Paving the way for more women leaders

EACH year, International Women’s Day (Mar 8) celebrates the achievements of women around the world. It is also an opportune time to reflect on the different realities confronting women at work and how they have changed over the years, especially in the area of leadership.

Is there a glass ceiling for women leaders?

Corporates have achieved some progress in advancing gender parity in recent years. Globally, women’s representation on boards have risen 3.6 percentage points to 23.3 per cent since 2022, driven by a mix of government action and investor voting policies.

Despite these positive results, women remain a clear minority in corporate leadership. According to a report by Deloitte, women hold just 8.4 per cent and 6 per cent of chair and CEO seats, respectively. At this current rate of change, global gender parity for chairs and CEOs will only be reached in 2073 and 2111 at the earliest – almost 50 to 90 years from today.

This is despite tangible known advantages of having females at the helm, which include better financial performance, enhanced team collaboration and stronger organisational trust. For instance, companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on their boards were found to be 25 per cent more likely to deliver above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile.

This begs the question: How can organisations create conditions that engender more women leaders?

The broken rungs on the career ladder

For women leaders to become commonplace, organisations must address systemic barriers that hinder their advancement.

Focusing on the “glass ceiling” is simplistic and could lead to institutional complacency once a few prominent examples of female leaders emerge. Institutions would be better served addressing “the broken rung” – or the gender disparity in the first step-up: From entry-level to manager, where women lose ground to men as they balance careers with caregiving responsibilities.

In my own experience, while I felt no disadvantage relative to my male peers in the earlier years of my career, I felt the strains later.

The fatigue that crept in during my pregnancy and the logistical challenges of breastfeeding amid ad-hoc business travel were daunting. The race to make school drop-offs while being punctual for morning meetings and the peak-hour rush home to be present for bedtime rituals are daily challenges.

At the same time, parents and caregivers will know how immensely fulfilling it can be to spend stretches of unplanned, unstructured time with young children who want nothing more than your undivided time and attention.

This internal tug-of-war and wistfulness felt by new mothers pursuing ambitious career goals can lead to frustration and burnout, and the loss of female talent.

Left unaddressed, the underrepresentation of women in middle management will lead to a weaker pipeline of future women leaders, with real implications on business outcomes and financial performance.

Modernising organisational policies

How, then, can organisations better support their employees and repair the broken rungs?

GenZero, for one, has been intentional in embedding inclusiveness and diversity in our people policies. With more than 70 per cent of our senior leadership comprising women, our female leaders are real-life role models for younger colleagues.

Employees also need to lead balanced lives and be given the tools and resources to help them build an emotional bedrock that will sustain their careers over the long term. Therefore, besides medical coverage, we offer flexible work-in-office days, go-slow Fridays, extended paid maternity and paternity leave, along with wellness benefits including reimbursements for gym memberships and classes to learn new skills.

We have found that organisational effectiveness remains high so long as we hone a culture of excellence and sense of ownership, which drives employees to deliver regardless of where they work.

Beyond policy, mentoring my younger colleagues to help them achieve personal success, irrespective of what it means for the organisation, has been most effective in building a foundation of trust and bolstering them as they advance in their careers. Being aware and understanding of individual needs and circumstances can be more powerful than policy or process in making employees feel supported.

It is also heartening to see government and whole-of-society support to drive equal opportunities in the workplace. In 2021, the Singapore government completed year-long nationwide conversations with nearly 6,000 participants to gather wide-ranging views on how to advance the development of women in Singapore.

Feedback and ideas from these conversations contributed to the White Paper on Singapore Women’s Development, which sets forth action plans including the entrenchment of flexible work arrangements as a workplace norm, as well as revisions to the Singapore Exchange Listing Rules and Practice Guidance to the Code of Corporate Governance to support greater board diversity, including gender diversity. The endorsement of this White Paper in Parliament after a nine-and-a-half hours debate and a total of 41 Members of Parliament sharing their own personal stories speaks to how deeply the country feels about supporting women.

Transforming mindsets

Companies must go beyond paying lip service to gender diversity to systematically support talented women through inclusive attitudes and practices.

Our collective mindsets towards and expectations of women must shift away from dated archetypes of the female corporate titan or selfless mother. We need to celebrate those of us who will end up somewhere in the messy middle between the extreme paragons of corporate achievement and maternal virtue.

There is a time and season for varying approaches, but leaders must ultimately recognise that individual success needs to be balanced and multi-dimensional in order to be sustainable over the course of a multi-decade career.

Finally, our understanding of effective leadership must evolve beyond the conventional associations of “masculine” traits, such as boldness and confidence. We need to focus instead on intrinsic qualities that go beyond gendered attributes, such as self-awareness, respect, communication and resilience, which transcend gender and background.

The writer is managing director and head of investments at GenZero, a decarbonisation-focused investment company wholly owned by Temasek