Women CEOs are subjected to far higher levels of personal scrutiny than their male counterparts, a new survey claims today. Headhunters Russell Reynolds Associates (RRA) looked at news coverage of hundreds of company bosses across Europe, the UK and the US with women making up 9.2% of the total.
The report - Time to Tell a Different Story – analysed more than 20,000 news articles covering almost 750 CEOs in FTSE 100, S&P 500 and Euronext 100 companies. The stories reflect commentary from analysts, shareholders, executives and policymakers. The analysis used machine learning to tag stories according to a series of attributes commonly associated with CEOs.
It concluded that women CEOs are simultaneously described as having “too much and not enough” of key leadership traits. The report found that “ambition” is 73% more likely to be mentioned in discussions of women CEOs, “but rarely for the right reasons”.
The analysis found that women CEOs “are both 2.1 times more likely as men to be described as too ambitious, and 2.1 times more likely to be described as lacking ambition. “. A similar pattern was uncovered in references to “confidence.” In the sample no women CEOs were described as possessing the “right” level of confidence. Instead, they were 3.56 times more likely to be described as lacking confidence as men, while men were 1.25 times more likely to be described as having excess confidence.
“News reports provide a fascinating window into how these biases play out in public discourse but make no mistake, they are rooted in our society not the media. Knowing how these double standards show up in public discourse allows all of us to spot them in the boardroom.”.
Laura Sanderson, Co-Head of Europe, Middle East & India at RRA added: “It really is a glaring double standard – you just can’t get it right, you’re either too ambitious or too apathetic. “Society often expects women in leadership positions to walk a tightrope between being seen as competent, which requires displaying ambition, and likeable, which often requires downplaying ambition. This contributes to women’s sense of ambivalence when it comes to owning up to any aspiration that they may have to take on the CEO role.”.
Overall women CEOs receive 1.25 times more mentions than men, while CEO coverage overall is 17 times more likely to mention the words ‘woman’ or ‘women’ than ‘man’ or ‘men.’. Women CEOs receive 1.7 times more attention when they leave a role than men and while 18% of stories around make CEO departures is negative, 28% of coverage of women CEO departures is.
The research has also found that descriptions of CEOs differ by gender. While men are defined by their business and industry impact, women’s personal attributes are more frequently under the spotlight. Women CEOs are 27% more likely to be described using people-oriented adjectives than men, while men are 24% more likely to be described for their task-oriented skills.
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