Why few women leaders

And even in the non-profit world, a world we sometimes think of as being led by more women, women at the top: 20 percent. We also have another problem, which is that women face harder choices between professional success and personal fulfillment. A recent study in the U. A couple of years ago, I was in New York, and I was pitching a deal, and I was in one of those fancy New York private equity offices you can picture. And I'm in the meeting — it's about a three-hour meeting — and two hours in, there needs to be that bio break, and everyone stands up, and the partner running the meeting starts looking really embarrassed.

And I realized he doesn't know where the women's room is in his office. So I start looking around for moving boxes, figuring they just moved in, but I don't see any. And so I said, "Did you just move into this office? Or maybe you're the only one who had to go to the bathroom. So the question is, how are we going to fix this?

How do we change these numbers at the top? How do we make this different? I want to start out by saying, I talk about this — about keeping women in the workforce — because I really think that's the answer. In the high-income part of our workforce, in the people who end up at the top — Fortune CEO jobs, or the equivalent in other industries — the problem, I am convinced, is that women are dropping out.

Now people talk about this a lot, and they talk about things like flextime and mentoring and programs companies should have to train women. I want to talk about none of that today, even though that's all really important. Today I want to focus on what we can do as individuals.

What are the messages we need to tell ourselves? What are the messages we tell the women that work with and for us? What are the messages we tell our daughters? Now, at the outset, I want to be very clear that this speech comes with no judgments. I don't have the right answer. I don't even have it for myself. And my daughter, who's three, when I dropped her off at preschool, did that whole hugging-the-leg, crying, "Mommy, don't get on the plane" thing.

This is hard. I feel guilty sometimes. I know no women, whether they're at home or whether they're in the workforce, who don't feel that sometimes. So I'm not saying that staying in the workforce is the right thing for everyone. My talk today is about what the messages are if you do want to stay in the workforce, and I think there are three. One, sit at the table. Two, make your partner a real partner.

And three, don't leave before you leave. Number one: sit at the table. Just a couple weeks ago at Facebook, we hosted a very senior government official, and he came in to meet with senior execs from around Silicon Valley. And everyone kind of sat at the table. He had these two women who were traveling with him pretty senior in his department, and I kind of said to them, "Sit at the table.

Come on, sit at the table," and they sat on the side of the room. Don't you love that kind of thing from college? To reach the top of the top, more cultural change is needed. Akshi Chawla, an independent researcher in Delhi who created the WomenLead newsletter , believes that the media and creators of popular culture have a key role. Chawla advocates for building on this momentum to avoid complacency around gender equality , or the perception that one extraordinary event is sufficient.

It still reinforces the stereotype that women in office are the exception and not the norm. Even as women leaders such as New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern have won plaudits for their pandemic leadership, many still face sexism and criticism Credit: Alamy. Individual workplaces can nurture women leaders by, for instance, supporting networks of role models and enabling flexible work. At an individual level, gaining certain life experiences may help to counter gender bias.

Ono comments that in Japan, older men may witness frequent discrimination against women colleagues and partners, making them more sensitive to the need for women leaders. In the US, men whose first children are daughters are more likely to support female political candidates. And for young girls, this is a critical time to be learning about what kinds of people get to be in charge. Equality Matters. Equality Matters How we work. Why do we still distrust women leaders? Lean In Circles Groups for women Find peer support and mentorship with friends, co-worker, or neighbors.

Lead a Circle Learn more about Circles. More resources. Build new skills—from public speaking to team-building—using these expert talks and career resources. To find out why such a gap exists, a study published in in Personnel Psychology analyzed more than papers on leadership emergence published between and In the papers, samples of students or co-workers were asked to select group leaders or to rate one another on the extent to which they led a group.

Some of the papers also measured group participation and personality traits such as assertiveness. As predicted, men emerged as leaders more often than women.

But that gap varied depending on the length of interaction and other factors. The data suggest that men were more likely overall to be chosen or rated as leaders, in part because they had more assertive personalities and thus spoke up more.