Women Keep on Climbing

Jennifer Bradford wanted a job that would stretch her skills as a magazine editor and raise her profile. So her boss suggested that she take over managing the new online as well as traditional print side of their magazine.

Bradford shrank from the proposal, concerned that she new nothing about online publishing. She questioned whether she was the right person for the job. But her boss pointed out she'd get a substantial raise, a better title and greater visibility. Her best friend declared, "So what if you know nothing about online publishing? You know your magazine backwards and forwards. There's no question that you can do this job!"

She ended up taking the risk and was highly successful in her new executive position. But if she hadn't been pushed, she wouldn't have dared.

That kind of self-doubt is typical of some women in business, said Lee Ann Howard, co-founder of the recruiting firm Howard & O'Brien in Cleveland in a recent article in Career Journal.com, an online publication of the Wall Street Journal. "If a job requires five skills and we have four, we'll decide that we aren't qualified and let it go. But a typical man who has two of the skills will take a chance and go for it."

"Yet this is why they're called promotions," said Carol Gallagher, founder of the Executive Women's Alliance and a career coach based in Oakland, CA in the CareerJournal.com article. "If you weren't doing things you hadn't before, they would be lateral moves."

Fortunately, many women have found the confidence to push ahead, and the past 20 years have seen progress in terms of the rise of women into managerial, executive and director positions. In 1980, for example, the Fortune 100 (the world's largest and most stable business operations) featured no women executives such as company presidents, chief executive officers, chief financial officers, and senior vice presidents. But by 2001, 11 per cent were women, according to a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

In addition, not only are women now a greater presence in the corporate power structure than they were in the 1980s, but women executives tend to be younger (47 years versus 52), less likely to be lifetime employees (32 percent versus 47 percent), have spent less time in each of their jobs before being promoted (3.4 years versus 4.0), and to have broken into the executive ranks "much quicker (21 versus 25 years) than did their male counterparts," said the NBER report.

Women Want More

Yet while 11 per cent is significant, it's not enough, according to many experts. In fact, some studies have shown a recent stagnation or even a backwards trend in the number of female executives in different industries.

The percentage of major public companies with no female board members, for example, has actually worsened in Philadelphia, Chicago and Georgia, among the seven states and regions surveyed in 2005, according to the InterOrganization Network, a group of seven organizations of female executives.

"With few exceptions, we have not moved beyond tokenism in the number of women in top leadership positions or serving on the boards of communications companies. Men still hold the vast majority of positions," commented FCC Commissioner Susan Ness in an article published by the University of Pennsylvania. "The glass ceiling is firmly in place."

Why the Lag

Observers blame the women's continued lag behind men on a variety of factors. (SEE SIDE STORY.)

Corporate directors, who tend to be men, have long had a tendency to choose people they know and trust well - and those tend to be other men. These informal networks tend to exclude women from critical decisions and opportunities. The solution: women need to build and fortify their own supportive networks.

Easier said than done. Career coaches and executives say too many women tend to act like worker bees rather than queen bees; they focus too much on getting tasks done, and overlook networking opportunities because the don't consider them "necessary" to their work. They come across as hard workers with exceptional expertise rather than as strong leaders who can manage and delegate.

Observers also cite other corporate cultural issues, including a lack of role models, the failure of many women to seek credit for what they do, the failure of their companies to spotlight them, and the continuing challenge of women finding ways to successfully integrate their work and personal lives.

What Companies Are Doing

For companies like Westaff, a leading provider of staffing services, taking a gender-blind, merit-based approach naturally brings women into positions of power. For its role in promoting women into leadership roles, for example, Westaff was recently honored by the University of California Graduate School of Business. The business school found that Westaff was among the top three of California's 200 largest publicly traded companies with more than 35 percent women directors and executive officers.

"Throughout our organization, we hire and promote people based on their abilities, experience and drive to succeed," said Westaff President and Chief Executive Officer Trish Newman. "I believe that the strength of our leadership team is in its balance. We're a company with a lot of opportunity for both men and women with skill and drive."

Optimists believe that more companies like Westaff will come to recognize the merits of rewarding the most talented - entrusting key aspects of a company to their very best people - regardless of gender. It makes good business sense. Organizations with greater gender and cultural diversity in their management ranks, according to recent studies, outperform those organizations with less diversity.

"For America to compete, we must have the best and brightest in our corporate boardrooms," said Lynn Utter, chief strategy officer for Coors Brewing Company, according to an article published by the McCombs School of Business. "Women bring a different perspective to business challenges. Diversity of thought brings the best answers."