I had lunch with a male gender expert this week who was sharing his frustration that we’ve made ‘no progress on women in leadership in a decade.’ This struck me as a pretty strange claim from someone, like me, regularly staring at corporate talent data. It ain’t what I’m seeing. Progress may be piecemeal, irregular, and unsatisfyingly paced, but the idea that we aren’t making progress isn’t a helpful narrative - not for women, nor for the men and boys who are increasingly feeling a reverse gender gap needing our attention. This complaint is also fairly widespread and feeds both women’s impatience and frustration, and men’s resentment.
Some companies, sectors - and men - are harder to crack than others, I will admit. At a couple of dinner parties this past week I’ve been seated next to men who have not (successfully) evolved beyond mansplaining, dominating and confrontation-disguised-as-conversation. I call this ‘aural rape.’ A friend and I were discussing tactics to address it in good company (and companies) and came up with the idea of equipping people with red cards they could hold up to call out last-century behaviours. (Watch this space!)
Also, the newly rising topic of longevity and generational balance opens an opportunity to focus on the impact of lengthening lives and careers on gender balance. Career management systems, pacing, and expectations in companies are still based on the traditional, linear male-normed career cycle.
This may change as the world adjusts to changing demographic curves. It’s heartening to see Dr Lucy Ryan’s book Revolting Women: Why midlife women are walking out, and what to do about it win Best Business Book of the Year. It’s an encouraging sign that Q3 women and their talents are becoming a visible variable on the strategic business agenda. Companies are losing too many women just as they are reaching their peak career decades, through a misunderstanding of adapting male-normed career management systems to a more gender balanced talent pipeline.
This week I got a couple of key gender related reports in my inbox that show contrasting perspectives on reality. First, the latest McKinsey report, then some essential reporting from the FT’s John Burn-Murdoch.
Women in the Workplace 2024
McKinsey has come out with a 10-year edition of its much-referenced Women in the Workplace reports. It looks only at US data and focus on the corporate sector, where these reports have been highly influential. They’ve also been incredibly beneficial to McKinsey’s brand and reputation, despite the firm’s own resilient lack of gender balance. You won’t find the current gender ratio of McKinsey partners published anywhere on their website. It would be lovely if they shone their analytical gender flashlight on their own firm and sector.
Nonetheless, this year’s report builds on representation - the number of women in business - to also review how much corporate policy and culture has adapted to the arrival of women in their midst. The short answer: not enough, and where much of the challenge remains. But I’m a bit dubious about the KPIs they are using to make these conclusions.
Over the past decade, gender balance has increased at every level, says McKinsey. C-suites among the firms surveyed are now 70/ 30 male/ female compared to 83/ 17 ten years back.
But most of the progress continues to be in staff/ functional roles vs. line or profit-generating roles (usually a surer path to power). It’s pretty shocking to see the complete flat-lining on the P&L jobs.
“Change is hard and messy, and we’re somewhere in the middle of the shifts needed to fix the pipeline and make the culture of work more equitable.”
The report complains of a drop in programs specifically aimed at women. I’m not sure that’s automatically a bad thing. I often consider, in 2024, that these ‘fix the women’ frames unwittingly undermine women, and are something I suggest companies move beyond if they are serious about gender balancing.
It then points to the inefficacy of current corporate approaches focused on bias training (what I call ‘blame the men’ sessions) and ‘allyship’ programmes (another unfortunate misnomer. What are the men who aren’t ‘allies’? Enemies? Also, trying to divide men amongst themselves on the issue of women never struck me as a smart idea). The report seems to regret their demise. Despite a growing body of research suggesting these programmes don’t work, and can even contribute to a fairly predictable backlash.
Reading between the lines, the report offers useful data to encourage companies to rethink their approaches to gender balancing - and innovate. As you can guess, I’m not a big fan of the way companies have been pushing the topic, and I’m afraid part of the DEI backlash (and backlash against progressive ideas generally) is a result of the way these sorts of initiatives have been run. You think we’d be able to recalibrate a bit more easily. But, as one client told me this week, women love their women’s programmes! But reports like these will hopefully teach us that if things aren’t progressing the way we want to, it might be time to reconsider our approach.
The Bigger Story?
Yet there is something bigger going on, and Burn-Murdoch’s data in the Financial Times gives a good picture of a parallel tale. His article, entitled Young Women Are Starting to Leave Young Men Behind, is essential reading for anyone interested in current gender realities - and their likely future consequences.
First, he shows that women are getting far more educated than young men. This has been true for decades, but has accelerated since the beginning of the 21st century and is reaching some society-impacting proportions.
Years of women out-educating young men is starting to have an impact on employment, with young, 20 to 24-year-old women’s employment starting to pull ahead of men across the developed world.
Without surprise, these trends are now impacting salaries, with young women’s pay pulling ahead in the UK - particularly among those without degrees. The crossover point was in 2022.
These gaps are partly women getting stronger, but are more largely attributable to non-degree men’s salaries collapsing. In the US, male salaries remain slightly higher on average, but show similar drops among men without degrees. Anyone say backlash?
Burn-Murdoch has done some earlier writing about some of the consequences of these trends. Like the widening political gender gap, with young men becoming more conservative and young women increasingly more liberal. Now, he correctly points to the broader, simmering impacts of shifting gender roles that aren’t likely to go smoothly if we don’t better integrate the needs of men (of which the McKinsey Report makes little mention):
”relationship formation itself is being affected, as growing numbers of female graduates discover a shortage of male socio-economic counterparts, and simultaneously have less need than ever to pair up with a man for financial support.”
While companies, consultants and DEI departments continue to push ‘women’s programmes,’ reports and education, it’s been urgent for some time to switch the focus to a more equitable and neutral focus on gender balance. And get both men and women into the conversation. Not to mention education.
A world of educated women and poorer, uneducated men will not be a peaceful one. For anyone.
There is another way to work on gender balance, one that brings men and women together to debate and design the way forward. One that is more inclusive of both genders’ evolving needs. It works, I’ve been doing if for years.
Because if we keep branding our efforts ‘promoting women’ and ignore men’s emotional reactions to these programmes and their exclusion from the conversation, we’ll continue to get what we are seeing: backlashes and rejections to women’s steady, quiet rise.
The stats don't lie. Thanks for the illumination Avivah.