Equally Effective, Unequally Represented: Why Is The Leadership Gender Gap Still So Large?

While it’s been well-studied that diverse teams are more resilient, innovative, and experience better financial performance¹, there are still significant gaps between women’s and men’s representation at the leadership level.

We then examined the differences between how men and women leaders were perceived on these levers by their direct reports. Overall, we found no significant perception differences between men and women leaders.

The one exception? Women leaders are outperforming their male counterparts in coaching and development.

Yet women’s presence at the leadership level remains abysmal, as men are 2.5x more likely than women to be executives in S&P 100’s top leadership teams. Closing this gap is not about asking women to change; our research finds they are performing alongside (or sometimes even outperforming) their male counterparts. Instead, it requires fixing the systemic barriers to achieve a more stable, profitable, and resilient future for all leaders and their organizations.

Minimal differences in how men and women leaders are perceived by direct reports—with one exception

Women and men leaders are perceived similarly by their direct reports, falling within six percentage points across four of the five resiliency levers. (It’s worth noting that, while the differences on these four levers aren’t significant, women are viewed slightly more favorably than their male counterparts across all of them.)

Across the three leadership competencies—creating value through others, navigating uncertainty, and enabling change & innovation—there is no meaningful difference between men and women. However, in the construct that matters most for retention and career progression—coaching and development—women leaders are viewed significantly more positively than men.

Figure 1: % of leaders who agree that their direct manager is effective at…

^{Source: Russell Reynolds Associates’ H1 2023 Global Leadership Monitor, n = 779 total (Women = 163, Men = 616) C-suite and next-generation leaders}

Women leaders are outperforming men on coaching and developing direct reports

Women managers were rated 10 percentage points higher than their male counterparts (55% vs. 45%) on coaching and development practices (Figure 1). Critically, this gap widens when we account for the gender of the person being managed. Women who report to women are most likely to see their manager as effective at coaching and development (57%), while notably fewer women (46%) who report to men feel the same. Women managers are also perceived more positively by the men they manage, as 52% of men with women managers rate them as effective at coaching and development, compared to only 43% of men who are managed by men (Figure 2).

Figure 2: % of leaders who agree that their direct manager is effective at overall coaching & development (by direct report/manager gender pairings)

^{Source: Russell Reynolds Associates’ H1 2023 Global Leadership Monitor, n = 779 total (W2W = 75, W2M = 183, M2W = 88, M2M = 433) C-suite and next-generation leaders}

Coaching and development effectiveness encompasses a range of activities (detailed in Figure 3). On every one of these activities, women managed by women report the highest levels of effectiveness.

On the activities that create the most career opportunities and require active engagement by one’s manager—creating development opportunities for me in my work, nominating me for meaningful stretch assignments, and advocating for me by highlighting my work and impact with other leaders—we note some important distinctions between men and women’s views on their manager’s effectiveness. Men view their managers’ effectiveness consistently, regardless of gender. However, women leaders report significant gaps between men and women manager’s efficacy on these same measures. This suggests that, for men, their manager’s gender has less impact on how they view their career progression; for women, it makes a big difference.

It’s worth noting that all the individual coaching and development activity scores are low, regardless of gender. This points to a larger question: are senior leaders focused enough on enabling and developing their team members?

Figure 3: % of leaders who agree that their direct manager is effective at individual coaching & development activities (by direct report/manager gender pairings)

^{Source: Russell Reynolds Associates’ H1 2023 Global Leadership Monitor, n = 779 total (W2W = 75, W2M = 183, M2W = 88, M2M = 433) C-suite and next-generation leaders}

This matters for retention, which heavily impacts organizational resiliency. Our 2023 Monitor found that leaders who do not receive effective coaching and development opportunities from their direct managers are 6.5 times more likely to say they would leave their organization. As such, knowing if and where gaps in advocacy and career development are occurring is crucial for organizational health. And while women leaders are doing a better job of coaching other women to the top alongside them, there are simply too few women in top roles for organizations to depend on their mentorship as a comprehensive method for next generation leadership development.

The link between women leader’s representation, coaching & development, and organizational resiliency

While the similarities between men and women’s leadership abilities might initially seem like an unrevealing story, when paired with the huge differences in men and women’s representation, it paints a more nuanced, troubling picture. If both populations are equally capable leaders, yet one makes their way to the top 2.5x more than the other—and 10x+ more often to the CEO role—it does not logically follow that decisions about who gets promoted are based solely on merit.

Recognizing bias is not enough; organizations also need to understand that women are operating in a work environment that was not designed for them. For too long, organizations have viewed leadership through too narrow an aperture. This, alongside all the other roles women hold (both within and outside of the workforce), has created more barriers for women leaders to overcome, which makes them more dependent on the advocacy of their manager. And the top two reasons women in the C-suite left their roles last year? A desire to feel more valued and seeking a different type of leadership.

Women are more likely to be overlooked for opportunities; moreover, they have not historically benefited from internal advocacy and actively created development opportunities, which are hugely important to career advancement. Having a manager who does this – whether a man or a woman – is vital to changing how we think about women leaders.” Hetty Pye Russell Reynolds Associates

These structural issues won’t be fixed by asking women to change. Instead, shifting the organizational paradigm to embrace women’s perspectives and experiences—while also investing in these next-generation leaders—will bring more parity to the pipeline. The argument for diverse leadership teams goes beyond our finding that women are equally capable of holding the top job. Leadership homogeneity dulls our understanding of the world. Improving your leadership team’s diversity enhances its collective understanding of all the stakeholders it serves, leading to long-term organizational resiliency, stability, and success.

External References

1. ^{Katie Abouzahr, Matt Krentz, Rocio Lorenzo, Miki Tsusaka, Nicole Voigt, “How Diverse Leadership Teams Boost Innovation.” Boston Consulting Group.}
2. ^{Arianne Cohen, “Women in Leadership: Recruiting to Close the Gender Gap,” Bloomberg, April 5, 2022.}

Authors

Leah Christianson and Tom Handcock of RRA’s Center for Leadership Insight conducted the analysis and authored this report.