“For the past five years, Bain & Company has studied how and why women’s career paths differ from men’s. One of the more telling findings from our 2014 US gender parity research is that a significant number of women follow Anne’s prototypical trajectory. We surveyed more than 1,000 men and women in the US at all career levels, asking specifically about their interest in pursuing a top management position (board, CEO level, and one or two levels below CEO) in a large company. We discovered that 43% of women aspire to top management when they are in the first two years of their position, compared with 34% of men at that stage (see Figure 1). Both genders are equally confident about their ability to reach a top management position at that stage. This suggests that women are entering the workforce with the wind in their sails, feeling highly qualified after success at the university level. However, over time, women’s aspiration levels drop more than 60% while men’s stay the same. Among experienced employees (those with two or more years of experience), 34% of men are still aiming for the top, while only 16% of women are. As they gain experience, women’s confidence also falls by half, while men’s stays about the same.”
Everyday moments of truth: Frontline managers are key to women’s career aspirations | Bain & Company, Inc. (pdf)
Category: Zeitgeist
Reviews, essays, links, and whatever else doesn’t fit in the other categories.
What WIM are reading
These women take responsibility for their successes and failures, and teach us all a thing or two about leadership along the way.
10 Women In Leadership Share Their Secrets To Success, By Vivian Giang, FastCompany.com, June 17, 2014
What WIM are reading
“In four studies, Bowles and collaborators from Carnegie Mellon found that people penalized women who initiated negotiations for higher compensation more than they did men. The effect held whether they saw the negotiation on video or read about it on paper, whether they viewed it from a disinterested third-party perspective or imagined themselves as senior managers in a corporation evaluating an internal candidate. Even women penalized the women who initiated the conversation, though they also penalized the men who did so. They just didn’t seem to like seeing someone ask for more money.”
Lean Out: The Dangers for Women Who Negotiate, by Maria Konnikova, The New Yorker, June 11, 2014
“The elusive nature of confidence has intrigued us ever since we started work on our 2009 book, Womenomics, which looked at the many positive changes unfolding for women. To our surprise, as we talked with women, dozens of them, all accomplished and credentialed, we kept bumping up against a dark spot that we couldn’t quite identify, a force clearly holding them back. Why did the successful investment banker mention to us that she didn’t really deserve the big promotion she’d just got? What did it mean when the engineer who’d been a pioneer in her industry for decades told us offhandedly that she wasn’t sure she was really the best choice to run her firm’s new big project? In two decades of covering American politics as journalists, we realized, we have between us interviewed some of the most influential women in the nation. In our jobs and our lives, we walk among people you would assume brim with confidence. And yet our experience suggests that the power centers of this nation are zones of female self-doubt—that is, when they include women at all.”
The Confidence Gap, by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, The Atlantic, April 14, 2014
If we want innovative results, we need leaders who aren’t afraid to think differently. And who aren’t afraid to lead differently. The most successful leaders know all too well that their high-demand positions mean nothing if they can’t influence others to believe in their mission. What’s their secret to effectively being on top? We asked 10 successful women leaders what they think most people don’t know about leadership. Here’s what they had to say:
10 Women In Leadership Share Their Secrets To Success, by Vivian Giang, Fast Company, June 17, 2014
Women Leaders in Higher Education
“Women are significantly underrepresented among higher education presidents. Today, only 26% of the college presidents in the U.S. are women while more than 57% of the students in colleges and universities are women.”
Why So Few Women College Presidents?, by Lucie Lapovsky, Forbes, April 13, 2014
“A recent study of top female college and university leaders finds that although there are lots of glimmers of optimism, female higher education administrators still face subtle barriers such as being held to different expectations than male counterparts, some lack of support, discouragement and sometimes sabotage.”
Study: Female Leaders in Higher Ed Face Different Expectations than Males, by Lekan Oguntoyinbo, Diverse, April 27, 2014
10 Business Books Recommendations Based on Your Favorite Book as a Child
10 Business Books You Need Based on Your Favorite Book as a Child, by Nick Greene, 250 Words, March 5, 2014
