Are women leaders?

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Two years ago, we marked a century of women gaining various rights. These include voting, equal pay, applying for credit cards and loans, working in legal professions and many more. 

The movement created years ago changed the view of women in a positive light and gave hope to young women that everything is possible to become. 

However, even today women make a small percentage of senior teams and CEOs for businesses which has to be changed. Women need to be encouraged and promoted to unleash their full potential in leadership roles. 

The graph below shows the percentages of women in different roles in the top 500 companies. 

As shown above, nearly 6% of 500 businesses have women CEOs and their senior management teams include only 26.5% women. 

The numbers of women leading businesses have significantly increased compared to the past however, the numbers are still low. Research done by DDI global leadership forecast, show that the 500 businesses that are ran by women “had a 20% higher stock price on average”.

In addition, the research shows that “organizations that have at least 30% women in leadership roles are twelve times more likely to excel financially”. Companies with higher gender diversity are 1.4 times more likely to have sustained, profitable growth which shows that women are needed in leadership positions. 

To support the point above, research done by Harvard business review, shows that “women are rate better than men on key leadership capabilities”. They explain that from all 19 capabilities included in the study, women outscore men with 17.

For example, practicing self-development (capability), women score 54.8% while men score 49.6%. 

Overall, women need to spend more time innovating and leading instead of just serving. As shown, women can increase the profitability of a business due to their leadership skills. Due to this fact more gender diversity needs to be included in higher authority positions.