Women get hired but not promoted: the top jobs issue
The fact that most companies have fewer women than men higher up in the organization is primarily driven by disparities in promotion rates, not gender differences in hiring or retention.
It’s common for organizations to have gender parity or close to it in entry-level roles, only to see the percentage of women employees decrease as you get closer to the top. A way to address this is the gender proportionality principle (GPP), argues three researchers in Harvard Business Review.
The GPP stipulates that a given level in an organization should aim to reflect the gender composition of the level immediately below it. The researchers have worked with several organizations that report that the GPP has helped achieve sustainable and predictable improvement in gender equity across ranks.
Their example:
A company’s entry-level workforce is approximately half women and half men, but the proportion of women drops slightly at every level. Only about 38% of managers are women, then 33% of directors, 28% of senior vice presidents, and 21% of C-suite executives.
The numbers are from from the latest McKinsey/Lean In Women in the Workplace study, which reflects average demographic realities at 317 North American companies.
“The report underscores the fact that career advancement, rather than recruitment, is where many companies need to target their efforts to further gender equity in their organization. While efforts to diversify the “pipeline” remain important, especially in industries like tech and finance, if companies are not able to develop and promote the women they hire, it will be very difficult for them to reach gender parity, or anything close to it, at senior levels”, the researchers write.
”The gender proportionality principle stipulates that a given level in an organization should aim to reflect the gender composition of the level immediately below it. Usually, women are represented in greater numbers at lower levels, so applying the gender proportionality principle would see women’s representation rise over time.”
“If women make up 38% of managers in an organization, but 50% of entry-level employees, the organization should set a goal to reach 50% women managers in a reasonable yet challenging timeframe.”
The researchers argue that in most companies, implementation of the GPP is straightforward because gender representation follows the same pyramid shape. Yet the GPP can also be adapted to organizations with different demographic compositions:
- The GPP can be applied to diversify the entry level of an organization: In this case, the “level below” is the available talent pool, which may be drastically different for a job in engineering compared to a job in marketing.
- Companies with higher gender representation at the manager level than at the entry level can focus on both pulling through that existing gender diversity to senior levels and separately diversifying the entry level.
- Companies that have an hourglass-type gender representation structure with few women at the middle levels but more in the junior and senior ranks can base their proportionality targets on the entry-level numbers.
- Companies whose current data reveal that they are already close to proportionality in, say, promotions, can instead focus their proportionality efforts on other areas where they are struggling, such as retention or senior external hires.
Importantly, the GPP itself is gender-neutral and can be applied to diversify representation with respect to any gender.
”Admittedly, the GPP will not solve companies’ gender problems overnight, and progress based on the proportionality principle may be slower than under sweeping 50-50 goals. But for many organizations, this is precisely its appeal.”
The researchers are:
Rea Siri Chilazi research fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School studying gender equality in the workplace.
Iris Bohnet, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government, co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program and the Academic Dean at Harvard Kennedy School.
Oliver Hauser, senior lecturer in economics at the University of Exeter Business School and a Research Fellow at Harvard University.
[First published 2/12/21]
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