Corporate E-Learning

Women make up almost half the US workforce, yet they are promoted to leadership positions at a rate far lower than are their male colleagues. What accounts for this leadership gap? How can organizations foster and develop women leaders? Studies show that having women in leadership positions brings many benefits to an organization, including greater accountability and a culture of work-life balance. Yet it can be difficult to determine the barriers to women’s advancement, and even more difficult to surmount them. Learning how to foster and develop women as leaders not only benefits individual employees, but can benefit your entire organization.

American women have always been part of the paid workforce, since the earliest days of our history. Since the 1940s, increasing numbers of women have been entering the paid workforce, and today the number of American women who are employed outside the home is the greatest it’s ever been. Women are a key part of our economy and our organizations, yet they lag behind men in assuming leadership positions.

In spite of their high numbers in the workplace, including the professional fields, women are still subject to what many studies call the “leadership gap.” This refers to the fact that even in fields where women make up the majority of workers, leadership positions are overwhelmingly occupied by men. Many theories have been put forth to explain the leadership gap, but none satisfactorily explain why that gap exists even as women earn degrees at higher rates than do men and enter the workforce at higher rates than ever.

Even with all the gains women have made in education and workforce participation, many barriers to women’s leadership still exist. Some of these barriers are the result of deeply entrenched cultural messages about women. They may seem invisible, or simply the result of common sense, rather than any systematic effort to bar women from leadership. It is important to explore these barriers and create ways to surmount them if women are to assume more leadership positions.

While it is important not to overemphasize gender differences, studies show that women often do lead differently than men do. By examining some common traits of women’s leadership, it is possible to see how having women in leadership positions can benefit your organization. Not every woman will lead exactly the same way, any more than every man leads the same way. The traits that are common to women’s leadership styles, however, can be highly valuable to your organization, both in terms of employee development and in terms of the bottom line in a rapidly globalizing business world.

Once you examine some of the common traits of women’s leadership, it is clear that there are many benefits to having women in leadership positions. One excellent way to encourage your organization to focus on developing women as leaders is to articulate the many benefits of having women in such positions. While we can never assume that ever woman leader will demonstrate all the common traits of women’s leadership – nor can we assume that male leaders will not demonstrate any of these traits – putting women in leadership positions does increase the chances of your organization benefiting from these practices.

While there are formidable barriers to women’s leadership, there are also simple but powerful steps your organization can take to nurture women’s leadership. Developing women into leaders from within the organization is a key path to increasing women’s representation in your organization. Investing in women who are already in the organization demonstrates a commitment to employee development generally and to women’s development specifically. In addition, there are steps you can take to bring more women into your organization, whom you can then invest in developing.

Actively recruiting women should be part of any organization’s recruitment plan. This is even more important if you are in an industry where women are underrepresented overall, or heavily represented in lower positions but underrepresented in leadership. Creating initiatives to recruit women at all levels of the organization helps to create a culture which is gender-diverse, and also creates opportunities to develop women leaders from within, starting at the earliest stages. There are several steps you can take to actively recruit women to your organization.

Research has repeatedly shown that a strong professional network is vital to career advancement and success. Other studies have shown that men tend to have larger, stronger professional networks than do their female peers. Women may miss out on networking due to entrenched ideas about the genders, unwillingness (either their own or male colleagues’) to engage in mixed-gender networking, or due to work-family conflicts that prevent them from accessing networking opportunities. A key strategy in developing women leaders is creating and encouraging networking opportunities for women, both within the organization and outside of it.

Mentoring is one of the best investments you can make in employees. Studies show that women especially benefit from being mentored by other successful women. Taking the time to pair women with mentors demonstrates that your organization invests in helping women grow and develop not just in their current roles, but toward their career goals.

Growth, development, and learning must be continuous and incorporated at all stages of a person’s career, regardless of gender. A key step in developing women into leaders is creating and encouraging educational opportunities. Much like creating networking and training opportunities, there are a number of things you can to create and encourage educational opportunities that will benefit your female employees specifically and grow them into the next generation of women leaders.

Although this workshop is coming to a close, we hope that your journey to learning how to develop women’s leadership. Please take a moment to review and update your action plan. This will be a key tool to guide your progress in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. We wish you the best of luck on the rest of your travels!