Are Women Hurting Women in the Workplace?

Women, not men, may be holding women back from achieving upper levels of management. A Gallup survey released this week finds that 39% of women — and only 26% of men — preferred to be led by a man.  This preference for males has held for the past 60 years of polling, says Gallup.

In reporting the survey, BusinessWeek adds that "a growing pile of evidence suggests that women mistrust, and can undermine, one another at work."

• "95% of working women felt they were undercut by another woman at least once during their professional life," according to a 2011 survey.
• A 2010 survey of legal secretaries found that not one preferred to work for a woman partner, although 47% had no preference.
• A 2008 study found that women working for female supervisors experienced more stress than those who had male supervisors.

The data suggest that even the millennial generation "would rather not have a woman in charge:"

NFL Refs - Another Glass Ceiling Cracking

Sarah Thomas, a 39-year-old woman, is "poised to become the Nation Football League's first permanent female game official," reports Bloomberg news, "possibly as soon as the 2014 season." A wife, mother of two boys, and a full-time pharmaceutical sales rep, Thomas has spent "16 years calling high school and college games."

“I didn’t set out to break a glass ceiling or a gender barrier,” said Thomas, a 39-year-old from Brandon, Mississippi. “If you’re doing things because you love them, then things have a tendency to just kind of fall into place.”

Not Such a Feminist Paradise

"Sweden seems to be an egalitarian, feminist utopia. So why are American women so far ahead of their Swedish counterparts in breaking through the glass ceiling?" asks Christina Hoff Sommers in a well-documented article in AEI's The American this month.

Sweden has the kind of very generous 'family friendly' policies that American liberals dream of, including:

• a 16-month leave policy for new parents — male and female; and
• a parental right to work only part-time (at a reduced salary) until his or her child is 8 years old.

But it turns out that even in the feminist paradise state, women take advantage of the policies (the mommy track) while men stay focused on the career track. In 2012, Swedish officials reported 1 in 3 women (33%) took the part-time parental work option, compared to only 1 in 10 men (10%). Not surprising, women hold fewer high-level jobs than men, too.

Sommers cites the following findings of two major recent studies on the impact of 'family friendly' work policies on women: 

• Swedish-style 'family friendly' work policies "make employers wary of hiring women for full-time positions at all."
• European "broad-based welfare state policies impede women's representation in elite competitive positions."

With fewer welfare-state work policies than Europe, the United States is a better environment for women who want to break the glass ceiling. Writes Sommers:

Advice: 9 Rules Women Must Follow to Get Ahead

Despite many examples of females in the top ranks of power, "women held just 14.1% of executive officer positions in 2011 in Fortune 500 companies," writes FINS reporter Julia Steinberg, and "women held 16.1% of [board] seats."

Why are the numbers so low? Despite their talent, education and hard work, many women simply aren't chosen for roles that lead to greater success later. Women often don't have the "intangible skills" needed to gain the attention of higher-ups at the company, says Elena Rand Kaspi, a former consultant to law firm White & Case and the president of LawScope Coaching, an executive career coaching company.

Getting "chosen," then, is an art that many women need to learn. FINS spoke with women executives and leadership coaches to determine the best ways you can position yourself for the next great position.

Steinberg lists the 9 rules women must follow to "help them earn more management roles in the workplace:"

Women Primed to Break Glass Ceilings

From the Wall Street Journal: "The ranks of female chief executives remain thin, with women in the top spot at just 35 Fortune 1000 companies. But the pipeline is promising, says Maggie Wilderotter, CEO of Frontier Communications Corp., adding that "she wouldn't be surprised if the number of major-company female CEOs doubled by 2017." Many women are already in senior management positions proving their worth:

• nearly 73% of Fortune 500 companies now have at least 1 female executive officer
• 24% of senior vice presidents at 58 big companies are women

The Wall Street Journal profiles 10 female executives "whose operational expertise and track record make them likely picks to lead a Fortune 1000 company within five years."

Read the full article, More Women are Primed to Land CEO Roles, by Joann S. Lublin and Kelly Eggers.