How to Help Women in Business Get Past Gender Barriers to Management

According to a recent study by Lean In and McKinsey, Women in the Workplace, the biggest barrier women face in business today isn’t the glass ceiling. Instead, it’s the floor – the barrier to entry-level management positions.

Although women now own 4 out of 10 companies in the US and are making great strides at the top of the corporate ladder, they are still lacking in junior and middle management positions. Companies of all sizes have to deal with this.

Women in business mean more success

It’s not just about diversity (although that’s a goal worth striving for in itself). Statistics show that hiring women for leadership positions will help your business thrive. For example, a study by Peakon showed that when 50% or more of a company’s management is made up of women, employees feel more loyal to the company and its products or services.

A 2017 Morgan Stanley report reiterates these findings, suggesting that gender diversity within an organization leads to increased productivity, more significant innovation in product and service design, improved decision-making, and reduced employee turnover, with associated higher employee satisfaction .

Try implementing these three strategies to fix the broken rung at the bottom of the corporate ladder and get more women into entry-level leadership positions.

1. Start from scratch.

As the Women in the Workplace study suggests, the first task for any company committed to increasing the number of women in leadership positions is to increase the number of women hired and promoted.

Your job is to make your workplace more attractive to diverse candidates. Start neutralizing your job postings and ads. Go through each ad line by line before releasing or posting an open position. Avoid potentially off-putting terms like “rock star” and “ninja.” Some of the more qualified female candidates might interpret this as code for “male candidates preferred”.

Also, consider following Buffer’s lead. Based on the finding that women are far less likely than men to apply for a job unless they exactly match the image created by the ad, Buffer encourages all candidates to apply, even if they feel they don’t have all the qualifications fulfill .

If you want to reach more female candidates, consider going where they are. For example, open up your job search by sharing the job posting on platforms and websites with target groups with a significant proportion of women.

2. Commit to taking action

Set actionable goals for both hiring and promoting women to senior management. Clearly establishing metrics and committing to meeting those metrics can help foster positive change for your organization as you seek to diversify its management.

For example, if there are two candidates, a man and a woman, the female candidate has a 50 percent chance of getting the job. However, if there are three female candidates and one male, the probability that one of those women will win the job increases to 67%.

However, if you reverse this scenario, with three men and one woman, your chances of getting the job go down. One way to counteract this unconscious bias is to set a specific goal of getting an equal number of men and women in the final judging round. Creating this type of rule helps you look beyond mere lip service to the ideals of “promoting qualified candidates” to truly evaluate your candidates based on their qualifications without any unconscious bias.

Finally, try to establish clear, neutral evaluation criteria. Make sure your hiring and promotion evaluation criteria are based on the actual duties required in the position and not an outdated evaluation that has not been standardized and edited to be gender neutral.

3. Get to the bottom of the unconscious bias.

Training appraisers and supervisors to recognize and combat unconscious bias can help remove the barriers to promoting women to senior positions within your organization. But how do you recognize a bias if it is not consciously held?

One way is to test your systems. For example, the next time your company is hiring for a potential manager or feeder position and a female candidate is screened out at the pre-interview stage, you should still promote her to the next round. If she proves qualified at the interview based on the feedback you receive, you may have some bias in your processes at work.

Additionally, implement commitment-based evaluation processes. Groups with balanced representation can help to eradicate and neutralize individual biases. At the same time, they can help to better assess the strengths and challenges of each candidate.

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