The Future Must Be More Female

By Sana Rahim (FEMBA ’19)

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Embodied Leadership Workshop for Women at UCLA Anderson with Suzanne Roberts, founder of Unifying Solutions. The four-hour workshop was a crash course on the history of gender inequity, and Suzanne shared powerful strategies and exercises for women to thrive in the workplace.

The most boggling statistic she shared during the session was that girls’ confidence peaks when they are in about the fourth grade. According to Dr. Robin F. Goodman of the New York University Child Study Center, “Girls’ self-esteem peaks when they are nine years old, then takes a nose dive.”

So often, gender inequality is thought of as an intangible force that somehow holds women back. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that these forces are not mystical remnants of the past. There are structural and embedded boundaries that limit a woman’s viability for the C-suite over time, and these boundaries are starting to affect women at a younger and younger age. It is important for women to educate themselves on the subtle and not-so-subtle forces that are molding us to shy away from leadership opportunities and industries that have typically been dominated by men.

What is maybe more alarming is that these boundaries don’t always originate from men. A recent study published by the Academy of Management Journal showed that white male executives aren’t rewarded for valuing diversity, and that female leaders who value diversity in the workplace are actually penalized with poor performance reviews. This leaves women, particularly minority women, in a conundrum. Once you’ve reached success, how do you help other capable and competent women move up without risking your own career?

Gender equity is a complex and challenging topic. But it is clear that businesses without women in the C-suite are less profitable than those that include them. Researchers at the Peterson Institute found that the presence of women in corporate leadership positions is linked to better firm performance. The study showed that going from zero women in corporate leadership to a 30 percent female share is associated with a 1 percent increase in net margin, which is typically a 15 percent increase in profitability for a firm.

Although women make up 40 percent of MBA graduates and 40 percent of managers, they still constitute only 15 percent of the C-suite. We should all ask ourselves: What boundaries or biases are affecting my company’s ability to retain talented women or keep them from moving up?

Eighty-five percent of corporate executives and board members are white men. The only way to solve the problem is to recognize that you have one.

Sana Rahim is sales manager at McMaster Carr. She is a student in UCLA Anderson’s fully employed MBA program and a strategic consultant for social impact at the Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. This summer she will be on fellowship at the United Nations in Istanbul to work toward Sustainable Development Goals. Her post originally appeared on LinkedIn.