As the three posts included in this one attest, I’ve been writing for some time on a subject that up to now has been taboo. How being a woman, specifically being in the body of a woman, pertains to the leadership gap. The persistent gap – despite all that’s been done in the last several decades, at least in the West, to reduce it -between the number of male leaders and the number of female leaders.
My original focus was on the impact on women’s bodies of being pregnant, giving birth, and breast feeding. And on how the enormous physical and psychological changes that are associated with childbirth and breastfeeding – over long periods of time – almost certainly have an impact not only on women’s capacity to lead, but on their ambition to lead. (I know, I know, even to suggest this is politically incorrect.)
But every few months there’s further evidence that being a woman is not like being a man. And that the differences between them might go further, much further, toward explaining the leadership gap than we have been willing so far to appreciate or admit.
The third of my posts above takes the argument further – to menopause. To the fact that while for some women menopause has little or even no impact on their well-being, for other women it’s different. For many women the effects of menopause are considerable, and they are deleterious. Menopause is often associated with symptoms such as hot flashes, mood swings, and brain fog – all in the prime of women’s professional lives. Not helpful if you’re on a leadership track – or for that matter already in a leadership role.
In recent weeks I’ve been reminded of two more health issues that, logically, further explain why women lead less often than men. Both also revolve around pregnancy and childbirth – which a woman typically experiences in her twenties, thirties and now, into her forties.
The first is the relatively high rate of maternal mortality in the United States. While this is especially true of Black women – who have a maternal mortality rate 2.6 times higher than that of white women – it is by no means confined to a certain segment of the population. The U.S. maternal mortality rate is already the highest among all peer nations. And in recent years the numbers have deteriorated still further. As Vernonica Gillispie-Bell put it, writing in the New York Times, “Maternal outcomes in the United States are a public health crisis and they are only getting worse.”
The second health issue that directly pertains to – likely limits – the numbers of women in leadership roles is what used to be called (and often still is) postpartum depression. Now the term is a more general one – “mood and anxiety disorders.” But the point is the same. These disorders impair women, often for months or even years at a time, and they are not uncommon. Researchers estimate that one in five new mothers suffer from such disorders during pregnancy and up to one year after giving birth. We’re talking here about some 800,000 American mothers each year. The impact of such afflictions is not, moreover, always transient. Last year the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention said that mental health disorders are the leading cause of maternal deaths, including from suicide or drug overdose.
Why are women everywhere still so underrepresented in leadership roles? Let me count the ways. To the familiar list of explanations and excuses such as implicit bias and the white male leadership model, we must though add another one. We must freely and openly acknowledge that women and men are different and that these physiological and sociobiological differences impact on why women lead less often than men. To do otherwise is to continue to stick our collective head in the proverbial sand.