/think male’ and ‘men take charge/women take care’ is a stereotype stuck in all of our brains from millennia of men being in charge.  So women leaders are behaving counter-stereotypically and that is why we get push back. It is a dilemma specific to female leaders. So, this tension means that leadership behaviours like our confidence, authority and ambition are being experienced and judged differently when we do them, compared to the identical behaviour in men. And yet not behaving like that gets in the way of our leadership impact.

This double bind is still very real, presenting a challenge to women as they progress, so it must feature in women’s leadership development. Because these challenges are not unsurmountable and the more skilful we are as women leaders at managing the double bind for ourselves and others, the sooner we can unleash the women coming behind us from it.  And then it will be over.  Meanwhile I intend to keep banging on about it….



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