For the last eight years I have been publishing articles dedicated to International Women’s Day, which falls on March 8th.
Why publish an article dedicated to International Women’s Day? Is it an admission that my other articles do not address women on all other days of the year? No, not at all. All my articles address both men and women, but the articles written specially for International Women’s Day examine the unique aspects related to women in business.
You may think that the issue is too general and there should be no room for generalizations. Let me say that I agree. However, in this article, which deals with statistics addressing a wide range of the population, I characterize aspects of a general group and ask general questions relating to the position of women in the business world. Naturally, not all women are the same and there will always be women who do not fit into my generalizations.
What is the proportion of women in CEO positions?
It is my impression, that most people believe that women hold only 5% of total CEO positions, and that figure has not changed over time. So, I checked the data online.
An article, published on finance.walla.co.il in October 2021, claims that women in management positions are financially beneficial to organizations. This claim, says the writer, is based on a comprehensive study conducted by the Credit Suisse Bank’s board of directors. The study concluded that boards of directors which demonstrated gender diversity, enjoyed better business results and investors’ confidence.
Despite the impressive growth in the number of female managers, says the Gender 3000 report, a global study by Credit Suisse, the road to equality still has a long way to go. […]
The Gender 3000 report, regarding the integration of women and LGBT people in management positions of organizations [...]
reveals that the percentage of women in CEO positions around the world has increased by 27%, but before we open the champagne, we should note that women still form only 5.5% of the total.
Below is a breakdown of the major global areas:
In Europe, the percentage of women in CEO positions stands at 6.7%, the largest increase since 2019. Asia, excluding Japan, is in second place with 6.2% female CEOs and in the USA the percentage of women in CEO positions is 5.6%.
Therefore, about two years ago, the global average of female CEOs was 5.5%. It seems to me that in our conservative country, the proportion of women in CEO positions still stands at 5%. But the difference is not great.
Why only 5%?
I have no definite answer to this question, but it is worth paying attention to what Adi Soffer Teeni, CEO of Meta Israel, said when she spoke at the “Strategic trends of the next decade” conference of the Eli Horowitz Institute for Strategic Management, at Tel Aviv University .
Towards the end of her speech, she was asked about the proportion of women in management positions at Meta Inc. Her reply is summarized in the table below.
Soffer Teeni continued by asking herself “why only 5%?” to which she answered that, when a child is born, even in the most progressive homes where men and women share the household tasks equally, women are the dominant parent. Men continue to travel abroad, seek new opportunities, and offer themselves to new positions, while women stay at home to care for the baby. This is the reason, Soffer believes, why only 5% of CEOs are women. Soffer Teeni added that only when the domestic tasks at home are equally shared between both spouses, will we see equality outside the home.
Soffer Teeni continued by quoting a study conducted in the USA amongst women who held senior CEO positions. The study showed that even after being nominated senior CEO, the women in the study continued to perform the household chores seven times more than their male counterparts.
I think that the situation Soffer Teeni describes derive from paradigms we learn during our childhood, and since each generation follows the example of its own parent’s behavior, changes will progress very slowly.
Where are the senior female managers?
The Credit Suisse bank "Gender 3000" report states that gender variation in meeting rooms continues to improve around the world. The report estimates that an average of about 24% of meeting participants are women. The number of women in senior C- suite roles had also risen to 20%, says the report.
Soffer Teeni also mentioned that about 20% of women were senior managers (she may have relied on the same ‘Gender 3000’ report for her source of information).
So, where are they?
It is my impression that women mostly occupy Human Resource and Quality Control senior management positions.
An article published nine years ago, by Calcalist, Israel’s leading financial newspaper, quoted a study led by Ben Gurion university. The study found that 91% of employee recruiters are women.
Recruiting new employees is usually the first role offered in Human Resources departments. Women with managerial qualities, advance from that role to managerial positions and eventually to the senior chief position. That is the reason why 90% of HR managers in Israel are women.
The study, although conducted nine years ago, confirms my impression regarding the female power in HR management.
Another position staffed mostly by women is Deputy CEO for Quality Assurance.
Why mostly women?
Quality Assurance and Human Resource managers are the most important positions in every company.
The human resource is the competitive advantage of every company, or it can be if cultivated properly.
Jack Welch, who had been General Electric CEO for 20 years, wrote in his book “Winning” that there is no doubt that the human resources manager should be the second most important person in any organization. From the CEO’s point of view, said Welch, HR mangers should be equally important as the chief financial manager. That goes for female HR managers as well.
However, in Israel the situation is different. Many Israeli companies do not employ HR managers because their CEOs think they can save money by not manning what they regard as an unnecessary position. However, these CEOs do not realize how much they lose by employing unmotivated, uninvolved, and uncommitted employees.
In how many companies does the female HR manager hold a CEO Deputy manager position, is a board member or is titled the HR CEO’s adviser? The role, when performed by women, rarely receives its rightful, deserving prestige.
Female Quality Assurance managers also have no prestige
Quite surprisingly, Quality Assurance does not receive its rightful recognition as well. It is astonishing to see how many companies employ QA managers at minor positions or not at all. These companies do not meet global and national quality standards and provide poor quality products or services. Sometimes they don’t even meet the quality parameters they had set themselves, either because of pressure imposed by their sales managers or following agreements signed with their customers.
This is an unbelievably short-sighted approach.
Male managers who do not gain full appreciation and prestige, leave their jobs and women take their place. I have not found statistics regarding the specific role of women QA managers, but it seems to me that everyone agrees that the situation described is real.
This reinforces my claim that men abandon the role of QA manager because it lacks the level of prestige and recognition it deserves.
Are there any other reasons?
The Calcalist’s article quoted previously, lists the following reasons for women’s dominance of the HR world.
- A Historic reason (or simply: women were there before)
Human Resources, as a profession, originated from caring . The profession began during the 19th century when women served as “welfare employees”. During the first and second world wars, large numbers of women were required to replace the men who were sent to the front or helped the war efforts by performing heavy manual work. The profession expanded from caring for the wellbeing of families and individuals to recruiting and training new employees. In those days, recruiting and training new employees was a profession which did not require higher education, (in those days dominated by men) sometimes not even a high-school graduation certificate. It was therefore considered to be suitable for women. Then, as today, and similarly in the field of education, it is dominated by women. - Continuous discrimination of women at work
The following explanation is directly connected to the previous one. Although, as already proven, there is a clear female majority in recruitment and human resources positions, the more senior positions are still reserved for men, who also receive higher salaries than women in the same position. An HR network blog presents an example which shows that in Great Britain, salaries of male managers are 20% higher than women in the same job.
In 2013 Israel, the gap between men and women’s salaries was also tens of percent. Data published by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics in 2011 showed that, on average, women earn 66% of a man’s salary. These data confirm the hypothesis that wage discrimination leads women to human resources, where they receive lower salaries compared to other positions. - Evolutionarily, women are more suitable for the job (or is it just a stereotype?)
Researchers have been trying to identify female characteristics and qualities that might benefit the recruiting process. For example: good listening skills, empathy, high organizational ability, attention to detail, talent for negotiation and most prominent, the desire to help other people. Researchers have been claiming that these qualities are evolutionarily embedded in the female genetic system and the woman’s maternal nature is the factor responsible for her need to help other people. Greg Savage, former CEO of Aquent International, a marketing staffing agency, believes that women occupy most of the recruitment positions because women do it better. He believes that women are better at listening and understanding the candidate’s motivation, aspirations, and abilities. Because of these qualities, he says, women can find the right job for the right candidate.
This explanation falls into a stereotype which I do not accept. Suffice to say that men perform HR related jobs equally successfully, not because they are exceptional but because they accept the challenges of the position.
Summary and recommendations:
Women occupy around 20% of senior management positions (only 20%) but only 5% of the CEO positions. The reason for this is related to the fact that women prefer to dedicate their time to their children and homes as opposed to developing a career.
Women take the responsibility to raise children and manage the home because they are prisoners of old paradigms associated with man vs women roles in the family.
These paradigms originate in the example we take from our parents. It is the reason why intergenerational change will continue to be slow.
Adi Soffer Teeni said, in the above-mentioned lecture, that when a child is born to one of the Meta Inc. staff members, both mother and father take a four-month maternity leave.
I think that women occupy the majority of HR and QA management positions because, despite the enormous and even crucial importance of these positions, they receive little appreciation and low prestige. Men vacate these position and women step in. Men believe that women deserve to earn less, and women are willing to work for lower salaries. This is unjustifiable of course, but unfortunately it happens.
When I coach women managers, I always try to change their paradigm. I urge them to remember their right to demand equal salaries to men.
In this context, I would like to add that women managers tend to also pay women lower salaries than they pay men in similar jobs. When I asked one of the woman managers why? She answered, “I pay her what she asked for”
It takes two to tango…
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