There was a time, not so long ago, when the issue on every HR professional's mind (as well as every social commentator and equal opportunity advocate) was how to get more women into leadership positions. Women had been readily accepted into the workforce but many encountered invisible barriers blocking their route up the corporate ladder. These so-called glass ceilings meant women would routinely hit their career peaks while still able to view equally-competent men enjoying the challenges and rewards of higher office.
But times are changing. Though few leaders are prepared to say the glass ceiling has already broken, it is clear more women are now finding their way through the cracks. The anecdotal evidence is everywhere. Just consider leaders such as SingTel CEO Chua Sock Koong or SMRT CEO Saw Phaik Hwa. These aren't exceptions, or fortunate recipients of affirmative action strategies: they each have an education and career history that can be compared to the roadmap of any modern organisational leader.
Statistically, the change is also apparent. The International Labour Organisation has found women are increasing their share of management and business administration positions, particularly in the US and Australia. The movement is slower in Asia, but nonetheless apparent in countries like Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. According to the most recent population census, 24.39% of Singapore's 187,300 broadly categorised legislators, senior officials and corporate managers were women.
That represents a definite improvement on past figures. But it is a gradual, linear shift, not an exponential explosion. We're not talking about a tidal wave yet, says Anne Benbow, MD of executive search firm Spencer Stuart in Singapore. That may yet come with the impact of the next generational change.
With fewer people available to take over the current generation of leaders as it retires, there'll be increasing demand on a diminishing labour pool. That is expected to ensure a broader range of opportunities for women and access to the world's top executive positions. Including them will be the only way to keep up with demand.
Still, this may not prove to be the ceiling breaker that one might first expect. Benbow explains that today's supply of experienced and qualified women is dependant on attitudes and organisational strategies that were in place many years ago.
For women to be capable of leading a modern, global business, the vast majority will need to have gained important work experiences during their early and mid-career levels. The number of women graduating to that stage, having worked with companies that proactively supported their careers during the early levels, is definitely growing. But the tidal wave of women is still at least one-half to one generation away.
This is particularly the case in Singapore, and the wider Asian region. Benbow remembers her first Asian assignment and says there was a clear divide between the western and eastern companies 20 years ago. Those from the west were obviously attracting more female talent because the career paths they laid out allowed women into management levels. Companies based in this region were typically slower to break with traditions.
While many organisations are now working hard to ensure diversity in their workplace and best practice recruitment strategies, she says it will still take time before the glass ceiling is reached by the vast majority of highly talented women .
But that doesn't mean diversity policies have not worked. While it may take time for highly talented women to rise to the top, their presence at high and midway points of the corporate ladder does have a positive impact on those below them.
Importantly, they are able to act as a beacon to junior staff, which can ensure retention of high potential talent. Without talented women at senior levels of an organisation's structure, junior women can become discouraged at their own career prospects.
Women need to believe the access will be there when they are ready, Benbow says. In this way, the challenge for breaking the glass ceiling is present at all parts of a woman's career road map. For companies to hold onto women long enough to groom them for the executive suite, they need to examine their policies and practices at every level.
Suprisingly, or perhaps not so, women in leadership positions want very much the same as men. New research from Towers Perrin shows the drivers for attraction are virtually the same between the genders. Its latest Global Workforce Study, completed over 2007 and 2008, showed the top three factors that women in leadership positions wanted in their job description were the same as male leaders: competitive pay, opportunities to advance and challenging work. While women rated flexible schedules and learning new skills at numbers four and five, men considered the advantage of a convenient work location as a priority.
In Singapore specifically, women want almost the same things as leaders all over the western world. Local female leaders are most interested in competitive base pay and the opportunity to advance their career, and think challenging work and flexible schedules are more important than convenience of the work location.
Denise Fairhurst, senior consultant, Towers Perrin, says these results do not mean companies looking to attract more women into leadership positions should simply do nothing. As gender is just one of a number of diversity issues, companies need to be working hard to individualise their employment offer across a number of demographics and levels.
These ideas are clearer at the non-management levels where the Global Workforce Study shows much more disparity in the needs and wants of men and women from different regions. In order to attract and keep all potential leaders, including talented women, employers will need to take individual considerations into account.
Fairhurst says flexible scheduling, hot-desking and telecommuting opportunities are all likely to become useful tools, particularly as more and more work crosses time zones. The days of the nine-to-five work day are gone. But this does not represent an exhaustive list. To groom the next generation of leaders, whatever their gender, companies need to pay attention to career development, effective leadership .
If it will take some time before Asia's C-Suite offices show a more generous gender balance, the glass ceiling below boardrooms could prove to be an even bigger challenge. Currently, there are relatively very few women holding directorships of major global organisations.
Released in November, the Corporate Women Directors International (CWDI) report has found women are vastly underrepresented at the board level on both sides of the east-west divide. As the table shows, the US is leading the way. But its 14% representation pales in comparison to the near-40% level of women in corporate management. Japan, where less than one percent of board members are women, seemingly has a long way to go.
The CWDI has also found that more women are appointed to board positions when the CEO of the organisation is a woman. These findings answer the question of whether it matters if a woman is in charge, Irene Natividad, chairman, CWDI, says. Clearly women CEOs are far more likely to bring in other women to corporate leadership roles.
Of course, just getting a board position does not necessarily mean the battle for equal opportunity has been won. Researchers have looked into the types of supervisory positions women are acceding to and have found some interesting results.
There is a higher propensity for women to accept senior leadership positions in failing or under-resourced organisations. These 'glass cliffs', as researchers from the University of Exeter have called them, mean women are more likely to be at the helm when an organisation finally goes under. Though they may have inherited the sinking ship, their longer-term ambitions can also be at risk of drowning.
The original study looked at leading companies on London's Financial Times Stock Exchange index. It showed those that appointed women to directorships were more likely to have been struggling in the first place - with at least five months of consistently bad performance results.
Case study: No glass ceilings here
Not every industry has glass ceilings in place. Zaha Rina Zahari, Chief Product Officer for the Bahrain Financial Exchange, says her career has been all about knowledge and understanding of credit markets. It's a question of what you know - gender doesn't come into it at all. My colleagues don't see me as a woman, but as a team player.
She says she has not faced any barriers, nor any special treatment, during her 15-year career and professional education. While these may be present in other industries, she warns that the perception of glass ceilings can sometimes be just as career-limiting.
If you think there is a glass ceiling, you'll find it. But if you have confidence and belief in your capabilities, you can achieve great things.
Zaha Rina was instrumental in the development of the Malaysian capital markets during the 1990s, and has previously headed both the Kuala Lumpur and Financial Futures Exchange and the Malaysian Deriviatives Exchange as COO. Her present position involves building new financial products that are both effective and compliant with Middle East sharia traditions.