How Employers Can Increase the Number of Women in Leadership Roles—and Why They Should

In 2014, the tech giant Lenovo recognized a problem in its workforce.

Although women make up more than 30% of Lenovo’s roughly 77,000 employees, the number of women on its executive leadership team was trending downward. In 2014, that number hit a new low: only 14% of executive-level roles were held by women.

“It was a tremendous red flag for us,” explained Jennifer Broerman Spencer, director of global diversity and inclusion at Lenovo. “We knew that it wasn’t trending in the right direction, and we had to take an intervention.”

As a result, the firm decided to create a leadership program to increase the number of female leaders in its workforce, a program that has now been in place for a decade. Broerman Spencer says that it has been a big boon to the company’s inclusion and diversity efforts—and its overall success.

Lenovo isn’t the only organization identifying gaps when it comes to gender equality and opportunities for promotion—and working to make changes.

Women in leadership is a rising focus for many workplaces, with many industry insiders pointing out the benefits that female leaders bring.

“Anecdotally speaking, I have seen growing momentum for women in leadership roles,” says Vicki Salemi, a career expert at jobs site Monster. “This needs to continue. It’s not a trend, as that implies it’s seasonal and will fade—it should be here to stay.”

But even though heightened attention is being paid to the topic of women in leadership, there have been bumps in the road to progress.

Women represent roughly 1 in 4 C-suite leaders, and women of color represent just 1 in 16, according to McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2024 report. Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data found that although more women than ever are working, many working women are reporting fewer promotions and salary increases.

Meanwhile, according to the S&P Global Total Market Index, in 2023, the growth in women’s representation among all senior leadership positions in the U.S. dropped to the lowest rate in more than a decade: 0.5% versus 1.2% on average.

The drop in women’s leadership roles “is definitely something we don’t want to see become a trend across multiple years,” says Ella Washington. She is a professor of practice at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and the founder and CEO of Ellavate Solutions, a consulting firm that focuses on inclusion, equity, and diversity.

Furthermore, female employees are more likely than their male counterparts to indicate that more employer support is needed. According to a Monster survey earlier this year, the majority of men (67%) think that all employees at their organization receive the same quality and quantity of opportunities, whereas only 33% of women agree. And 60% of women think that men get a seat at the table more often than women at their company, but only 12% of men agree. Disparities exist for salary, as well: 71% of men think that they are paid the same as women by their employer, contrasted with only 28% of women who agree.

That’s all ripe for change.

Diversity of Thought

Female executives are important for the same reason that greater diversity is vital to businesses, Washington explains.

“Different lived experiences provide us with different strengths, skills, and perspectives. The experiences of women are important additions in all of these ways that other leaders have impact,” she says. “Their unique way of being strategic, leading teams, and making decisions helps make the workplace more innovative and collaborative. Women do not hold a standard set of skills; everyone’s offerings are different, and that is why a diversity of women in executive roles is a strength for an organization.”

Having female executives is also important for developing and inspiring future female executives, Washington says: “Representation at the top is vital for establishing greater inclusion and community throughout the organization.”

Women bring many skills to the table. For one thing, women are now more educated than men in the U.S., with women outnumbering men among the college-educated labor force. Other experts point to the productivity and multitasking skills women can bring to businesses.

“Women get stuff done, bringing valuable acumen, skills, and experiences to the workplace while being maestros of multitasking,” Salemi says. 

What Employers Are Doing

There are numerous strategies that employers can implement to help increase the number of women in leadership roles.

After finding that just 14% of its leadership team was made up of women, Lenovo leveraged Advancing Women Leaders, a SHRM/Linkage Signature Solution. Through it, Lenovo offered targeted learning and development opportunities to director-level women through a 10-month women’s leadership development program. Since 2015, eight cohorts of Lenovo employees, totaling 170 female leaders, have completed the program.

The tech firm has increased the percentage of women in executive-level roles from 14% to 22%. It hopes to increase that figure to 27% in the next couple of years, Broerman Spencer says.

“I think we’re going to come close, and whether we hit the goal, we will celebrate for a moment and we will set another one and we will continue,” Broerman Spencer says. “And if we fall short, it’s just another excuse to double down.”

Promoting leadership programs and career development opportunities, such as the Linkage program leveraged by Lenovo, is among the many strategies that employers can adopt. Others include ensuring fair pay for women, offering comprehensive benefits, and providing access to employee resource groups dedicated to women.

One of the first steps employers can take toward making sure women can thrive in the workplace is to take stock of their workforce, suggests Roshan Kindred, chief diversity officer at San Francisco-based tech firm PagerDuty.

She explains that conducting a comprehensive audit of staff—considering gender, race, authority, and salary—to identify areas where organizations can improve representation to produce better business outcomes is essential.

Salemi agrees, saying that part of the solution is recognizing what gaps exist and where you might be falling short.

“It’s important for employers to realize disparities exist, and so do the perceptions of inequities,” Salemi says. “Awareness is key—awareness of both the lack of women in leadership roles and how to even the playing field and awareness that workers themselves see inequities. There are disparities between genders and their perceptions; resentment can build, too.”

For its part, Kindred says, PagerDuty has used “data-informed decision-making to develop and sustain inclusion and diversity programs that drive employee engagement and belonging and ensure that our teams are motivated to solve complex problems for big customers.”

Half of PagerDuty’s board members are female, and 86% of its employees cite PagerDuty’s social impact investment as making them proud to work there, Kindred says.

“By working closely with teams, we can ensure that everyone has access to opportunities for growth, such as skilling programs for women in coding and development,” Kindred says. “It’s also important that we collectively advocate for change at all levels, including the C-suite, where leadership can be pivotal in driving these efforts. Through collaboration and shared responsibility, we can build a stronger, more inclusive community that can support the diverse needs of our customers and stakeholders alike.”

Supporting employee groups, such as business resource groups and affinity groups, can also help women build strong networks for support and professional development, Washington says. And investing in tailored development opportunities for women by level or role can also “lay the foundation for strong cohorts of women to grow and develop professionally with tactical advice that is relevant to their circumstance,” she says.

Betting on Benefits

Other industry experts say that a lot of it comes down to offering benefits and resources to make sure women are able to thrive in the workplace. For instance, child care and other family responsibilities have historically been barriers for women in the workplace, and they are often reasons why women have stalled in their careers or even left the workforce altogether.

“Women tend to take the majority of the parenting responsibilities, even in a dual-earner household,” says Rachel Sederberg, a senior economist and research manager at Lightcast, a Boston-based labor market analytics firm. “It takes a lot to take on all of those different responsibilities within the household. And that will pull you away from work, especially when your work is a type of job where the longer the hours you put in, the more you’re rewarded. It’s not a punch-in, punch-out, do your shift and leave. It might be something like consulting or the like, where the more you’re in the office, or the more you’re online, the better you’re going to do. So that causes problems.”

Comprehensive benefits that help women—and men—juggle their home and work lives can make the difference. Those benefits include paid parental and family leave, child care assistance, and remote work options.

According to the Monster poll, besides fair and equal wages (cited by 87% of the women surveyed) and a clear vision for the future of their career (68%), the benefits that women value most in the workplace are maternity leave and child care benefits (38%, up 13 percentage points from 2023 when it was 25%), female mentors (35%), and fertility and family planning services (16%).

“Regarding the importance of maternity leave, child care benefits, and fertility and family planning services, companies should be prioritizing and evaluating their benefits plans and improving them,” Washington says. “If organizations offered better support to parents and what they need, women would have greater opportunity to deliver in the workplace on their goals and visions.”

Washington adds that good workplace benefits must include family benefits for men to allow a balance of responsibility for couples, thus allowing women to truly benefit from the offered resources.

Workplace flexibility is also key to the equation. According to a 2022 YouGov survey, 72% of women said they preferred flexible working locations, as compared to 57% of men.

“Employers should ensure that there are reasonably flexible options for all employees, including remote work,” Washington says. “They should implement clear and transparent criteria for promotions, ensure equity-informed decisions that reduce bias, have adequate parental leave policies for both parents, and provide child care assistance via financial support or an onsite child care option.”

Those practices can ensure that women—and working moms in particular—are “provided with the best opportunities to succeed and rise in the ranks as they desire,” Washington says.

To learn more about women in leadership, don’t miss the SHRM Women in Leadership Institute, a multiday event designed to equip you with the game-changing tools to propel you into the next phase of your career. It will bring together more than 2,000 women leaders for an exceptional and results-driven leadership development experience.