Fewer women advance to executive positions

American women pursue equal rights in the workplace. An irony of that workplace chase is that women are disproportionately represented in executive management and on corporate boards when women are America’s primary buying force in a consumer-driven economy.

Las Vegas is a premier example of a market that can hugely benefit from women in executive positions. Retailers such as the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood Resort on the Strip show that hiring women in executive positions is good business. The senior director of marketing for Miracle Mile Shops is Wendy Albert, who reports directly to its ownership group, David Edelstein and Aby Rosen.

Albert said promotion in a marketing company starts with hard work and passion.

“Interest and passion drive women to executive promotion in any industry, whether it is finance, health care, entertainment or retail,” she said.

Albert has a point. Interest and passion are important to every person who wants to advance in an organization because it motivates performance in oneself and in those around that person.

“I love the retail industry, so this position is a perfect fit,” Albert said. At Miracle Mile Shops she works in many areas, such as advertising, public relations, social media, promotions, merchant relations and leasing, she said.

As a leader , Albert injects her interest and passion to improve performance of everyone around her, she said.

“At Miracle Mile Shops, we have to make all these (disciplines) work together in order to create the ultimate shopping, dining and entertainment destination.”

Albert thinks Las Vegas is a great place for women when it comes to opportunities for advancement .

“I realize how important it is for women in the workplace to support and help each other succeed,” said Albert, who serves as a role model for women in executive positions, having spent 20 years in marketing at nine shopping centers.

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook and author of the best-seller “Lean In,” said at her 2010 TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference that role models are one of the three most essential needs for increasing the number of women in executive positions. The other two are the will to lead and life balance.

Albert certainly shows her willingness to lead. When she moved to Las Vegas in 2001 to become senior director of marketing at Desert Passage (now Miracle Mile Shops), “I’d recommend taking on new challenges, whether that be offering to take the lead on a new project or taking time to suggest improvements for a system already in place.”

In Sandberg’s characterization of women executives, Albert “leans in.”

Although Albert shows that women can achieve executive level positions, only a small number of Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs. In 2011, only 18 women were CEOs in Fortune 500 companies. (Forbes magazine reported female CEOs dropped to 12 in May 2011). Additionally, women hold only 15.7 percent of board seats in Fortune 500 companies.

Why do most major companies fail to advance capable women to upper management positions? What is holding women back? It is certainly not education because more women than men graduate from college in America.

It also is not smaller numbers of women working in corporate America. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, women nearly equal men in workforce numbers but hold less than 30 percent of executive positions. With better education, improved child care facilities, better corporate acceptance of flex-work hours, employment legislation, maternity leave and marginally improving male acceptance of family responsibilities, more women are choosing to pursue corporate careers without proportional success.

One explanation is that women are late comers to the battle for executive positions. Since World War II, women have become increasingly important to American productivity, but before the war, most women stayed home. Another explanation is the competitive nature of business. Men have traditionally held most executive positions; some are competent; others are not, but men have been in the corporate arena longer.

Competent executives are not doers of things but developers of people. Change comes in well-managed companies that realize developing one’s replacement is an opportunity and not a threat to one’s position. Not accepting that management belief creates fear in the executive office. Less competent executives and supervisors are threatened by competent subordinates rather than energized by liberated management time.

When a good manager has a competent subordinate, less time is required to assist or mentor that upcoming executive. Less time needed for mentoring the subordinate leaves more time for development of others. Companies that wish to be competitive must capitalize on human resources based on what people can do that positively contributes to company’s profitability.

If a subordinate can do part of an executive’s job with less supervision, competent executives move on to other management opportunities; i.e., he or she is then able to spend more time with other potential superstar managers. Part of the reason for women’s proportionate disadvantage is late arrival in the executive arena: They are competing with men who have been in the arena longer and in greater numbers.

Another argument for women’s lag in executive positions is that there are not enough role models. That conclusion was discussed in a spring 2013 special sections titled “Women in a Man’s Word” by DealBook, a financial news service about deal-making and Wall Street published in The New York Times.

Irene Dorner, CEO of HSBC USA, is one of the few women to reach the upper levels of finance. In an interview with DealBook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, she admitted that she didn’t do enough to change the male-dominated corporate culture, but added the women don’t do enough “pushing their own agenda and advancement.”

America, like most of the world, is unconscionably patriarchal rather than gender neutral — beginning with religion and continuing through most governments and economies. The Roman Catholic Church says women cannot be priests. God is a man in Christian, Jewish and Moslem religions. Christian teaching says a woman comes from the rib of a man and that man fell from grace because of Eve’s betrayal of God’s law by biting the apple of knowledge and offering it to Adam.

Traditional Judaism says women are separate but equal but, in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court suggest ed that “separate but equal” is inherently unequal. The Muslim holy book, the Quran, says men maintain women and women are to be devoutly obedient to men, inferring inequality.

Women did not have the right to vote in many states until the late 19th century. The 19th Amendment, which guarantees women the right to vote, was adopted in 1920. The United Kingdom did not allow women to vote until 1918, and then women had to have property and be at least 30 years old.

All of these examples explain why women’s position in the corporate world is more often challenged than supported by demographic reality.

The advancement of women in business and their disproportionate representation in the executive office go beyond the patriarchal history of humankind. There is competition, the human drive for money, power and prestige. Good management skill alone is not enough for promotion.

Human development in business is not about gender but about productivity. Humans, male and female, have strengths and weaknesses. Good managers build on strengths and work around weaknesses by organizing human and technical resources to maximize results. These fundamental business truths will eventually level the playing field for executive promotion.

Men are neither from Mars nor women from Venus — all have a drive for money, power and prestige, which are the prerequisites for profit. Business women that demonstrate the ability to get things done without supervision should and will be paid, praised and promoted for the same reasons as men — improved productivity. When women are not treated equally, productivity is diminished by the loss of an equivalent and possibly greater source of competent managers.

It is important to understand demographics for corporations and governments to capitalize on change. Women are nearly half the workforce in America. Corporations and the government must change business policies and practices when it is more difficult for women to receive equal pay for equal work. Attempted government action is illustrated by the 2013 Paycheck Fairness Act that recently failed (for a second time) in Congress.

If child care interferes with corporate advancement, then corporations need to create an environment that allows parents to choose how they will share child care responsibility. If both husband and wife are pursuing executive careers, each bears the burden of family responsibility equally.

To the extent that government and business can help husbands and wives make family decisions by offering child care services or family counseling, the nation’s economy benefit s. In 2012, Fortune magazine reported that “Nearly a third of Best Companies offer an onsite child care center.”

Choosing to pursue executive management positions and getting the job are two different realities but the bar for success is set higher for women than men because of patriarchal history, but also because of changes in postindustrial economies, the relative late arrival of women in the workplace and fewer female role models.

Some argue that it is because women have familial responsibility that interferes with work commitments. That is a weak argument. Other than the act of birth, family responsibility is the same for both parents — one day, or one week or one month of absence from work hardly interferes with a worker’s contribution to a company. Not to mention, some women choose to have a career and not become mothers. The suggestion that mothers have to be primary caregivers for children is borne from cultural bias.

Women may represent the greatest market opportunity of 21st century working America. Women dominate consumer choice while slowly gaining corporate management experience. With an economy dependent on consumer buying decisions, women may have a better understanding of consumers than men.

With value conscious input about consumption and gained experience in business management, women can improve corporate contribution-to-fixed-cost (aka profit). Unfortunately, only a small percentage of corporate management acts as though they understand that opportunity. Statistics suggest corporate America fails to endorse employment practices that provide equal opportunity for women in executive management.

Women, just as men, have earned the right for promotion in business based on a level playing field. Executive management skill is learned. It is not a privileged domain of gender.