A guide to tackling invisible career barriers for women at work
Women and organisations need to rethink foundational imbalances and the ‘invisible barriers’ in order to genuinely progress gender equity in the workplace
Stubborn stereotypes are still impeding women’s career progress, even as gender gaps slowly shrink and more organisations implement gender-equity initiatives. However, research shows that solving the problem requires more than soft policies and quotas.
The good news, according to Dr Alexandra Niessen-Ruenzi, a Professor of Finance at the University of Mannheim, is that industrialised countries have seen decreasing gender gaps in both pay and leadership for decades, as part of what Nobel Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin has called the grand gender convergence.
Unfortunately, creeping progress means that, at the current rate of change, it will still take more than half a century for those gaps to close fully, Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi said in a recent conversation with Dr Natalie Oh, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Banking and Finance at UNSW Business School, about gender dynamics in business and academia. Under the UNSW Education Focused program's Visiting Teaching Fellowship, Prof. Alexandra Niessen-Ruenzi has been invited by Dr Oh to establish connections with highly regarded international educators in the area of gender equity for the benefit of the wider finance industry.
“There are still social norms and gender stereotypes that make it particularly hard for women to advance their careers,” said Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi, pointing first to expectations around women as caregiving at home. “That puts them under a lot of pressure to devote time to care work and at the same time work long hours to advance their careers.”
In the professional setting, powerful norms also evolve around the “think manager, think male” paradigm, in which most people still picture a man when they think about a business or political leader. That contributes not only to the gender gap in pay – which currently averages nearly 22 per cent in Australia – but also to the gap in male and female leadership. “These kinds of perceptions create invisible barriers for women who aspire to leadership positions,” according to Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi, who is also Academic Director of the Berlin Centre of Corporate Governance and a Research Fellow at the European Corporate Governance Institute.
Crucially, these issues are already built in before young people enter the workforce. In a survey of her students’ salary expectations, Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi said she found that female business school students expected to earn €10,000 less than male students per year once finishing their degree. “Being aware of these invisible barriers means they’re not invisible anymore, and that makes it easier to jump over them,” she said.
“As early as possible, we should make students aware of these differences and acknowledge that this is happening,” she added. “Then, when our female students enter salary negotiations later on, for example, they’ll already know that they have lower expectations for no reason.”
Invisible barriers, signalling effect
These barriers mean women face a different evaluation standard in their career progression, which has profound and long-term financial implications. For instance, when men negotiate for salary, it’s often seen as ambition; when women enter salary negotiations – and they are already particularly reluctant to do so – they risk violating invisible stereotypes and facing backlash.
Expectations that affect women’s ability to negotiate, therefore, contribute to the problematic gap in men’s and women’s earnings, which in turn exacerbates the gender pension gap, leading to a “huge problem of women accumulating less wealth than men,” according to Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi. “Once they enter retirement, they also face a higher risk of old-age poverty. And it all starts with the gender pay gap.”
Her research has highlighted a “signalling effect” whereby men get promoted based on potential, whereas women must signal much more based on what they’ve already accomplished. In a research paper co-authored with Leah Zimmerer of the University of Mannheim, The Importance of Signalling for Women’s Careers, Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi looked at how likely women in established careers are to lead a large publicly listed company. The researchers learned that members of CEO nominating committees “have a harder time judging the skillset that a female candidate brings to the table” than they do evaluating male candidates, who are judged more on potential.
Career advancement is, therefore, easier for women who can better signal the professional skills and experience they have accumulated. “What we found is that, compared with men who enter these leadership positions, women have to provide more objective and verifiable skill signals,” she said. “That doesn’t necessarily have to do with outright discrimination. But it certainly has to do with the think-manager-think-male paradigm.”
Non-promotable tasks vs. organisational currency
Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi also cited research that highlighted that women are likelier than men to take on “non-promotable tasks“ at work. These tasks do not necessarily contribute to an organisation’s advancement, such as taking meeting minutes or organising the Christmas party, and tend to be disproportionately allotted by gender. “Everybody has to take over some of these tasks at some point, but if it’s disproportionate, it’s another invisible barrier for women who wish, for example, to enter a leadership position one day,” Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi said.
The research, which was conducted by US academic Professor Linda Babcock, found that women are both more likely to take on non-promotable tasks at work and more likely to be asked to take them on, a reflection that labour dynamics in the home get translated to the workforce. It’s critical, therefore, that women understand the distinction between non-promotable tasks and work tasks that can advance their career – what the research refers to as “organisational currency”.
“For example, for us academics, research output and teaching quality are the two most important elements of being promoted,” Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi said. “I think, in everyday life, women are probably not as aware of differentiating between non-promotable tasks and organisational currency. It’s crucial that we make this distinction more salient.”
That’s not to say this issue occurs because men are better at distinguishing and balancing between the two, she noted; instead, the fact that men are not as expected to take on non-promotable tasks makes it more manageable for them. “A lot of this is going on implicitly because of the social norms that already steer men and women on two different paths. I don’t think it’s a conscious decision by men versus women to follow one of these paths; it’s more the implicit expectations that play a role,” Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi said.
However, she added that it’s also important not to eliminate or avoid all non-promotable work tasks altogether. “In a functioning work environment, you need people also to take over these tasks but to be aware not to take a disproportionate amount of them and to put more focus on the organisational currency,” she said.
Quotas can help, but culture is key
For organisations, a critical step towards promoting gender pay equity is to ensure transparency in the pay-setting process. Quantitative key performance indicators (KPIs) are also essential for measuring and managing pay equity.
The “primary example” of a quantifiable gender equality measure is when governments or organisations implement quotas to increase female representation. These tend to help, Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi said – but only in those areas of the company where the quota applies.
Nonetheless, quotas are still an important signal by governments of an intent to promote gender equality. However, whether they work depends on organisational culture; Germany’s mixed experience with quota laws shows the limits of these measures. “Lawmakers were hoping there would be some positive externalities – say, impose a quota for the supervisory board, let’s hope we see more women in leadership positions generally – and this is unfortunately not what we observe,” Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi said.
Quotas are also expensive, in a sense – to meet them, firms need qualified female candidates, and many lack access to the networks needed to find them. “As long as there is no inclusive corporate culture in place where the key decision-makers say, ‘Yes, we want a diverse corporate culture’, quotas are not very effective,” she explained.
Dr Oh agreed that for gender gaps to narrow more quickly, it will be essential for organisations to embrace an inclusive culture, not just pay lip service to it. “Making sure there is a culture of inclusivity, where women are valued, where diversity is valued, is key,” rather than relying on smaller initiatives that have a more localised effect, she said. Such limited efforts will not create the positive externalities that cultural change does.
And, as Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi noted, firms should not need quotas in the first place, as those with an open organisational culture that welcomes diversity have already started engaging in these changes. In contrast, imposing this change as law on organisations where people don’t believe in the value of diversity can backfire.
Awareness, education and allyship
The academics agreed that the first step towards remedying these imbalances is awareness, which must extend to the executive level. Leadership should be more aware of these issues and respond by, for example, distributing non-promotable tasks more equitably and not preferring women for these tasks.
Providing parents with childcare support payments would also go a long way toward ending the so-called motherhood penalty, where women experience a sharp drop in pay or hours worked after having their first child, and from which they never fully financially recover. Higher education can also play a more significant role in countering the problem of invisible barriers. To fully address these societal problems, the best intervention would begin as early as possible.
And, Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi said, it’s not just about gender: “It’s all minorities, so we should even phrase this a little more broadly as the challenges and barriers that minorities face when they enter the labour force.”
Dr Oh said that a greater focus on combating gender inequality is needed at the university level. Her research has shown lower pay for women graduates and that female students enter leadership programs at lower rates, which she sees as a reflection of what’s happening in professional settings. “Already at the university level, we are seeing less female representation, and there is a gender pay gap happening even at the graduate level. It’s a no-brainer that we really need to educate students on this so that there will be a narrowing of the gender gap in the workforce,” said Dr Oh, who has implemented a number of initiatives to help students with gender equity in practice.
Dr Oh has developed an interactive online module for students to educate them about gender equity issues and solutions to help prepare them for the realities of the world of work. The module educates students on the following issues:
- Why students should consider this issue in their career preparation
- The state of gender inequality
- What is the problem?
- What does gender inequality look like?
- Why is gender inequality a problem?
- Systematic factors contributing to workplace gender inequality
- Psychological factors contributing to workplace gender inequality
- Action to address workplace gender inequality – what can I do now?
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Dr Oh reiterated that unlearning biases must begin as early as possible to be effective, noting that many university students “know that this is a problem, but they don’t think it’s going to happen to them”.
Significantly, Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi and Dr Oh also stressed the importance of male allies in the struggle to achieve true gender equity at home, at universities and in the workplace. “Gender equality is not a women’s issue; it’s a societal issue. And for it to be solved, we need men and women on board,” Prof. Niessen-Ruenzi said.
For more information about the interactive learning module, Awareness to Action: Empowering Gender Equity in the workplace, please contact Dr Natalie Oh, Senior Lecturer in the School of Banking and Finance at UNSW Business School.