Breaking Through the Corporate Glass Ceiling

Over the last generation, women have made huge strides in the professional world. By many accounts, they account for over 60% of US college graduates. And while the economic recession harmed everyone, women have had a lower rate of unemployment than men, particularly in white collar industries, where their presence has been increasing.

But somehow, there seems to be a limit to how far they can rise---that proverbial “Glass Ceiling”. Though women are a majority in professional occupations, they’re just 4.2% of CEOs in America! Corporate boards are a whole other story.

"Progress on Gender Diversity for Corporate Boards: Are We Running in Place?"

Today’s WAPPP Seminar featured Cathy Tinsley of Georgetown University, presenting some preliminary findings from her research on Progress on Gender Diversity for Corporate Boards: Are We Running in Place?

Using a number of different laboratory experiments and statistical analyses, she and her colleagues explore the conditions under which more women might be added to corporate boards. While the research is still ongoing, some early results suggest a tendency to maintain the board's existing gender composition when members need to be replaced. Interestingly, she also saw an increase in selecting a woman for an open board seat when there were predominantly women in the candidate pool.

Of course, some of the reasons for women's representation on boards are important to note too. A Credit Suisse report issued last year found that companies with women on their board performed better than comparable companies that did not. In another report, Catalyst found that Fortune 500 companies with more women on their boards outperformed their peers on average across a series of financial indicators.

Women may be more represented on the boards of social organizations and non-profits than on of financial firms, for example. But should this be the case? Should women be represented equally simply because it’s fair and they are capable of providing the (exact) same service as men? Or because they bring something special and complementary---but essentially different---than men do?

What's Culture Got to Do with Fertility?

I had no idea what to expect from a talk titled “Lowest-Low Fertility: A theory of normative rigidity and economic context” but judging by the packed room, a number of people were interested in hearing Mary C. Brinton, the chair of Harvard’s sociology department, discuss this topic. 

   

What is “lowest-low” fertility? A country’s total fertility rate of 1.3 or fewer births per woman is considered lowest-low. Of course, low fertility is not a problem for the planet overall, but for individual countries fertility far below replacement rate has serious implications – a rapidly aging population and a shrinking labor force among them. 

 

So why are some developed, post-industrial countries experiencing lowest-low fertility and others are not? For instance, the United States does not have “lowest-low” fertility, but Japan does, even though Japan has better child care options and ostensibly more family-friendly policies. Low fertility doesn’t even correlate with female labor force participation. In fact, it appears that countries with high percentage of women working actually have normal fertility rates.

If it’s not working women and it’s not government policies, what is driving down fertility in some well-to-do nations? Perhaps it is culture. 

Professor Brinton and her team set out to test this hypothesis. Utilizing data from the global attitudes survey, they isolated the gender-role perceptions through answers to questions like “A woman needs children to be fulfilled” and “Men have more rights to jobs when jobs are scarce.” They discerned three broad clusters among 24 post-industrial countries – those with predominantly “conservative” attitudes, reflecting the male breadwinner-female caregiver model, and then “egalitarian” or “caregiver egalitarian” countries.  

Professor Brinton’s analysis demonstrates that predominance of male breadwinner-female caregiver attitudes correlates significantly with low fertility rates. The quantitative model controls for the economic well-being of the countries and includes other potential factors that affect fertility, such as unemployment among young males. 

This means changing a culture of gender inequality and breaking down attitudes that perpetuate rigid gender norms is in the best interest of any post-industrial country concerned about its rapidly shrinking and aging population. If only changing culture were easy...