Female executives make it harder for other women to climb to the top, study shows
If there are already women in a company's top management team, it makes it more difficult for other women to reach their position, according to new research published in the Strategic Management Journal.
By studying the number of women on the boards of S&P 1,500 Companies over a 20 year period, researchers in the US found that there was often an “implicit quota” on the number of women who could occupy the top spots.
“The likelihood that a given position in a top management team is occupied by a woman is lower if another position on the same team is occupied by a woman,” they say in their study.
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They found that companies tended to make a big effort to ensure there were at least some women in high positions, but that this effort completely diminished once the initial aim had been achieved. They added that in some cases there was even a “resistance” to having lots of women.
The proportion of S&P 1,500 board positions occupied by women went up from 1.6 per cent in 1992 to 5.8 per cent in 2000, and then to 8.7 per cent in 2011. But the researchers said the trend-lines had “flattened somewhat” in recent years, and had “even turned negative in some cases”.
Women are particularly underrepresented among positions with profit-and-loss responsibility, holding only 3.7 per cent of chief executives officer positions and 6.1 per cent of line officer positions in 2011.