The consensus seems to be both generalized and specific – diversity of leadership is a key component of a company’s success. And yet the higher you look on the ladder, the fewer female faces you see.
Last year’s Fortune 500 list included a record 24 female CEOs – the highest number since the magazine began including gender statistics in 1998. (This year’s list was the same.) And while that’s important, it’s also important to note that 24 is less than 5 percent of 500.
Of course, not every woman (or man) wants to be a Fortune 500 CEO; truth be told, reaching that pinnacle of leadership is a stressful, tiring, time-consuming process for anyone, of any gender. It requires conviction and talent, as well as a willingness to make sacrifices to the god of success.
The commitment and sacrifice required for other leadership roles is in many cases much less, and yet the percentages of women on corporate boards and political offices remain nearly as stark as those of the Fortune 500.
As is so often true of particularly vexing issues, the lack of female diversity at the highest leadership tier is a knotted, twisted, tangled ball of sociopolitical yarn. Paid maternity (and paternity) leave, the number of women in STEM fields, the cost of higher education, sexism, racism and misogyny so subtly and deeply ingrained in the corporate environment as to be nigh invisible to those not directly experiencing it – all of these strands and more snarl combine into one rather bleak picture.
There is one sector of the economy where women are well-represented in leadership: Family-owned business. A global study from professional services firm EY and Georgia’s Kennesaw State University found that the C-suites of family-controlled businesses have five women, on average, and four being groomed for top leadership positions. About 70 percent of respondents were considering a woman as their next CEO.
The Warren Group has never slacked in the hiring and promoting of women and does not lack for female board members. Of the five directors at the company, three are women, and 50 percent of the shareholders are women. While the CEO and president are both men, they have also been with the company for a combined six decades and one is the fourth generation of the Warren family to helm the company in its more than 140 years of existence. (It could be argued that willingness to embrace diversity is part of the reason why the company is still around.)
The ball cannot be unraveled without teasing apart the strands; more, it cannot be unraveled if those who have the power to do so do not choose to unravel the strands. Take a look around you – how diverse is your C-suite, your board, your leadership pipeline? And how successful is your company? How innovative? How nimble? How likely to survive another 10, 20, 100 years?
If you don’t feel good or confident about your answers to those questions, maybe it’s time to take a closer look at your own corporate ball of yarn.
