Skills and Strengths to Elevate Women in Leadership

A woman sitting at a desk with a confident smile

There’s no sugarcoating it: we still have a long way to go as a society when it comes to achieving true workplace gender equality, particularly with regard to women in leadership. And we aren’t making progress nearly fast enough.

Despite the fact that research continues to show that companies that are more diverse and have more women on their boards are significantly outperforming the field, there remain both significant pay and leadership gaps between women and non-women in the workplace:

The Challenges for Women in Leadership

The Gender Pay Gap

Women still earned 17% less than men on average in 2022, making 82 cents for every dollar men make.
Worse, this pay gap has barely moved in over 20 years: in 2002, women made 80 cents for every dollar men made.
Latinas made only 54% of what non-Hispanic white men made in 2021.
Black women were paid 58% of what non-Hispanic white men were paid in 2020.
Native American women are typically paid only 60 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.
Over half of American women (61%) believe a major reason the pay gap persists is that employers treat women differently from men.
The gender pay gap also increases with age: Women who were ages 25 to 34 in 2010 earned 92% as much as their male counterparts, while those same women, now ages 37 to 46, only earned 84% as much on average. This pattern also has not changed in four decades.

The Gender Leadership Gap

As of 2022, only one in four C-suite leaders is a woman, and only one in 20 is a woman of color.
For every 100 men who are promoted from entry level to manager, only 87 women are promoted, and only 82 women of color are promoted.
Only 6% more women are C-suite leaders (20% vs. 26%) since 2017.
The gap between how many more women are leaving their companies than men is wider than it ever has been — implying a lack of advancement opportunities for women within these companies.
Women only hold 32% of upper management positions, up from 31% in 2021.

Clearly, the time has (long since) come to prioritize finding a better way to promote women into leadership positions. Not only is it the obvious right thing to do, but it’s critical for the long-term health and viability of virtually any business organization.