Breaking Barriers

Breaking Barriers was one of the themes from our recent Leadership Summit for Women Leaders in Education in the UAE region. There were two key takeaway messages for me from the opening and closing keynote inputs that have me mulling more on this theme:

• “Progress is not parity!” (Fiona Cottam quoting McKinsey data).
• “When you break the glass ceiling, you will need to step through the broken glass!” (Professor Yusra Mouzughi in her 10 reflections on her leadership journey).

I have gone down some rabbit holes revisiting the data and reviewing what has been published and reported on these themes and here is a summary of my findings and thoughts…

The Women in the Workplace Report 2024 – 10th Anniversary by McKinsey and LeanIn.

The key takeaways from this year’s report:

1. Companies still have important work to do – companies have made real progress, but the culture of work is lagging behind, but a rise in inclusion training is not leading to employee action.
2. Women’s experiences have by and large not improved – women’s day-to-day experiences largely mirror those of a decade ago and women experience a multitude of competence-based microaggressions.
3. Women and men see progress differently – men are more optimistic about progress for women – at work and at home but women continue to say they shoulder more housework.

The Center for Creative Leadership published this white paper on Overcoming Barriers to Women’s Leadership and Unlocking the Power of Diversity by Sophia Zhao.

The report identities different push and pull factors for women leaders:

• Pull factors are internally driven – the limitations women place on themselves, pulling them away from leadership roles or actions.
• Push factors are externally driven – the limitations placed on women by others in their network, their organization, and the society or culture.

Women Rising, the Unseen Barriers, is an article published in the Harvard Business Review by Herminia Ibarra, Robin J. Ely and Deborah M. Kolb.

The three actions they suggest to support women’s access to leadership positions are:

1. Educate women and men about second-generation gender bias
2. Create safe “identity workspaces” to support transitions to bigger roles
3. Anchor women’s development efforts in a sense of leadership purpose rather than in how women are perceived.

There is also a great podcast here from Deloiitte entitled: Are women rewriting the rules?

Breaking Barriers was one of our themes as all of the co-organisers agreed that we wanted the impact of the leadership summit to be that it would inspire and empower women leading in education to challenge the systemic, structural and societal barriers that inhibit progress for women leaders personally and professionally, individually and collectively.

Here are my reflections:

• Breaking the Mould – we know that traditional leadership moulds have been designed by men. How can we dismantle the leadership mould that has been created for us and create a new one for a different style of leadership? How can we support women in defining their leadership identity and not shapeshifting into a leadership style that feels inauthentic to who they are?
• The Glass Ceiling – we know it exists but where does it sit in our organisation? Are leaders and line managers aware it is there and how are the mentoring, coaching and sponsoring female talent to break through it?
• The Internal Glass Ceiling – we know that women may suffer from limiting beliefs. Whilst we smash through the external ceilings how we can support our existing and aspiring women leaders to break through their own mindset barriers that might be inhibiting their progress?
• The Concrete Ceiling – we should all be aware of the impact that intersectionality has on women of colour. How are specifically supporting and investing in women with intersectional identities? How are we challenging the biases and microaggressions they are experiencing in our workplaces?
• The Pay Gap – we know that education has a significant gender pay gap and also a huge BME pay gap. What are we doing to review equity of pay for our educational leaders? How are we benchmarking ourselves internally and externally to ensure there is parity in payment for the same role within our school, our group of schools and across the system?
• The Motherhood Gap – we know that there is a double bind for women who are also mothers. We should also know that women in their 30s with children are a vulnerable group in our sector with high attrition rates. So how are we creating family-friendly policies and workplace cultures?
• The Flexible Working Gap – we also know that flexible working contracts make a massive difference to a woman’s ability to lead. How are we reviewing our working conditions and our employment contracts to use flexible working as both a recruitment and a retention tool?

Just a few of my thoughts and challenges regarding the barriers that need to be broken in our sector to enable women to fulfill their leadership potential and thrive in their leadership roles.