We need to run the numbers up against the Big 5 Psychological trait tests. I think we will find that people who test high in 'agreeableness' really do not wish to lead, because they really do not want the responsibility and competition that goes with leadership. When hard decisions need to be made, they want somebody else to do the making of them. They never want to be the bringer of bad news, or to tell somebody that they are behaving badly. Managers are the focus of resentment at times -- and they want to be loved at all times. There are plenty of men who test high in agreeableness who also don't want leadership positions. Instead of looking at 'why the men who want to lead want to lead' I think it will be more fruitful to look at 'why the people of both sexes who don't, don't'. But then, I live in Sweden.
Leadership usually (not always) involves dealing with and resolving interpersonal conflicts . This is especially stressful and unpleasant if you are high on “agreeableness “
I’d add in there a screen for neuroticism as well. I have read that women typically have higher scores on both agreeableness and neuroticism than men (at least in WEIRD countries). It isn’t difficult for me to imagine that people who are both more agreeable than average and more neurotic than average having strong preferences to avoid a work environment that involves a lot of conflict.
I've spent the past 20 years on gender balancing big businesses around the world...
and my short answer to your question is leadership.
As soon as a CEO is serious about gender balancing their business (and I've had the pleasure of working with many, all men btw), they do it. It's not even that hard, contentious or slow. But 'serious' is the key word. It takes will, then skill and focus. From the whole leadership team.
Key requirements:
. leadership commitment, accountability and skill
. framing: business issue, not women's issue or HR or 'diversity'
. focus more on the dominant group, and balance as a management skill
this is a long way away from the way most companies approach gender balance. Usually, it's introduced as a diversity dimension, led by women and all about 'empowering' women. A perfect set-up-to-fail framing. We've got to stop 'fixing' women and stop blaming men, and turn gender balance into a 21st century leadership skill like any other.
It's amazing we've made as much progress as we have!
Out of curiosity, how frequently did the leadership teams at the businesses you worked with have the necessary skills? My experience in the business world (North America) is that usually the leadership team is in over their heads. I have worked with more small and medium sized enterprises though, so it could be that the most capable leaders are working at the big firms.
This fits my casual obervations. My exwife works at a company where the staff are majority female. Her direct boss and department boss are female. There is a leadership training program in place. She does not want to promote. She just wants a job where she is happy, doesn't take responsabilities home and has a great time with her colleagues. So even if the office is 80% female, top leaderhip is 50% male.
(After 2 years of her boss asking her to apply for promotions, she has accepted, but only as long as she doesn't have to lead a large team. She thinks having to be respponsible for everyone's performance and wellbeing is too taxing and draining.)
I however don't understand that: you're going to be at the office anyway. At least get more money and challenge yourself!
BTW, absolutely love your newsletter and your work. So important!
I also personally know women who have turned down promotions, though that has usually been because they want to prioritize their families. Which is very different, and why I don't love the "motherhood penalty" framing. Spending time with your kids is not a penalty, it's just a trade-off.
Came here to write something similar to Laura. It's REALY hard to get big things done across a large organizations in a timely manner. And even if you do it the right way working hard to include people in the process, being successful requires being willing to make choices that some folks aren't going to like. Execs who can get big stuff done are incredibly valuable.
Men on average, are less agreeable than women. And at the tails of the distribution, the most disagreeable people are much more likely to be men. So those folks willing to get big stuff done quickly even if it upsets people are more likely to be men. And frankly most of the women I've worked with that are senior executives... are not so agreeable! So I think you are spot on.
In contrast, I would argue that many of the traits we'd like to see in a middle manager or supervisor match a little better to the stereotypical woman... conscientiousness for example.
But as Laura states, probably more fruitful to look at individuals than large groups.
The team leadership data is very compelling. Here's another reason why this might be prevalent. I wrote a book on it called Who Really Matters (Random House, 2003). People base their decisions at work on what they think the Core Group wants. ("I don't want to be the one to go into my boss' office and tell him it's not going to happen.") We carry around in our minds an idea of "who's important" and we think our job is to do what they want, without asking them. Team leadership is a natural way for men to get a sense of what they're supposed to do, without having to ask. Promoting men feels natural, because the Core Group members are already men. In the few companies founded and run by women (Eileen Fisher, the Body Shop) promoting women feels like the natural thing to do, because the Core Group seems to encourage it. I think the lack of desire to run a team is grounded, in part, in a reluctance to simplify relationships - to tell people what to do in a corporate sense. Once people get used to the simplicity of a corporate team where everyone comes from a similar background and thinks alike, they no longer feel resistance to it. That's just a hunch, however. I agree research on this is needed. It's fascinating.
Alice, I read your newsletter faithfully. There is always something powerful here.
IMHO, the images of the text chain begin to touch on what appears to be the core reason: incentives.
The rewards of achieving leadership for men are so much higher from a societal standpoint - respect from other men and more interest from women. On average, men over index on climbing the ladder (at a profession they may even hate) while women over index on beautification (makeup, morning routine, botox, etc.) because we are all just trying to appeal to the opposite sex. Gender polling on what traits matter most in selecting a mate line up perfectly with the aforementioned actions (albeit kindness also ranks highly for both sexes thankfully).
People that reach the C-suite are unusual in many ways. E&Y found that 54% of women at that level in the US were collegiate athletes. For men, the number is even higher.
Considering only ~2% of female undergrads are currently athletes, that's more than 20 times more likely.
So what is different about those women? Probably preferences, personality, and more.
I feel like this post was dancing oh-so-carefully around an important consideration: Married white men are responsible for a significant slice of the 'gender pay gap.' Instead of looking for a 'child penalty' for women why not look for a marriage boost for men?
You even had a chart that examined the intersection of marriage and pay, but excluded married men from the table.
Hi Alice, big fan of The Great Gender Divergence, hope the book's going well. I'm writing one too and may have slightly underestimated the time it would take... Above, you asked people to get in touch if they've done relevant research so here's a link to a book I co-wrote a while ago, 'The Network Trap' https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-15-0878-3
It's about why there are, persistently, fewer women at the most senior level of management in the FTSE350, based on remarkable data from our former PhD student who moved in those circles. It's about the women who have already been through all this stuff - are unequivocally ambitious, have self-confidence, proven in their jobs, children either adults or there's money for every kind of help, etc etc. Let me know if you'd like the pdf.
Can I suggest that reading up on Claudia Goldin's work would reward your investment of time. She won last year's Nobel Prize in Economics for her four decades of work describing the gender gap in employment. Goldin gives a detailed treatment of why the gap increases as you go up the earnings scale, and she has rigorously tested it over the years to show that it is robust. The rigour of her work is one big reason she got the Nobel (the first woman to win on her own), and one reason I have come to think she is one of the most worthy winners of recent years.
I wrote this synopsis of her work, but there are many others:
Baumeister makes the extreme, can't-possibly-be-true claim that millions of years of evolution and reproductive incentive structures might explain some of the differences in male and female behavior. I'm a good liberal so I find this extremely problematic for reasons I can't explain right now, but let me tell you, it really makes me feel icky.
More motherhood data needed. Anecdotally on all the teams I've led, women who have children or are thinking about having children too often themselves from applying for leadership positions.
We need to run the numbers up against the Big 5 Psychological trait tests. I think we will find that people who test high in 'agreeableness' really do not wish to lead, because they really do not want the responsibility and competition that goes with leadership. When hard decisions need to be made, they want somebody else to do the making of them. They never want to be the bringer of bad news, or to tell somebody that they are behaving badly. Managers are the focus of resentment at times -- and they want to be loved at all times. There are plenty of men who test high in agreeableness who also don't want leadership positions. Instead of looking at 'why the men who want to lead want to lead' I think it will be more fruitful to look at 'why the people of both sexes who don't, don't'. But then, I live in Sweden.
Leadership usually (not always) involves dealing with and resolving interpersonal conflicts . This is especially stressful and unpleasant if you are high on “agreeableness “
As a man who tests high on agreeableness, I relate with this.
Being in a leadership position feels me with anxiety and dread.
I always envision that I would be terrible at having to discipline or fire someone.
I confess, I also have zero interest in leadership! I'd much rather read my books!!
I’d add in there a screen for neuroticism as well. I have read that women typically have higher scores on both agreeableness and neuroticism than men (at least in WEIRD countries). It isn’t difficult for me to imagine that people who are both more agreeable than average and more neurotic than average having strong preferences to avoid a work environment that involves a lot of conflict.
I've spent the past 20 years on gender balancing big businesses around the world...
and my short answer to your question is leadership.
As soon as a CEO is serious about gender balancing their business (and I've had the pleasure of working with many, all men btw), they do it. It's not even that hard, contentious or slow. But 'serious' is the key word. It takes will, then skill and focus. From the whole leadership team.
Key requirements:
. leadership commitment, accountability and skill
. framing: business issue, not women's issue or HR or 'diversity'
. focus more on the dominant group, and balance as a management skill
this is a long way away from the way most companies approach gender balance. Usually, it's introduced as a diversity dimension, led by women and all about 'empowering' women. A perfect set-up-to-fail framing. We've got to stop 'fixing' women and stop blaming men, and turn gender balance into a 21st century leadership skill like any other.
It's amazing we've made as much progress as we have!
Out of curiosity, how frequently did the leadership teams at the businesses you worked with have the necessary skills? My experience in the business world (North America) is that usually the leadership team is in over their heads. I have worked with more small and medium sized enterprises though, so it could be that the most capable leaders are working at the big firms.
This fits my casual obervations. My exwife works at a company where the staff are majority female. Her direct boss and department boss are female. There is a leadership training program in place. She does not want to promote. She just wants a job where she is happy, doesn't take responsabilities home and has a great time with her colleagues. So even if the office is 80% female, top leaderhip is 50% male.
(After 2 years of her boss asking her to apply for promotions, she has accepted, but only as long as she doesn't have to lead a large team. She thinks having to be respponsible for everyone's performance and wellbeing is too taxing and draining.)
I however don't understand that: you're going to be at the office anyway. At least get more money and challenge yourself!
BTW, absolutely love your newsletter and your work. So important!
I also personally know women who have turned down promotions, though that has usually been because they want to prioritize their families. Which is very different, and why I don't love the "motherhood penalty" framing. Spending time with your kids is not a penalty, it's just a trade-off.
Wafa, what's a more neutral term for 'motherhood penalty'? I agree.
Opportunity cost? Trade-off? Or just cost?
family prioritization?
Came here to write something similar to Laura. It's REALY hard to get big things done across a large organizations in a timely manner. And even if you do it the right way working hard to include people in the process, being successful requires being willing to make choices that some folks aren't going to like. Execs who can get big stuff done are incredibly valuable.
Men on average, are less agreeable than women. And at the tails of the distribution, the most disagreeable people are much more likely to be men. So those folks willing to get big stuff done quickly even if it upsets people are more likely to be men. And frankly most of the women I've worked with that are senior executives... are not so agreeable! So I think you are spot on.
In contrast, I would argue that many of the traits we'd like to see in a middle manager or supervisor match a little better to the stereotypical woman... conscientiousness for example.
But as Laura states, probably more fruitful to look at individuals than large groups.
The team leadership data is very compelling. Here's another reason why this might be prevalent. I wrote a book on it called Who Really Matters (Random House, 2003). People base their decisions at work on what they think the Core Group wants. ("I don't want to be the one to go into my boss' office and tell him it's not going to happen.") We carry around in our minds an idea of "who's important" and we think our job is to do what they want, without asking them. Team leadership is a natural way for men to get a sense of what they're supposed to do, without having to ask. Promoting men feels natural, because the Core Group members are already men. In the few companies founded and run by women (Eileen Fisher, the Body Shop) promoting women feels like the natural thing to do, because the Core Group seems to encourage it. I think the lack of desire to run a team is grounded, in part, in a reluctance to simplify relationships - to tell people what to do in a corporate sense. Once people get used to the simplicity of a corporate team where everyone comes from a similar background and thinks alike, they no longer feel resistance to it. That's just a hunch, however. I agree research on this is needed. It's fascinating.
Alice, I read your newsletter faithfully. There is always something powerful here.
IMHO, the images of the text chain begin to touch on what appears to be the core reason: incentives.
The rewards of achieving leadership for men are so much higher from a societal standpoint - respect from other men and more interest from women. On average, men over index on climbing the ladder (at a profession they may even hate) while women over index on beautification (makeup, morning routine, botox, etc.) because we are all just trying to appeal to the opposite sex. Gender polling on what traits matter most in selecting a mate line up perfectly with the aforementioned actions (albeit kindness also ranks highly for both sexes thankfully).
People that reach the C-suite are unusual in many ways. E&Y found that 54% of women at that level in the US were collegiate athletes. For men, the number is even higher.
Considering only ~2% of female undergrads are currently athletes, that's more than 20 times more likely.
So what is different about those women? Probably preferences, personality, and more.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2015/10/sport-is-a-critical-lever-in-advancing-women-at-all-levels-according-to-new-eyespnw-report/amp/
I feel like this post was dancing oh-so-carefully around an important consideration: Married white men are responsible for a significant slice of the 'gender pay gap.' Instead of looking for a 'child penalty' for women why not look for a marriage boost for men?
You even had a chart that examined the intersection of marriage and pay, but excluded married men from the table.
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2020/september/taking-closer-look-marital-status-earnings-gap
Hi Alice, big fan of The Great Gender Divergence, hope the book's going well. I'm writing one too and may have slightly underestimated the time it would take... Above, you asked people to get in touch if they've done relevant research so here's a link to a book I co-wrote a while ago, 'The Network Trap' https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-15-0878-3
It's about why there are, persistently, fewer women at the most senior level of management in the FTSE350, based on remarkable data from our former PhD student who moved in those circles. It's about the women who have already been through all this stuff - are unequivocally ambitious, have self-confidence, proven in their jobs, children either adults or there's money for every kind of help, etc etc. Let me know if you'd like the pdf.
Can I suggest that reading up on Claudia Goldin's work would reward your investment of time. She won last year's Nobel Prize in Economics for her four decades of work describing the gender gap in employment. Goldin gives a detailed treatment of why the gap increases as you go up the earnings scale, and she has rigorously tested it over the years to show that it is robust. The rigour of her work is one big reason she got the Nobel (the first woman to win on her own), and one reason I have come to think she is one of the most worthy winners of recent years.
I wrote this synopsis of her work, but there are many others:
https://www.publicaccountant.com.au/features/nobel-prize-winner-claudia-goldin-knows-how-to-close-accounting-s-gender-pay-gap
Transcript of a speech from a cancelled psychologist named Roy Baumeister:
https://medium.com/cregox/is-there-anything-good-about-men-by-roy-f-baumeister-d111ba407de3
Baumeister makes the extreme, can't-possibly-be-true claim that millions of years of evolution and reproductive incentive structures might explain some of the differences in male and female behavior. I'm a good liberal so I find this extremely problematic for reasons I can't explain right now, but let me tell you, it really makes me feel icky.
More motherhood data needed. Anecdotally on all the teams I've led, women who have children or are thinking about having children too often themselves from applying for leadership positions.
The (average) difference in desire to lead is something that has been found in other previous research right?
Or am I making that up?