The Business Case For Women In Leadership

by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
Forbes | February 17, 2016

In a normal world, we would not really be asking about the “business case” for women in leadership. After all, one would expect any fair, moral, and highly functioning nation to have little reason to exclude half of its citizens from being fully active members of society, or restrict economic opportunities to just 50% of the population (which alas doesn’t stop 104 countries in the world from doing so).

Furthermore, there does not seem to be a clear business case for having so many men in leadership. Indeed, throughout the world, men tend to occupy 65-95% of leadership roles, and yet:

• 65% of employees would happily refuse a pay rise so long as they could replace their boss
• 75% of people quit their jobs as a direct consequence of their boss, which makes managerial incompetence the number one cause of turnover in the world
• Meta-analytic studies indicate that toxic bosses have a pervasive negative influence on employees’ turnover, salary, and productivity, and that people “quit their bosses, rather than their jobs”
• 84% of workers report persistent stress and anxiety problems caused by their bosses
• Fewer than 20% of boards feel confident of effectively addressing their leadership problems
• Up to 70% of executives fail within just 18-months of taking their role
• Even in democratic countries approval ratings for heads of state (180/195 are male) typically hovers around the 40% mark.

Still, we can understand (if not justify) the perpetual request for the business case for gender diversity and female leadership because gender parity in leadership still seems unnatural to most people, not least because they have habituated to the notion that leaders are typically male, and indeed masculine. Those who are accustomed to privilege may see equality as oppression, so their push back is often manifested in the form of demands, such as asking for financial benefits, or an ROI, for allowing women to access leadership roles…[MORE]

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To read the entire article by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic at Forbes website, visit: The Business Case For Women In Leadership