The glass ceiling in organizations has been stubbornly persistent for several decades, despite concerted efforts to improve matters. Research from Washington State University argues that part of the problem might be that the desire to take on leadership roles among women has also remained stubbornly below that among men for much of this period.

The gap, while not enormous, appears persistent and grows more so as you advance to more senior levels. What’s more, the researchers believe this remains even without considering the systemic discrimination that is patently evident.

“What this suggests is that even if we were to drastically reduce bias and systematic gender discrimination, we still wouldn’t expect to see equal representation of women in leadership roles,” the researchers explain. “If we want to get to a more equitable 50/50 split, we need to have a conversation around leadership aspirations. We need to think about what women need to be able to see themselves in these roles.”

Aspiration gap

The researchers are at pains to point out that they don’t believe their findings challenge the notion that structural discrimination exists, nor indeed that women lack ambition. They highlight that past research has certainly shown that women want promotions, but that these upwards moves don’t always require additional supervisorial duties.

The findings emerged after analyzing samples from 174 previous studies conducted between 1960 to 2020. In total, the studies covered over 138,000 participants, and all examined leadership aspirations across a wide range of disciplines.

While few of these studies specifically targeted gender differences, the researchers were able to gain access to additional statistics from the authors of the original studies to allow them to compare the varying aspirations of men and women.

The results show that the apparent leadership aspiration gap was particularly wide in male-dominated professionals, such as politics, where fewer women were looking to run for elected office. While the researchers weren’t able to ascertain specific reasons why this was the case, they believed internalized sexism was likely to play a major role.

Internalized sexism

“It may have to do with the process of ‘self-stereotyping,’ where individuals internalize their respective gender stereotypes and voluntarily conform to gender norms,” they explain. “For women, this means internalizing a more communal stereotype, which leads them to view themselves as less similar to a leader and, consequently, to aspire to leadership positions to a lesser extent.”

Stereotypes tend to have the opposite effect on men, as the masculine stereotype often plays up to the desire to have control over others, which leads men towards leadership roles. It’s also likely that women have had more negative experiences in the workplace than men, with this resulting in lower aspirations. It’s also possible that leadership may be perceived as likely to have a negative toll on one’s family life.

Interestingly, this aspiration gap appears to manifest itself early on in women’s careers, and is often evident around college age.  There is more research required to understand both when the aspiration gap emerges and also why, but if organizations want to have more diverse leadership this is clearly something that needs to be addressed.

“If people who are feeling somewhat ambivalent about leadership are given the chance to be immersed in the experience, then they might realize that they are cut out for it and they actually enjoy it,” the authors conclude.