Obstacles to
Gender Equality
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technology. innovation. equality.
Women can do it all.
Women deserve it all.
The Dilemma
It has been over fifty years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
During that time, corporate and academic leaders have embraced diversity. Virtually every institution has an Equal Opportunity Policy and a Code of Conduct that emphatically prohibits discrimination and retaliation. Corporations have invested enough in these practices to support an $8 billion diversity industry.
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Nonetheless, the goal of gender parity remains elusive. The statistics are well known: only 7% of CEOs in the Fortune 500 are women, only 21% of C Suite positions are held by females, and women earn only 80 cents for every dollar earned by a male.
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Much has changed since the Civil Rights Act passed. In the 1950’s, only 19% of women with small children worked outside the home, whereas over 60% now do so. Women achieved parity in the receipt of bachelor degrees in 1982.
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The United States landed on the moon, built a space station and just launched a rocket prototype that can take us to Mars. We defeated smallpox, cured cataracts and won the Cold War.
Today, average people communicate the same way Captain Kirk did on the original 60’s version of Star Trek and regularly video-chat with colleagues located in Australia and Japan. Is gender equality harder than these accomplishments? Why aren’t we there yet?
Key Obstacles to Gender Equality
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McKinsey stratified the progress of women in corporations across six seniority levels -- from entry level to C- suite.
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This research demonstrates that there is a relatively equal number of men and women at the entry level. However, there is a significant loss of women in the first promotion “jump” -- where female representation drops to 38%.
At each ensuing level, the percentage of women contracts further until females comprise only 21% of the C-Suite. (see Table right)
Lack of Parity in Promotions
Factors Impacting Inequality in Promotions
Biased
Performance
Reviews
Women are consistently leery of the fairness of performance reviews. McKinsey found that only 17% of women thought the most qualified candidates were promoted and in another study, only 15% of female managers had confidence in the performance review process.
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Some academics attribute this to the “tightrope” of gender expectations that women must navigate at work. If women comply with gender expectations and are perceived as “warm and nurturing” then they “don’t show what it takes to move into a leadership position.” However, if women adopt a “take charge” stance then they are “often seen as angier or more aggressive than men.”
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In a 2019 Harvard Business Review article, Kellogg School of Management Associate Professor Lauren Rivera highlighted that a variety of research indicates that reviewers consistently give men higher performance ratings than women, even when their qualifications and behaviors are identical. Even artificial intelligence algorithms have been vulnerable to preferring men.
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A key underlying problem is that most performance reviews have little to do with actual performance. Seminal research published in the Journal of Applied Pyschology in 2000 found that only 21% of variance in performance reviews had to do with actual performance. The vast majority -- 62% -- was associated with the raters’ peculiarities of perception. Stanford University found that women were 2.5 times more likely to receive criticisms for “agressive communication styles” while men are three times more likely to hear feedback based on business outcomes.
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Corporate Housekeeping
More Likely Women Perform Office Housework
29%
Women are disproportionately given “housekeeping” assignments in the workplace. This category of work is often administrative -- such as keeping track of contracts, compiling meeting minutes or other mundane but necessary tasks. They may also be emotive -- such as dealing with low morale or executing “diversity” initiatives. The common element? Corporate “housekeeping” tasks are not ones that enable advancement or will garner recognition in competitive performance evaluations.
In one survey for the Center for WorkLife Law and the Society of Women Engineers, women were 29% more likely than white men to report doing more office “housework” than their colleagues. Time spent on corporate “housework” means less spent on more promising opportunities. In fact, women are less likely to receive “glamour work” that provides visibility and promotion opportunities.
Female lawyers of color indicated they were 30% less likely than white men to say they had equal access to high quality assignments and white women were 18% less likely. Research indicates that both male and female managers are more likely to assign these tasks to women instead of men. A simulation conducted at the Pittsburgh Experimental Economics Laboaratory (PEEL) found that both sexes were 44% more likely to assign the tasks to women.
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Can’t women just say no? This is a risky strategy in many cases because women may face a stiff penalty if they fail to execute these tasks. Research in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that women were viewed negatively for not doing these types of assignments, while there were no consequences for men to sidestep these projects.
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Lack of Constructive Feedback
Dr. Paola Cecchi Dimeglio, Chair of the Executive Leadership Research Initiative for Women and Minority Attorneys at the Center for the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School, has written that failure to receive feedback is another problem faced by women.
Her data revealed that “women got less constructively critical feedback. The objective of constructive feedback is to allow an employee to focus on the positives while identifying areas where there is room for growth.” Lack of precision feedback makes it more difficult for women to identify the changes they must make to ready themselves for advancement.
Many diversity programs now recommend the development of “mentors” to propel female advancement. However, the individual who is in a position to provide the most pertinent and timely feedback on a consistent basis is in fact a woman’s immediate first and second line supervisors.
Lack of Parity in Promotions
Inequality in Unpaid Work
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Inequality in unpaid work negatively impacts female advancement. Research consistently shows that women perform more unpaid work than men -- even working women.
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Full-time employed women perform 22% more unpaid household and caregiver support than male counterparts. Even after controlling for a variety of demographics - including income, age, race, employment status and others -- women perform over two hours of unpaid work per day more than men. This phenomenon begins early in life. Females age 15 -24 perform 50% more unpaid work than their male counterparts.
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This also creates a “leisure time” gap with men spending about six hours more per week (about 49 minutes per day) on leisure activities. This further diminishes time females could allocate to long term advancement activities such as participating in career enhancing sports (e.g. golf), running for local government office or simply recharging themselves in order to be energetic and creative during the work week.
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Women More Likely To Perform Office "Housework"
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Hours Per Week
Fewer Leisure
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Fewer Leisure Hours Per Week
6
Hours Per Day
Extra Housework
2
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Would “family friendly” policies address this issue? Yes and no. There is a significant push now for the adoption of “family friendly” policies at work. Even before Covid, the remote workforce had experienced significant growth rising from 3.9 million Americans in 2015 to 4.7 million in 2017. According to a recent McKinsey survey, 64% of companies currently offer policies allowing some employees to work from home.
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However, women accessing flex options may harm their future potential. Research indicates that women who pursue flexible work options may be perceived as less committed to career advancement. Joan C. Williams, co-founder of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, coined the term “flexibility stigma.“ She notes “Many times these policies are on the books, but informally everyone knows you are penalized for using them.”
Inequality in Unpaid Work
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Given that virtually every major corporation forbids any form of discrimination -- why don’t women complain about biased performance reviews or uneven allocation of corporate housework? A well-founded fear of retaliation deters many women.
Despite the fact that retaliation is illegal, over half of all claims filed with the EEOC are related to retaliation. Experts agree that companies attempt to “isolate and vilify” employees who speak up about discrimination and harassment “often encouraging them to quit or firing them.”
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Among those that filed EEOC discrimination complaints, 64% lost their jobs in the process. This holds true even in companies with official anti-retaliation policies.
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Lose Jobs During Complaint Process
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Lose Jobs During Complaint Process
64%
Women More Likely To Perform Office "Housework"
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Even men fear retaliation. In a Catalyst.org study, about 81% of men indicated they were personally committed to interrupting sexism but only 31% were confident in their ability to do so. A climate of “organizational silence” where there is a fear that those who speak up will be penalized silences men as well as women.