Even in societies and organizations that value gender
equality and invest in initiatives to reach it, women are underrepresented in
most senior-level leadership positions. They account for less than 5% of
Fortune 500 CEOs, less than 15% of executive officers at those companies, less
than 20% of full professors in the natural sciences, and only 6% of partners in
venture capital firms.
Why does the gender imbalance in high-level positions
persist?
A series of recent studies that we conducted with Caroline Wilmuth of Harvard
Business School points to a new explanation: Men and women have different preferences when it comes to achieving high-level
positions in the workplace. More specifically, the life goals and outcomes that
men and women associate with professional advancement are different, we found.
The previous explanations for gender imbalance in high
places have been twofold. Some scholars argue that institutional barriers are
the key culprit. For example, research has found that people view women as less competent
than men and lacking in leadership potential, and partly because of these
perceptions, women encounter greater challenges to or skepticism of their ideas
and abilities at work.
Other scholars believe the gender imbalance exists
primarily due to innate differences in men’s and women’s perceptions,
decisions, and behaviors. For example, research has found that men are more
likely than women to engage in dominant or aggressive behaviors, to initiate negotiations, and to self-select into competitive environments — behaviors likely to facilitate
professional advancement.
Our new research does not dispute these findings.
Rather, we find that there may be more to the story.
In one study, we asked almost 800 employed individuals
to list their core life goals (up to 25 of them) and then sort them into
categories we provided. We defined core goals as “things that occupy your
thoughts on a routine basis, things that you deeply care about, or things that
motivate your behavior and decisions.” Examples include: being in a committed
relationship, keeping up with sports, being organized, or attaining power or
status. Compared to men, women listed more goals, and a smaller proportion of
women’s goals were related to achieving power.
These findings dovetailed with the results of prior research that, relative to women, men are more motivated by
power. These differences contribute to men holding higher leadership positions
than women. Meanwhile, women tend to be more motivated by affiliation
— the desire for warm, close relationships with others — than men, research finds.
Do these different goals lead to different career
aspirations for men and women? In another study, we showed over 630 individuals
who had graduated from a top MBA program in the last two years a ladder with
rungs numbered from 1 to 10 and asked them to imagine it represented the
hierarchy of professional advancement in their current industry. We asked them
to indicate three different positions on the ladder: (1) their current position
in their industry, (2) their ideal position, and (3) the highest position they
could realistically attain. We did not find any significant differences between
men and women in the current position they reported. And men and women reported
similarly high levels for their highest attainable position. But compared to
male participants, female participants reported a significantly lower ideal
position (see the exhibit below).
Our interpretation of the results: because women tend to believe they have less time in which to
attain a greater number of goals, they are likely to experience more conflict in deciding which goals
to pursue and which to sacrifice or compromise. When one of their goals is
brought clearly to their attention and seems attainable (for example, being
offered a promotion at work), women are more likely than men to feel anxious
about the sacrifices or difficult trade-offs they would have to make to give
that goal more attention than others. Thus women may associate power-related
goals (such as taking on a high-level position) with more negative outcomes
than men — which could help explain why women view a high-level
position as less desirable than men do, even if it seems equally attainable.
In another study, we asked roughly 500 adults in a wide variety of
management and non-management jobs to imagine being promoted to a higher-level
position in their current organization that would substantially increase their
level of power over others. Participants predicted the extent to which they
would experience nine different outcomes if they decided to accept the
promotion. Some outcomes were positive (satisfaction or happiness, opportunity,
money, and status or influence) while others were negative (stress or anxiety,
difficult trade-offs or sacrifice, time constraints, burden of responsibility,
and conflict with other life goals). Participants also indicated how
desirable the promotion would be to them and their likelihood of pursuing the
promotion.
The results: compared to male participants, female participants expected
the promotion to bring more negative outcomes, which led them to view the
potential promotion as less desirable than men did and to be less likely than
men to pursue it. However, men and women expected the same level of positive
outcomes from the promotion.
In a follow-up study of over 200 executives, we again saw that women had
stronger negative reactions than men to the hypothetical promotion but the same
amount of positive reactions. Female participants also reported viewing the
potential promotion as less desirable and indicated that they would be less
likely to accept the promotion as compared to male participants.
Overall, the results we collected from over 4,000 participants across nine
studies showed a profound and consistent gender gap in men and women’s core
life goals.
Our data might lead you to conclude that we are claiming that women are not
ambitious or that women should not be offered positions of power. But such
conclusions would mischaracterize the research. Being ambitious means having or
showing a strong desire and determination to succeed. But success, especially
professional success, means different things to different people. To some,
professional success means achieving power over others and making a lot of
money. To others, it means being happy at work, making other people happy, or
helping others. And for most people, it probably includes a combination of
these outcomes with differing weights of importance. So, if one defines
professional ambition narrowly as achieving power over others, then women are
less ambitious. But most people — especially women — do not define
professional success in this narrow way.
Based on these data, we cannot make value judgments about whether men and
women’s differing views of professional advancement are good or bad, or
rational or irrational for individuals, organizations, or society. It is
possible that men and women are correctly predicting the differential
experiences that they would encounter with professional advancement and
are making sound decisions. It is also possible that women are overestimating
the negative consequences associated with power, that men are underestimating
them, or both.
We can conclude, however, that one reason women may not assume high-level positions
in organizations is that they believe, unlike men, that doing so would require
them to compromise other important life goals. That is an assumption that is worth
studying further.
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