We hear a lot about endangered species these days. Usually the species in danger of disappearing has a name like the Crested Ibis or the Blue Throated Macaw. But there’s another species vanishing from our midst at an alarming rate: The Female CEO.
Earlier this month, Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, gave notice that she will be stepping down. Although she’s one of only a handful of women running Fortune 500 companies — her species is harder to spot than a Tasmanian Devil — when she leaves in October, after twelve years in the role, only 23 women will be running major companies. Since last year, the number of women running them has dropped by 25 per cent. Among those who have departed: Meg Whitman, former CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Denise Morrison, of Campbell’s Soup Company, Irene Rosenfeld, of Mondelez International and Sheri McCoy of Avon.
It’s a worrisome trend.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: Even though more women are earning college degrees than men, and approximately as many are pursuing business careers, men start earning more than their female counterparts and sprinting ahead of them within a few years of the starter pistol going off. Not surprisingly, the pipeline stats for women at the highest levels aren’t comforting either. As Brande Stellings, senior vice president of advisory services at the non-profit research and consulting firm Catalyst told the New York Times, “we are slipping back.”
We know why this is happening. Not only are women not being promoted at the same rates as men, they receive less mentoring and professional support and pay a far steeper price career-wise for parenting than men do. Add to those obstacles the widespread sexual harassment problem exposed by the Me Too movement, and the glass cliff phenomenon, whereby women only get offered the top job when a company is in serious trouble.
The evidence that we’re backsliding couldn’t be more compelling. And yet, a 2017 study by LeanIn.org and McKinsey & Company found that many men believe gender equality in the workplace has already been achieved. That same year, the Canadian Board Diversity Council’s ARC Report found that most of the men disproportionately occupying boardrooms across Canada believed nothing needed to change in terms of gender representation at the top. Think about those findings for a moment. The prevailing wisdom among men with the power to make decisions and otherwise is that everything’s fine and dandy. And if it ain’t broke why fix it?
Life has always been lonely for those at the top. But for female CEOs, it’s lonelier. Even if, against all odds, women do manage to advance to levels commensurate with their talent, drive and experience, the obstacles they face take a toll. And then we wind up with an endangered species problem.
So, what to do? This is a multi-pronged problem that requires a multi-pronged solution, but if I had to pick one immediate tack we can take it’s that companies spend more time, energy and money sponsoring all of their best and brightest. For women, sponsorship is particularly important because women need allies to introduce them to key players and billboard their talents to the powers-that-be. More important, though, you can’t protect an endangered species unless you know that it’s endangered. And opening our eyes to the vanishing female CEO problem is a responsibility we all share.