The “Leaking Pipeline” Phenomenon
The appearance of women who rise within the corporate world seems to be consistently lower than that of their male peers. In Nicola Clark’s article, For Women in the Workplace, an ‘Upgrade Problem’, we see that this is not due to a lack of qualified participants or a lack of caring and helpful executive boards willing to make a change, but rather to the obstacles females face in order to successfully climb the business ladder. Herein lays the ‘upgrade problem’. Through research of several European companies, Clark was able to identify conditions that limit women in the workplace from reaching the management positions within the varying work establishments. Although it is noted that certain corporations experienced an increase in the percentage of females holding executive level positions within the past couple of years, the presence of this so-called ‘upgrade problem’ remains an issue because of the inability to create a culture within the office which women want to be a part of and because of unequal opportunities for women to meet and be mentored by decision making executives.
Veronika Bethke is one of two female women Clark interviewed who hold managerial positions. Bethke is a 36-year-old employee at Siemens, a German engineering corporation, who is in charge of administering the company’s management training program. As a mother of two, she works part time frequently and on occasion from home, but when she is in the office Siemens provides excellent in house child-care. Note, in the United States, I doubt company’s would be so accommodating to female mothers. It is therefore understandable how Bethke attained such a level of success in her career and not surprising that the Siemens company is gaining recognition “in just the past two or three years [for] trying to attract, retain and promote talented women.” (Clark) A leader in gender diversity, Siemens was the one of the first German companies to bring on a woman to the executive board and did so again in 2010. This increased the percentage of female participants on the company’s board to 25%, a figure substantially larger than the average percents in Germany and the EU as a whole, which helped create worldwide buzz.
Simone Siebeke, a vice president at Henkel, a company based in Dusseldorf, similarly holds a leader position. It is important to consider here that Siebeke attributes her achievement to getting exposure with senior-level figures within five years at Henkel. Both of these women have accomplished executive careers and are by no means the only ones. Why then are these women succeeding in attaining these executive roles while most of the remaining working female population is not? Clark identifies throughout her article that they are not the exception, but that their work environment allowed such paths to be taken. Bethke had a satisfying work culture which supported her motherhood allowing that aspect of her life not to hinder her career while Siebeke was given priceless contact with her company’s decision-making executives. These two circumstances yield a gateway to encouraged success within the workplace.
The most minute baby steps have been taken in the quest for corporate gender diversity, the first being companies understanding that female influences are necessary to remain competitive and modern. We see lead female roles in the media that support this theory such as Miranda Bailey on Grey’s Anatomy who develops, organizes and runs a free clinic as a separate entity of the main hospital to do medical work on patients who might otherwise not be able to afford it. This gave Seattle Grace a competitive edge against other neighboring hospitals because they were in the good graces of lower-income families and increased their number of patients, despite the possible suffering of some income loss. However, although this media example of Dr. Bailey portrays to the show’s audience that there are many women in high-level corporate society who have such a great effect on a company, this is not the case and instead is what Douglas would argue to be enlightened sexism. Society has been influenced to think that there are numerous amounts of women keeping the corporate world competitive when really statistics show, from real life in the European Union, that there are only 12% of women on executive boards with the drastic decision making power. How’s that for a slap in the face. Clark, aware of this disconnect, even points out that we are jumping the gun and should appreciate that women only gained the power of comprising now almost half of the work force within the past couple of decades. This doesn’t mean we should settle for only this accomplishment, but rather take into consideration the milestones we have previously made and be aware that more change will take time.
Another factor that stems from a more substantial number of men having a considerable lengthier amount of time in the work force means that for the most part, the rules created for the corporate “system” have been established by males. Thus, as a result, many women still do not feel completely comfortable or themselves in the work environment. This creates a problem because what many companies are beginning to realize, Clark recognizes, is that in order to solve issues of these intimidated women, it comes down to “changing the culture – and not just to one that is friendly to women, but to one that women would want to be a part of.” (Clark) These traditions set in place by men in the workplace create, as one survey points out, “a masculine or patriarchal corporate culture.” This is a form of male privilege that is often taken for granted. Clark points out that they will be hard to alter since regularity is inherently hard to change. This concept of changing the system parallels what Johnson talks about in his article about patriarchy. Johnson argues that the system, in his case society as a whole, has set rules that are hard to change. In fact, the only way to change them would be to do something completely against the rules of the system which we have socially learned to accept making change that much harder. As well, such rules which happened to be created and established by men continue to be the norm. If we are going to move forward to change these rules to better accommodate women, the only solution, according to Johnson, will be to do something that goes against the rules of the work created system.
Despite the need for radical efforts to see effective change, some companies have taken the initiative to try and modify their respective work cultures. One way European companies are trying to promote more women to the top is through legal change. This method parallels the efforts of second wave liberal feminism. Betty Friedan acknowledges this group in her work The Feminine Mystique where the primary agenda for achieving gender equality was to work within the system by reforming laws and customs. “Norway, France, the Netherlands and Spain have all passed laws setting minimum quotas for women on supervisory boards of publicly listed companies.” (Clark) Many of these mandated quotas are as high as 30% which sheds a positive light on the hopes of seeing more women in executive positions in the near future. A few other companies that are not administering legal approaches, but are still interested in increasing the number of females in management, are instead voluntarily adopting these quotas. Deutsche Telekom in Germany is one business doing so and hopes to raise their current 13% of female managers to 30% within the next couple of years. Companies must be careful to not be too strict about such policies, however, because they do not want to make women feel like they are quota hires and to overlook qualified men because they have not reached their number of female targets. In this way, we begin to see a form of what Peggy McIntosh calls male privilege again. Men, I imagine, can get a job offer without questioning whether they got it based on merit or because the company had a goal of promoting a certain number of males. Women, on the other hand, cannot always say the same.
The second, and last, reason why gender diversity is being limited for female workers is because of their lack of exposure to high-ranking mentors. “A study performed by Catalyst in 2010 with … business school graduates…found that women who had mentors at the top of their organizations got promoted at a comparable rate – and faster than those who had no active mentoring relationship.” (Clark) This study concluded a major factor that must be recognized within companies who wish to strengthen their ratio of female executive members; they must offer the appropriate level of exposure. The Deutsche Bank staff in London tried to address both this and the previous problem of making women feel comfortable and wanted in the work place, by setting up cocktail hours after work. The idea was that this setting was more relaxing and approachable for their female employees and that invited, otherwise distant, executive-committee members would be able to mingle with the women. Unfortunately, these top-level people would often not stay longer than the opening greeting so the hopeful mingling rendered failed attempts at exposure for these potential women.
The underlying issue with women’s “upgrade problem” is the viscous cycle rooted in the corporate world. If a woman is not given access to a mentor and/or sponsor, someone who will vouch for her or nominate her for promotional worthy roles, then she will never gain exposure to higher-level executives and without such exposure the road to the top of a company will be much slower if not impossible. Many companies, such as Siemens, has implemented a management training program to help bypass the cycle a bit, but as Ms. Bethke pointed out, the cycle does indeed continue since everyone in the group must be nominated by their bosses, meaning that the need for a mentor is once again required. Even in companies without such programs demonstrate the cycle of promoting women as attributed to their amount of exposure to top tier management. “Ms. Siebeke’s … role gave her daily contact with the C.E.O. and other in senior management, and a sweat at every top-level meeting. Two and a half years later, she said, she was approached to become the head of human resources.” (Clark) So getting to the top for women these days is really about who you know, not so much about what you know.
Despite examples of a few women who have made it to executive positions within their companies, the resounding issue of few women “making it” is a problem for the corporate world spanning amongst many countries. In For Women in the Workplace, an “Upgrade Problem”, Clark highlights two main reasons for this uneven ratio among male and female in top-level positions; the dynamic of the bias work culture and lack of talented women getting high-level exposure. Office environments are inherently administered and catered to men and as a result are an obstacle to maneuver for women. Female employees feel as though they are navigating in a man’s world while working in a corporate atmosphere rather than as though there were an equal setting. Because of this, women are thrown into a system with rules established to benefit, for the majority of times, men and are silenced from promotions in the process. Women are further secluded from upgrading positions due to their ineffective ability to contact and establish relationships with senior management. With no exposure to people who have the power to make company related decisions, working women will have no reason to be promoted. And thus the cycle of the work system repeats itself. So it is clear, that those in power within companies are the C.E.O.’s, board of directors, etc. and that these people have the best chance at creating change. With extended efforts on their end to improve gender diversity either through mentoring or management training programs, I believe that a dynamic change in the corporate world can be just around the corner. See you at the top!
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