Businesses should embrace the value women bring

In today’s evolving corporate landscape, the value women bring to leadership and the boardroom is increasingly acknowledged. Businesses are no longer simply looking to boost gender equity numbers. Rather, they are diversifying leadership to ensure the future sustainability of a business in a world that requires a far more empathetic and transformative leadership approach.

Yet, certain challenges remain.

A strategic approach to developing women 

While research suggests that women leaders often find themselves in middle management, we see very few achieve a position in the C-suite.

McKinsey’s 2023 Women in the Workplace Report found that women, particularly women of colour, remain underrepresented in the boardroom (see figure below). 

As middle management, many women in the Gordon Institute for Business Science (GIBS) courses aimed at women leaders express that their roles in middle management are operational rather than strategic, meaning they implement strategy rather than help envisage it. 

However, in an increasingly uncertain political and economic environment, we are seeing an interesting shift. Businesses are increasingly looking for diversity of thought, meaning they need to start including female leaders in the creation of strategy.

The development of female leadership's technical planning skills will ensure that these leaders are able to get their voices heard and, as such, enable them to become equals around the (boardroom) table. 

This trend is seeing more companies demanding that women leaders develop technical competencies like innovation, strategy and decision-making in GIBS courses designed specifically for women in leadership. 

We are also finding our delegates are latching onto topics around these competencies. For many women, this is the first time they are being called on to flex their strategy or innovation decision-making muscles, and they find it exciting to develop such strengths. 

Women bring complex thinking into the strategic decision-making process 

Typically, women are considered relational and this has limited them to roles that require relational strength — human resources and finance, for example. This trait, of being relational, is now being seen as a strength that women can bring to the strategic decision-making process. 

Women’s roles outside the office, which has them juggling responsibilities alongside their jobs, ensures women innately have a valuable skill set. They are excellent at complex thinking. Having relational skills means that women can see connections between seemingly unrelated events or activities, which is important when businesses are trying to make sense of a world that is increasingly uncertain and complex. 

In addition, women are also bringing more granular information to decision-making spaces. This is because their multiple roles in life inform their thinking. As such, they can question issues in more detail, putting people at the heart of the strategy, which further enhances their ability to bring more empathy, understanding and diversity into the strategic decision-making process. With transformational leadership becoming a boardroom buzzword, these skills are essential. 

Barriers to entry slowing down change

Change, however, is slow. Women’s barriers to entry have been extensively researched and discussed, and there has been recognition and debate around issues like the difficulty of moving beyond the glass ceiling, women not supporting women, women having to work twice as hard as men to maintain the same roles, and women having to juggle family with their jobs.

McKinsey’s research attributed the middle management gender bulge to the glass ceiling or the broken rung, where organisational culture prevents women from achieving top positions.

And while those issues are still relevant and need to be addressed, one of the biggest challenges women are now facing is a lack of opportunity for progression. This is where we need to see change. 

Until women are given more strategic decision-making powers, and not just viewed as implementers of policy, they will be unable to contribute meaningfully to the strategic direction of a company.

And, until women are able to participate meaningfully at a boardroom level they will not be given the opportunity to ascend to this rung of the organisation. 

Competition for the boardroom is already fierce because so few positions are available at this level. As such, businesses must recognise the value women bring to the table and encourage greater skills development in areas like strategy and innovation, so that the doors are opened for women qualified to ascend to executive level.

Collaborating strategically for change 

Getting women into the boardroom is no longer a nice-to-have. While companies need to, rapidly, address the barriers women face to progression, this is not about women driving the process alone. It requires collaboration — collaboration with the men in the organisation. 

Research reveals that when women and men work together, there are better outcomes for individuals and for businesses.

Gibs professor Caren Scheepers and MBA alumnus Rebone Mahlangu, in a 2022 research paper, showed that women who are mentored by men move up the corporate ladder more successfully than those mentored by women. Their research found one reason for this was that male mentors have prior access to networks and senior positions and are therefore able to advise their mentees about the pitfalls and opportunities based on their unique experiences. 

Collaboration between the genders also gives people the ability to share their experiences around the barriers and the impact of change. Psychologically safe spaces need to be created to encourage such open discussions, where both men and women have space to be vulnerable to raise issues around the challenges they face. 

Women need to be able to voice their issues around barriers of including challenges around the glass ceiling, sexual harassment and women-on-women competition, for example, while men need to be able to share their vulnerabilities around the increasing representation of women in leadership, especially their feelings of displacement and around the masculine role of men in society.

This discussion needs to be conducted with empathy, otherwise organisations may, inadvertently, foster even greater resistance to change. 

Once businesses are able to open up a space for greater inclusion, a number of the barriers that women face will diminish. But to get there, businesses need to embrace the value women are bringing to the table, and give them the skills needed to take their seats. 

• About the author: Dr Michele Ruiters, PhD, is a permanent faculty member of GIBS, of the University of Pretoria.

To find out more about the latest GIBS courses designed specifically for women in leadership, please visit the Aspiring Women in Boards programme.

This article was sponsored by the Gordon Institute for Business Science.