MAMOKETE LIJANE: ‘Fix women’ is no way to get female leaders

Statistics abound about the lack of women in senior leadership positions in SA organisations. In a 2020 report, PwC said women made up only 14% of executive directors of the top 100 JSE-listed companies and only 6% of CEOs. This pattern is repeated to a greater or lesser degree across most large corporations.

As many, if not more, women graduate than men. The junior ranks of most workforces have even representation across genders. But as people move up the ranks the proportion of women declines, and does so most precipitously at the very top of the food chain.

Much ink has been spilt trying to explain why organisations fail to have more female talent in the upper echelons. It is likely that a confluence of complex factors intersect to produce this result, but I would like to explore one that I think might be particularly problematic to companies that are genuinely trying to address the issue: organisations might be asking the wrong questions of the wrong people.

I once attended a women’s event where a very senior leader was asked what he thought would help women advance in the organisation he led. He said he thought a mentorship programme, where senior men took women under their wings and mentored them, would help. With this guidance, women would be given the tutelage to advocate for themselves.

On the gender pay gap, he acknowledged that in his organisation people did not get paid the same to do the same job. His remedy was that women need to be more assertive when negotiating pay. In his mind, the way to address the bad treatment of women by his organisation is to change the women.

A man who had the power to pay women what they deserved and move them into positions they had the capacity to execute, made equity conditional on the women being more assertive. Yet there are many roles in an organisation where aggressive, dominant behaviour is not a requirement. Why is it a requirement for advancement?

Has this leader ever asked himself this question? Why should women pay this unnecessary emotional price to get deserved pay and promotion? It is like asking an administrator to behave like a combatant. Why, when selling widgets is not war?

I was asked by a colleague what I thought was the most significant barrier to female leadership. I suggested the question needed to be changed. There are no barriers to female leadership, but there are barriers to female leaders being in leadership positions in organisations.

People across genders possess leadership attributes. From what I have observed, women are no worse at leading than men. If that is the case, it follows that the scarcity of female leaders in organisations is more because women aren’t moving into senior positions, not that they don’t have the ability to lead.

Why are women not moving into leadership positions? Two things need to happen for a woman to move up the ladder. She must be capable and willing to make herself available for the role, and the organisation must be willing to appoint her.

When the issue of women in leadership is discussed, the way the questions are asked assumes the problem is women’s willingness and ability, and that these must therefore be fixed.

Companies spend a lot of money on leadership training specifically for women. It is truly strange, and profoundly problematic, that women are deemed to need leadership training but men not.

Clearly the “fix the women” approach is not working. There are as few women leaders in organisations as there ever were. Organisations need to ask themselves why being a woman is a pathology, a sickness that must be healed, before they can lead and get fair pay.

If we are serious about the advancement of women in our organisations, we cannot continue to scapegoat them for their oppression.

• Lijane works in fixed income sales and strategy at Absa Corporate & Investment Banking.