Increasing women in leadership roles needs to go beyond checking boxes

As more women enter the leadership ranks that are still male dominated, there needs to be a cultural shift on many fronts

The number of women in leadership roles globally lie in the vicinity of 20 to 25 percent in best case scenarios, with many organisations still stuck in single digits. These statistics are representative of the old-world order where women took on care-giving roles while men worked in and led organisations. While this ensured a stable societal system, as often argued by traditionalists, it came with a set of problems.

At an individual level, women who wanted to pursue careers walked into organisations not built to help them progress, while simultaneously having to undertake twice the responsibilities of both home and work. At a societal level, financial and institutional decision-making became largely vested in men, creating an imbalance of power. Organisationally, the workforce was not representative of the customer demographic where women are either the buyers or influencers of buying decisions.

The shift from this status quo across past decades has gained momentum in the last few years and must be understood as an inter-play of changing individual values and societal norms, and the role of various sub-systems such as regulatory bodies mandating increased representation of women.

Equal Representation Is The Means, Not The End

“50 percent” has long been propagated as the aspirational number for equal representation, whether it’s the percentage of women on a company’s board, or percentage of female CEOs or number of women in the workforce. While numbers often become the key statistic, being simplistic to understand and easy to compare, often they don’t tell the complete story.

For example, even in the small percentage of women leaders in corporations, many hold the role of CHRO or heads of other support functions. It is not an uncommon practice for organisations to have such roles under the category of “diversity hiring” to meet the numbers.

When we dig deeper into factors such as the likelihood of a CXO heading a support function versus a CXO heading a business function – like becoming the CEO, it will be clear why numbers are just the means, and not the actual end. The real reason for the need for equal representation is to allow women and their perspectives to guide organisational decision-making.

Organisations cannot claim to have achieved equal representation, even if they have checked the box statistically, unless their women leaders exert an equal amount of influence in the organisation.

Building Enabling Culture For Women Leaders To Thrive

As more women enter the leadership ranks that are still male dominated, there needs to be a cultural shift on many fronts. For example, many women professionals have spoken about the culture of male bonding and networking over smoke breaks and after-work drink outings.

While specific behaviours cannot be generalised, every organisation has informal cultural norms which need to be understood and addressed if required. Formal and informal opportunities to seek mentorship and build networks need to be created for women professionals.

Organisations also need to monitor if their interventions are inclined towards women being advised and coached to adapt to a male dominated environment rather than realigning any counter-productive aspects of the existing culture and create a better leadership ecosystem. Organisations need to seek feedback from women leaders, as much as give them feedback.

There is a lot of conversation on how a woman leader should be like, i.e. whether they should embody the feminine qualities associated with their gender or be more “bossy”. There cannot be a prescription of what kind of personality women leaders need to have.

Rather than trying to force-fit women into the stereotype and expectations of leadership established by male predecessors, organisations must see this as an opportunity to reevaluate the very nature of leadership required to lead businesses in the current environment and develop all their future leaders accordingly, irrespective of gender.

Finally, a woman leader is a leader first, and woman next. Beyond the initial euphoria of a woman breaking a glass ceiling, they will live through the same grind and experiences of success, failure, appreciation, and criticism as any other leader. Therefore, building women leadership in businesses, cannot just be a “woman thing”.

Organisations often go overboard with women-only networks and mentors, assuming that women are necessarily the best mentors for their kind. While existing women leaders can role-model the possibilities of growth to other aspiring women leaders, all women are not the same.

They have varied backgrounds, leadership styles, life-experiences, and aspirations. Therefore, the final piece of the puzzle is to make male leaders key allies in the process of grooming and developing significant numbers of highly competent future leaders, who also happen to be women.

This article is the second in a four-part series based on the book, Diversity Beyond Tokenism - Why Being Politically Correct Doesn’t Help Anyone, by Swati Jena and TN Hari. The first article in the series can be read here 

Swati Jena is the founder of WriteFor, school of applied writing. Twitter: @swatcat_sj. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.