Business

The Rise of the Female Business Leader

The Rise of the Female Business Leader

The number of women in business in the USA has been on the increase for many year and many top positions are now filled by successful women leaders and management. Gender equality will be a long time coming, but there are some positive signs that female business leadership is here to stay, and successfully at that.

How things are changing

The statistics have shown a slight increase over the last five years or so, and in 2017 women held just over 52% of all management and professional level jobs. For example, there are now specific courses that cater for you, Kelley Business School Women in Leadership courses are a prime example and worth noting. So, the numbers are increasing and the opportunities to study specific courses that focus on women in leadership is now more mainstream than you might think.

Developing management and leadership skills are only one part of the rise of women leadership in business, and the other skills that are being encouraged for women, are technology, artificial intelligence, and automation, all of which are skills of the future and have yet to be gender stereotyped. So, the sooner women enter these fields and have the technical knowledge in place, logic dictates that they will also be the first to rise into positions of leadership in these sectors of the future.

The roles that women can now play and apply for in the business sector are wider and more varied than they have ever been. These opportunities will continue to open up as gender equity becomes something enforceable by law and they must be seized upon if gender equality in the business world is to ever be achieved.

Female business leaders in the US

The statistics are clear and although women account for over half the population in the USA  and they are represented at the same level in colleges and institutions of higher learning, yet they do not make of 50% of senior leadership in American businesses. Things are changing and changing fast as more women both enter management positions, but more importantly, manage to keep these positions.

What the future looks like

Remote working during COVID-19 has sounded the death knell for patriarchal workplaces and as more remote work is accepted, there will be more space for more women to step into leadership and management roles that can be molded and designed around their daily family routines. One of the main reason’s women had been left on the sidelines for so long was the idea that they were the main care givers and that they needed to be available for home and family responsibilities. This perception has been totally changed and it is now clearer than ever that men and women can both provide this family support and structure, and both genders can be successful business leaders.

Flexibility is now a given and many companies and businesses across the US understand the value of female leadership. If half the workforce is female, then it makes sense to have half of the leadership as women as well. This is a start towards equality, but there needs to be some much more that is overtly done in the world of business to achieve overall equality, wages and payment received by women is still down compared to that of men, so while there may be more female leaders there is still a lot to do towards real equality in the world of American business.

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