Why Are Women Rising To The Top In Purpose-Driven Sectors?

Education Why Are Women Rising To The Top In Purpose-Driven Sectors? Barbara Kurshan Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I write on innovation, edtech ecosystems and entrepreneurial mindset. Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Sep 7, 2022, 02:35pm EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone in an executive position that women still have a long way to go until reaching gender parity in the boardroom and the C-Suite. But it is also true that progress is not even across sectors, and some are doing better than others. In recent years, we have seen an uptick in women rising to leadership positions in what we call purpose-driven sectors.

Purpose-driven sectors—like education, healthcare, NGOs, and government—have goals beyond just profit. Organizations that qualify as purpose-driven act on a core mission to help and lift-up others through the product or services they provide. Analyzing the data on CEOs across all sectors, a 2018 report by the International Labor Organization showed that in education, 35 percent of companies have a female CEO, and in human health or social work, 31 percent of companies are led by a woman.

Compare this with 18 percent of women-led companies in financial services and 16 percent in construction, and you see a clear picture of the gender distribution in the C-Suite. The question is: why? During a year-and-a-half long investigation, the research team for my recently published book asked a simple question: why are women rising to the top faster in purpose-driven organizations? What makes them so effective in these leadership roles? Are women more drawn to this work because of the mission, or, is it that they are more likely to get hired into these roles and therefore gravitate towards them? In addition to analyzing data from over 250+ purpose-driven leaders, we spoke to 29 women to get their first-hand perspectives, hear their stories, and put context around the data collected. We found four main takeaways, broken down into an even balance between internal factors and external factors that influenced women’s success in purpose-driven fields.

External factors for success Women are more likely than men to be influenced by the presence of a purpose-driven leader in their life from a young age. It is calculated that women staff anywhere between 73 and 86 percent of entry and mid-level roles in purpose-driven sectors . The types of roles they have historically occupied are operative and rarely serve as direct pipelines to leadership.

But the mothers, aunts, friends, and family members who worked as educators, nurses, or social workers were an inspiration for the next generation of women. They inculcated purpose-driven values in their daughters from a young age. As this next generation grew up with better access to education and job opportunities, they showed a preference for leadership positions in purpose-driven organizations rather than profit-driven companies.

MORE FOR YOU Kentucky State University Is In Financial Peril Legal Experts On Pearson V. Chegg And Why It Could Be A Huge Deal How To Land A Spot At One Of These Tuition-Free Medical Schools Once in leadership positions, women support women. Studies show that women are more likely to fund, hire, and mentor future generations of women.

We have seen that once there is a critical mass of women in leadership positions at any type of organization, balancing out the gender equation is more likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the book interviews, it was interesting to note that the women who had broken through the glass ceiling all had mentors, but those mentors weren’t necessarily women. In fact, many women cited important male mentors in their lives.

However, they all mentioned how important it was to them to support women who are coming up behind them—leading us to believe that these leaders understand the gaps in resources and see the importance of investing in the careers of the next generation. Internal factors for success Women build more empathy throughout their lives and careers than men, which uniquely positions them for leadership in purpose-driven orgs. According to the researchers who developed the Entrepreneurial Mindset Profile®, there is a difference between intrinsic personality traits and learned skills in entrepreneurial leaders.

The research revealed that empathy is a learned skill that is acquired over time—meaning we are not born with empathy, but rather, learn it by example, by socialization, and over long periods of time. When looking at empathy in purpose-driven leaders, we discovered that women scored an average of 13% higher than men in this skill. This uniquely positions them to be successful in purpose-driven organizations, where empathy gains them loyalty from their employees and provides a deeper compassion for their stakeholders that makes them uniquely positioned to carry out their roles effectively.

Women are calculated-risk takers and consider people just as important, if not more important than profit when making business decisions. When we looked at the data on purpose-driven leaders, we also saw another large gap between women and men. But this time, men were exceeding women in risk-taking tolerance.

When we asked the women in leadership positions about this, they added important context. Yes, they took risks, but they took risks differently. They considered the well-being of their stakeholders, for example, the people their organization serves, their employees, and their funders, first.

They were less willing to make decisions that would jeopardize their own roles too, recognizing how “lucky” they felt to be considered one of the few at the top. The future of women in leadership Women are Rising to the Top across the globe Forbes Photo Gallery It is clear that women are quickly rising to the top in purpose-driven organizations and sectors. For those still unconvinced, the lingering question remains: is there a clear benefit to reaching gender parity in the boardroom, and do these results extend beyond purpose-driven organizations? The answer is a resounding yes.

A 2016 Credit Suisse report shows that, when women are in charge, companies achieve diversity targets sooner, provide higher sales growth, and improve earnings-per-share. Additionally, the bottom line improves— a 2018 BCG survey showed that for every dollar of venture capital funding received, women-led startups generated 78 cents; for businesses launched by men, the return was 31 cents. The research shows that having equal gender representation is making a difference for these organizations.

As women continue to riseI have a to leadership positions, it will be important to continue to track if the takeaways from purpose-driven sectors continue to hold up for all sectors. If so, the future looks bright for the success of women and for building more effective organizations. Special thanks to Laura Smulian, researcher and writer, for her contributions to this piece and to InnovateHERs – Why Purpose-Driven Women Rise to the Top.

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