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Gender Barriers In Leadership

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Over the years, the subject of gender-based barriers has continued to generate a high level of interest and stimulates robust debate across vertical sectors of management practice and academia due to its influence on career advancement and gender diversity. The topic elicits the interest of stakeholders in the private and public sectors because of its perceived limitations to women’s advancement to top teams. These challenges and their effect on Fortune 500 companies (F500) have become one of the most discussed and researched constructs in literature. There are divergent positions on the reasons for women’s absence in U.S. F500 top leadership. These views range from those who advocate male-dominance in top teams, including those backed by organizational …show more content…

Consequently, the author reported that women were more disadvantaged in pursuing their career goals than males as a result of managing their professional and domestic obligations, while pursuing advancement to top teams in F500s. However, scholars including Hewlett (2013) offered a different position on the gender barrier issue. Hewlett attributed the limitations to women’s advancement to a sponsorship gap in their career progression. In her view, sponsorship of females to top positions would achieve rapid advancement that years of skills and qualifications would not. Moreover, writers of popular literature, such as Sandberg (2013) noted that ambition fuels women’s advancement. Furthermore, Sandberg asserted that women who aspire to become leaders, and are passionate and purposeful about their ambition eventually advance beyond workplace ceilings. While the debate rages on as to why senior women are unable to attain, retain, or sustain their leadership roles, scholars and practitioners agree that many unresolved policy, structural, and traditional challenges continue to debar women from reaching top positions in …show more content…

Pew Research (2008) and Patten and Parker (2012) asserted that F500 leaders should explicate the benefits and consequences of gender barriers to practitioners to pave the way for its resolution. The authors reported that as of 2013, less than four percent of CEOs in the U.S. F500s were women. Although, 2014 saw an increase of this percentage to 5.2%, the rate of growth was below research projections. The report attributed the slow growth of women's advancement to a partial implementation of gender-gap corrective measures by management stakeholders, thereby jeopardizing the targeted ratios (Catalyst, 2013; Fortune 500, 2013; Leahey, Fairchild, & Zarya, 2013). Moreover, non-compliance with the remedial gender practices initiated by regulators and practitioners accounted for the continued diversity gaps. These remedial steps included gender ratio compliance reports, leadership diversity composition rate, and monthly gender reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

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