These Are Eleven Proofs That Corporate America Still Failing Women in 2022
Corporate America and Gender Discrimination
Corporate America was initially conceived with men in mind and needs to evolve faster. Although gender inequality in the workplace has improved greatly, corporate America still has a long way to go before it can be called an inclusive and progressive place for women.
Corporate America Still Failing Women in 2022 this is evident from the findings of the 2022 Women in the Workplace report, a continuation of the annual study conducted by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org on gender diversity in the workplace that has been conducted since 2015.
Associate partner and report coauthor Nicole Robinson, Ph.D., tells The Muse via email, “It’s not getting any easier for women to advance in their chosen fields, but women are still ambitious about their careers..” Disparities in promotions and representation, for example, are still an issue.
As noted in previous Women in the Workplace reports, new threats threaten to undo our little progress in the last decade.
Yet, now that a global pandemic has upended traditional ideas of labor and generated new expectations in the office, women are making stronger demands and showing less patience in the workplace than ever before.
That’s encouraging. Women are now standing up to an antiquated order. Several businesses have taken the initiative to increase workplace gender diversity, equity, and inclusion, luring women who are leaving those that haven’t.
We’ve had enough,” LeanIn.org CEO Rachel Thomas told NPR. We both want to make a name for ourselves professionally. Nonetheless, we plan to seek other businesses that provide the kind of work environment that interests us.
The 2022 report is founded on data collected from 333 companies, feedback from more than 40,000 workers, and interviews with women from all walks of life and all walks of career life.
The complete report is well worth your time, but here are just 11 of the many ways corporate America is still failing women in the year 2022:
1, Women are still Grossly Underrepresented, and this Trend Worsens as one Moves up the Ranks.
Corporate America and Gender Discrimination 
Over half of all new hires are women (48%), but their representation steadily decreases. Women only make up about 40% of the workforce at the manager level. Women only comprise 36% of the workforce in managerial and director positions
There are 32% female vice presidents and 28% female senior vice presidents. Women comprise only 26% of the workforce, which plummets to 12% in the C-suite. The only bright spot in these otherwise dismal statistics is a one- to seven-percentage-point increase in representation across the board compared to five years ago.
Women know that some institutions are better than others at promoting gender parity in leadership roles. One Black woman in management told the researchers,
“When I joined this organization, I realized there were many women and people of color in leadership.” That gave me hope that I might climb the corporate ladder. It’s a different experience entering a company where the top executives look like you.
2, The Ladder from the Lowest Level to Management still Needs to be Functional.
The report cites the persistent “broken rung” problem as why so few women are in top executive roles, even though they make up nearly half of the workforce. They keep mentioning how the promotion from an entry-level position to a manager can be a broken rung in an otherwise upwardly mobile career.
According to the report, “just 87 women” are promoted from entry-level to manager for every 100 men, and “only 82 women of color” are promoted from entry-level to manager. Hence, there are many more males than women in managerial positions, and the gender gap will never be closed. There need to be more qualified female candidates for upper-level management roles.
Achieving equity in representation at the top levels will be hard once women are promoted more fairly from entry-level to management posts.
3, Women in Upper-level Positions are more Likely to Quit their Occupations than Men.
According to earlier publications, the first two results are problems known for some time. A new and (also) worrying tendency, however, is as follows:
Female executives are quitting their positions at a record rate, significantly more so than their male counterparts. Two women are leaving their companies for every promotion given to a woman.
According to Robinson, “women are voting with their feet” when they aren’t given “enough flexibility or assistance” or “a manageable workload.”
To mitigate this threat, businesses must first recognize it. If they don’t, they’ll lose the next generation of female leaders to companies that value the most important issues women tell us.
4, Women Experience More Microaggressions and other Barriers that Make Advancing and Draining to the Workforce More Challenging.
Women are more vulnerable to workplace microaggressions and report lower psychological safety levels than men. There are several ways in which this manifests itself, all of which make it less enjoyable to be at work and more challenging to advance:
Colleagues frequently attribute ideas to others, second-guess their judgment, presume they are less experienced than they actually are, make comments about others’ looks, criticize their demeanor, and make broad generalizations about others based on their perceived culture or nationality.
Women are also more likely to feel alienated and less likely to feel comfortable arguing with coworkers. It’s exhausting just reading that big list, much less experiencing it.
5, Women Spend More Time on Diversity, Inclusion (DEI), and People Management. They Receive no Compensation, Which Could Even Hurt their Promotion Chances.
When compared to males in similar roles, women leaders are more inclined to invest heavily on diversity, equity, and inclusion, only 40% of women in such positions report that their efforts are acknowledged, let alone considered, when evaluating their performance.
Women executives are more likely to prioritize employee well-being than men, but this is only sometimes reflected in their career prospects.
6, In Every Profession, Women Perform More Domestic Duties and Caregiving than Men.
Women are overworked not only in the workplace but also in the home. While fewer and fewer men are taking on these responsibilities, women are typically nonetheless expected to do so. It’s getting further and further apart from men of the same age.
More than twice as many women as males at the same level (58%) report doing this work. This ratio nearly triples at the management level (58% vs. 21%) and nearly quadruples at the senior manager level and above (52% vs. 13%).
One senior manager, a white woman with physical limitations, told the researchers, “I know that most guys in the C-suite have a stay-at-home spouse.” My CEO is a really good person. Yet, he is childless at the moment. He hasn’t considered the difficulties of caring for your family.
7, Burnout is Significantly More Common Among Women Than Males at Their Level
It’s no surprise that women experience higher rates of burnout than men do in the workplace, given that women spend more time than men do on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and employee well-being (EBW) andsince women also do a disproportionate amount of unpaid labour in the home and care for children.
The percentage of male leaders who are exhausted is 31%, whereas the percentage of female leaders who are exhausted is 43%.
8, Companies Need to Live up to Women’s Demands for Greater Flexibility, Emphasis on Employee Well-being, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
Women who have overcome obstacles to achieving leadership roles are leaving their current positions at an alarming rate, highlighting the issue of attrition.
While both sexes are just as likely to switch jobs for a promotion (48% vs. 44%), women are much more likely to do so for reasons related to work-life balance (20% vs. 13%), company commitment to DEI (18% vs. 11%), and overwhelming workloads (17% vs. 10%).
Companies that don’t make progress in areas like flexibility, DEI, and workload aren’t only seeing senior-level women leave now; they’re also less appealing to women under 30 who could possibly take on similar leadership roles in the future because these aspects are even more essential to them.
Robinson claims this is causing a “new pipeline problem” for companies resistant to change. Businesses that need to address these issues put their recruitment and retention efforts at risk, especially for those from underrepresented groups.
9, The Workplace is More Hostile to Women of Color, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transgender, and Disabled women.
After eight years of study, Robinson concludes that inequality and difference in experiences are tragically real and constant. While it’s true that women fare worse than men on average, the picture becomes more complex once subgroups of women are included.
According to Robinson, “despite small increases in representation,” women of color, LGBTQ+ women, and women with disabilities “consistently see a worse experience in the workplace: [they are] more likely to encounter microaggressions and hurdles to development.”
Some examples of how women from historically oppressed communities fare worse in the workplace:
When compared to non-disabled women, disabled women are more likely to have their judgment questioned, have their ideas credited to someone else, be mistaken for a lower-ranking employee, have their appearance criticized, and have their demeanor criticized (such as with the comment “you should smile more”).
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer women were also subjected to more comments on their appearance and criticism of their manner than other women.
Women of color were significantly less likely to report feeling physically safe at work, having a boss who cared about their professional development, and encouraging team diversity.
When asked about having strong allies on their team or whether or not a senior coworker had publicly praised their skills or advocated for them to obtain a raise or promotion, Asian and Black women were the least likely to indicate they did. These all things are not good signs for corporate America towards women’s rights.
10, Requiring a Certain Structure at Work only Makes Matters Worse.
Women who have the option to work remotely, in a hybrid setting, or in an office setting are more satisfied with their lives and their careers (81% vs. 61%), more committed to their jobs (64% vs. 41%), less likely to experience burnout (30% vs. 21%), and happier overall than women who do not have this option.
Women are mo gender gap in preference for to work largely remotely (61% vs. 50%) and significantly less likely to want to be on-site most of the time (10% vs. 18%), suggesting that remote work has helped reduce the number of microaggressions and raise levels of psychological safety for women.
One lady told the researchers, “Certain microaggressions just 100 percent don’t happen when I’m remote.” She is a Black VP who uses a hybrid work setting. People of color don’t want to work in an environment where they don’t feel like they can be themselves. Still, many people have told me I should be concerned about not having enough face time.
11, There Needs to be More Training and Recognition for Managers who Achieve in Areas Particularly Significant to Women.
Twenty-two percent of women, compared to eighteen percent of males, said they had quit a job in the previous two years because their manager wasn’t helpful. In the previous two years, having manager support has become even more vital; 42% of female leaders and 56% of women under 30 reported this.
In addition to personal assistance, women want their employers to be dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), employee wellness, and work-life balance (WAL). Companies must educate managers to succeed in remote and hybrid contexts and recognize and pay managers for the former.
It’s not all Bad News, Either.
There’s a lot of drive and forward motion. We see progress eight years into our annual survey. While “change is much too sluggish,” Robinson does see “encouraging” momentum and enthusiasm in corporate America.
And now, she argues, is the opportunity to build on that success. We need to do more struggle to enhance women’s experience in the workplace at all levels. Still, the report urges young women not to relinquish their struggle or settle for less.
They see the women they look up to as leaders and mentors leaving behind companies that don’t measure up, so they do the same.
And they are finding new chances at businesses that have implemented what the report terms “leading” and “emerging” policies that actually promote women in the workplace, going beyond the fundamental “table stakes” of DEI.
