The Need for Women to Sprint to Leadership—and How to Slow it Down
When I started my career, I felt the point was to race to the top as fast as you could. I spent far too long thinking about where I was headed rather than where I was. Along the way, messages I heard from peers who were men was their goal to become vice president by the time they were 40. Though I didn’t have a timeline by which I wanted to reach a certain role or title, perhaps I should have considered the rush to advance your career is even more time-sensitive for women. According to research from LinkedIn, women’s path to leadership starts to narrow after 10 years, suggesting a need for women to “sprint” in order to achieve their career goals. When I became a mother, I better understood the value of being present—and the many choices you will make about your career and family each day.
Why 10 Years is Significant
Around 10 years into a career coincides with when many people start to have families or consider having families. And that’s a major consideration: According to Pew Research, more women adjusted their careers to accommodate their family life than men did. Women have to consider what the job expectations will be and how they will affect home expectations, what childcare options will be available, how the cost of childcare relates to their salary, and whether the job is “worth it” after all those considerations. Knowingly and unknowingly, caregiving influences women’s consideration of leadership roles.
In many companies, it’s either up or out, and this mindset can prevent women from progressing in their career if they don’t want to get to the C-suite on a specific timeline or if they prioritize other aspects of their lives outside of work. Because we know that gender bias affects women at work in many ways, it’s possible companies invest less in women who are at this stage in their career on the presumption that these women may have families at some point in the near future.
How Companies and Communities Can Help Alleviate This Issue
Investing in women and investing in caregiving—which is a business issue—supports working mothers, families, companies, and the world.
Here are four strategies that companies and communities can employ to help alleviate this issue:
1. Create better policies for working parents
Workplace flexibility is an important consideration for everyone in the workplace, and it has particular indications for mothers, who carry the majority of unpaid labor at home. Though working remotely or hybrid is valuable for reducing or eliminating commute time, it’s also the ability and support to care for family and personal matters during traditional working hours—and removing the stigma for women who do so. Companies can provide paid parental leave, subsidize childcare for employees, provide on-site daycare options, and advocate for better government policies for working families. Recognizing that policy changes in organizations can take time, here is one adjustment that can start immediately: Clarify meeting schedules in your organization and encourage meetings to start after 9 a.m. This makes your workplace more inclusive for team members who are caregivers and recognizes everyone has interests they want to preserve time for outside of work.
2. Develop career arcs or pathways
Companies that want to build the most diverse and inclusive work environments will recognize that not everyone wants to climb the proverbial career ladder in the same way at the same time. Instead of career ladders, employees now want to think of their career as an arc or pathway, which allows for them to try new roles and develop new learning. Companies will need to adjust their employee development plans to intentionally provide new opportunities for lateral career growth. This pathway may look like people working in different verticals within the same company or taking on new project responsibilities to be promoted without adding more management expectations. Companies will need to consider how to support advancement at later points in one’s career, such as for women who are ready to take on new projects after their children are older.
3. Develop and sponsor women at all stages of their careers
To overcome the leadership sprint, companies need to develop and sponsor women at all stages of their careers. To better support women’s ambition and leadership aspirations, companies need to provide purposeful professional development and train men to mentor, promote, and sponsor women in the workplace. This includes promoting women based on their future potential, not just based on their past performance.
Further, the Women in the Workplace 2022 report from McKinsey and LeanIn.org shows that ambitious women want to advance to the top levels in their organizations, but they’re facing significant barriers—and they’re no longer accepting or settling for these kinds of work environments. Instead, women are changing companies and roles at a higher rate than ever before, and higher than their peers who are men.
4. Provide meaningful work
Create workplace cultures and roles that help working women nurture their ambition and feel connected to their purpose. This is more than helping employees feel good (though that’s an important factor, too!). Research shows when employees feel a sense of purpose in their work, they outperform expectations. Organizations can also create meaning at work through proactively fostering intentional connections at employee gatherings or through virtual “water cooler” moments. When the work is more meaningful and fulfilling, it will be more likely for women to want to find ways to stay in their companies while also caring for their families.
What’s Next
When women challenge gender expectations in the workplace at every stage of their career, they are penalized. In addition to the “motherhood penalty,” when pregnant women and mothers are perceived as less competent and committed to their jobs, new research shows there is also a penalty for single, professional women looking to advance to leadership roles or prioritize their careers. We still have important work to do together to encourage, support, and retain women leaders in the workplace.
This new world of work will require us to create new models to enable all of our employees to be successful. We have to lead for the world we’re working toward, not from where we were. It will take considerable resources and effort to continue to develop and promote women leaders at every stage of their careers and to create more equitable, inclusive organizations—and our workplaces will be better for it.
Shanna Hocking is a leadership consultant, philanthropic advisor, speaker, and author. Her forthcoming book, One Bold Move a Day: Meaningful Actions Women Can Take to Fulfill Their Leadership and Career Potential, will be released on November 15, 2022 and is now available for pre-order.