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New Week, New Headlines: Why Are So Many Executive Women Quitting? & Work Resorts and Remote CEOs
This week, we're talking about...
Why Are So Many Executive Women Quitting?
We tackle the unsettling trend of women leaders stepping down from Ivy League presidencies amid intense scrutiny. This concerning pattern highlights the persistent gender biases in leadership roles across academia and corporate America. As we dig into statistics from the Chronicle of Higher Education and discuss findings from McKinsey's Women in the Workplace Report, we underscore the need for systemic change.
Work Resorts and Remote CEOs
There are two stories getting heat in the great 'office debate:
- One: Introducing..."work resorts" where office spaces are designed to be aesthetically pleasing and offer additional layers of hospitality to get folks back to the office. Will it work or is this 2024's answer to the ping pong table?
- Two: Starbucks and Victoria's Secret welcomed new CEOs who will also be working 'remotely'. Begging the question about fairness of remote work policies, especially when CEOs work remotely while expecting their employees to adhere to in-office requirements. This disparity can create negative optics and affect employee morale.
Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host or the management.
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A year ago, women were the majority of Ivy League presidents. Now most of them have quit.
Speaker 2:What's going on, mel? What's up? You know what I was thinking about the other day. What you remember the Brock's Pick what I was thinking about the other day, what you remember the Brock's Pick-a-Mix at the grocery store I have no idea what that is.
Speaker 1:You don't know what that means what is a. Pick-a-mix what is?
Speaker 2:Brock's Pick-a-Mix. Do you know Brock's, the candy company, brock's Candy? No, now I do. Yeah, brock's Brocks is like B-R-A-C-H. Right, they do soybeans now, but back in the day they had this thing called the Pick-A-Mix and it was at an end cap in a grocery store and if you put like a quarter in you can get three different candies and they had the things like strawberry.
Speaker 1:Oh, the little strawberry candies that your grandmother has. Yes, they have that.
Speaker 2:Oh, the little strawberry candies, yeah, or that your grandmother has, yes, but then we also have them like that the mint meltaways. Or the Neapolitans, oh okay, yeah. And where the hell did that go? I was watching Vintage, we all need treats while we're shopping. I know.
Speaker 1:Like a little, like I'm just going to treat myself to a little. Just give me a pick-me-up while I walk through this store.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I know Where's the Brock's Pick-a-Mix. I think there is a ripe opportunity for them.
Speaker 1:I'm all for throwing a quarter in and getting a few candies out.
Speaker 2:I know Where's the little surprise and delight at the grocery store? Where's the surprise and delight? They don't have it.
Speaker 1:I know, you know who does. We're not sponsored by them, but hint, hint, wink, wink. Stu Leonard's in Connecticut. Have you ever heard of Stu Leonard's?
Speaker 2:I wait, is this ginormous grocery store with the big farmer?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it has like characters in there and it's amazing. Honestly, it is an amazing experience walking through this store.
Speaker 2:I'll have to take you there, Francesca, if you ever make it up this way Is it just big or is it actually good if?
Speaker 1:you ever make it up this way? Is it just big or is it actually good? No, it's like locally sourced things. It's an experience. There are farm characters throughout. It feels like a carnival and a grocery store at the same time. They have, like coffee roaster in there, homemade ice cream. It is fun Not at Thanksgiving, but every other day it's fun to go shopping there.
Speaker 2:Price is okay. No, I'm curious about the prices. Can I be jacking them up?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're a little jacked, but I guess you're paying for the experience.
Speaker 2:You're paying for the experience. This is the thing. There is a grocery store here that I adore Zupan's. They're in Portland. It's very high end, it's like Air One of Portland, right, it is super well-merchandised. You go in there and you're like, yeah, I need a $45 lotion. This is the thing. But I love them. I never shop there for my dailiness, because it's the best. What it would be at the Kroger? It's insane.
Speaker 1:It's insane. Get me an Aldi's any day. I love Aldi's. Yeah, I love Aldi's so much.
Speaker 2:We don't have an Aldi. We don't have Aldi's. What we do not? We have Trader Joe's, we do not have Aldi's. Oh, you're missing out, believe me. So good, we had them in Chicago. We had them in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1:They have a better cheese selection than Trader Joe's, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not so sure. Trader Joe's cheese selection right, all right, it's all right, it's all right. Does the job, yeah, especially when you need a girl dinner. Yeah, brocks, pick a mix and a girl dinner. That's the thing. I think that's part of it. Yeah, now we're back with new week, new headlines. What are you talking about this week?
Speaker 1:yeah, I got an alert about an article in the chronicle of higher education and the title is a year ago, women were the majority of Ivy League presidents. Now most of them have quit, so I want to talk about it. What are you talking about, francesca?
Speaker 2:Do you ever see that scene in Anchorman where all of the news corporations are in a street fight? Yes, yeah, just like the street fight. There are new sides in the office debate and I want to talk about it because PB Telemundo just showed up. I want to talk about the office because this week was really hot on two sides of the story work resorts and remote CEOs. I want to talk about it. Let's do it.
Speaker 1:All right, let's jump into the serious one first. Here I saw an article again from the Chronicle of Higher Education. We'll link to this in the show notes. The author was Eric Kelderman and it's exactly what the title notes here.
Speaker 1:In fall of 2023, six of the eight Ivy League colleges had women as presidents.
Speaker 1:This was a big deal, huge. It was praised as proof of progress in higher ed, but just also breaking quote unquote glass ceilings for women in leadership across the board Since last year. Four of them have since stepped down, three of them having been replaced by white men after intense scrutiny of how they handled the Israel Gaza protests, and most of them endured intense pressure on top of directed personal attacks on their character as part of their ousting. For example, claudine Gay was accused of plagiarism and her degrees were put into question unnecessarily. I know L Song Richardson, the former president of Colorado College and a legal expert on this, is implying. Implicit bias is quoted in the article, stating there's vitriol that's directed at women in higher education leadership, and this spring it really stood apart as the overt claims that they were not competent to lead these institutions, which just is not true. Other male university counterparts were, on the contrary, for these same things criticized, but they did not get forced into resignation, nor did they experience these types of personal attacks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially with the Claudia and gay thing. I remember that just felt like there was a whole campaign against her. That wasn't just Absolutely.
Speaker 1:It felt like digging and trying to create these accusation. It was awful to watch as a human and especially as a woman, and two of these women that have since left. They were first right. Manoush Shafiq was the first woman to lead Columbia University in its 270-year history, and Claudine Gay was Harvard's first Black president. They came in, these women leaders were praised just a year earlier, and then they were under this intense scrutiny that their male counterparts at other universities were not placed under. So why this matters? Eric points out this.
Speaker 1:Like it or not, these developments are rippling across the sector and into public discourse, because it doesn't just ripple into higher education. We see this everywhere. These public undressings of women leaders puts us as a whole back as a society. Right and Francesca, we're women who have been in leadership positions and we've experienced this type of thing and we've also seen it. Maybe not at the scale of these leaders, but you've leadership positions and we've experienced this type of thing and we've also seen it. Maybe not at the scale of these leaders, but you've seen it and you've witnessed it, unfortunately, oh yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:You see it on the pre and on the post, and what I mean by that is you see women getting put into leadership positions, ceo positions, especially when there's a massive cleanup job, so they're not even set up for success number one. And then on the post, when something hits the fan which it will hit the fan in any type of administration they are absolutely taken down so much harder than typically their white male counterpart, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and there's a ton of research to show it. I'm going to get into that in just a second. Eric notes that representation in higher education alone is already super low. For example, women make up just 29% of presidents at research universities, according to data from the American Council of Education, and 33% of presidents across all of higher ed. So they're massively underrepresented already in these leadership positions.
Speaker 1:And Marjorie Hess, who's president of the Council of Independent Colleges, noted that the stresses and strains of the presidency have increased significantly and the amount of grace we give to leaders has decreased, and that's especially true we give to leaders has decreased, and that's especially true, she said, when the very identity of that president signals a change, just by being the first of their gender or race to hold that position. Where we're seeing this elsewhere, we're seeing this everywhere. In the US, starting with Congress, a Pew Research report had data trends of women in leadership and it noted that at the start of the 118th Congress in 2023, there were just 25 women serving in the US Senate, shy of the record of 26 women sworn in on the first day of the previous Congress. In state Congress, women make up 29.9% of state Senate seats and 33.7% of state house seats or assembly seats, and one state is getting this really right. Women currently hold a 62% majority of the Nevada state legislature the largest percentage of any state. And I'm like yo, nevada, what's your secret?
Speaker 2:There's some progressive shit going on in Nevada.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got to take a look. What's happening there. Further down, the share of women CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies did reach an all-time high of 10.6% in 2023, with 53 women heading major firms. And can we just pause 10.6%? That's not you know what?
Speaker 2:drives me bonkers about Seems low. It's so low I'm like okay, 33. She's going to say 33.
Speaker 2:She's going to I knew it was going to be lower, but it's I was shocked to see that number I think the thing that you and I have both been in these organizations where they're making talent decisions at the executive level, and what we frequently see across the board is that there's gender parity right Pretty much all the way up to middle management. There's typically gender parity where you have equal number of men and women in roles. Once you start getting higher up and higher up, women drop off precipitously. The fact that it's only at 10% think about that going from middle management to CEO. That drop is significant, something wrong.
Speaker 1:Something is wrong and I'm going to talk about it. First, there is a ton of research out there that highlights that women in leadership positions are provided unrealistic expectations compared to their male counterparts the McKinsey Women in the Workplace Report, which recently came out in 2023,. They partnered with Lean In on this report. It's the largest study on the state of women in corporate America to date, and, based on data from that report from more than 270 companies and employing over 10 million people, here were some of the findings Progress remains slow for women at the manager and director levels, creating a weak middle in the pipeline impacting the majority of women in corporate America they talk about. There really isn't a glass ceiling. That's not the problem. It's what they're calling the broken rung. Have you heard about this? The broken rung is the greatest obstacle women face on the path to senior leadership because, for every 100 men promoted from entry level to manager, only 87 women were promoted, and this gap is trending the wrong way, especially for women of color, where, they noted, only 73 women of color were promoted to manager for every 100 men, down from the 82 women of color from the previous year of the report. As a result of this broken rung. Women fall behind and then they can't ever catch up. Bias is a huge factor here. Women are hired for what they have done, men are hired for what they've become, and women have to have a proven record, but men do not. So they noted here. Until this broken rung is fixed, gender parity and senior leadership will always remain out of reach.
Speaker 1:The next big factor here is honestly around microaggressions that women experience in the workplace. Microaggressions overall signal disrespect. They cause acute stress and they negatively impact women's careers and health. Overall, 18 years of data showed that women experience microaggressions at a significantly higher rate than men. They're twice as likely to be interrupted and hear comments on their emotional state in the workplace, and for women with traditionally marginalized identities, these slights happen more often and are even more demeaning. As a result, the workplace is a mental minefield for many women, particularly those with traditionally marginalized identities. And then they noted that women leaders are leaving their companies at the highest rate ever and the gap between women and men leaders leaving is the largest it's ever been. And as a point of perspective they added for every woman at the director level who gets promoted to the next level, two women directors are actually choosing to leave their company. Oh yeah, I believe it, though.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm curious if you saw this in the research. There has been a story for quite a long time that women aren't getting up into these higher positions because so much of the family housework is falling to them. So women for the most part are still the caretakers of parents, children, grandparents. Right, you're in a sandwich generation and that work typically will still fall to women and that's why we start to see women falling out of the workforce.
Speaker 1:That's been the story, but that's not the whole story.
Speaker 2:It's not the whole story, which I think is fascinating in terms of these environments suck for women.
Speaker 1:It's actually the environment, the unconscious bias women are experiencing. And when we go back to the original article around these Ivy League presidents, what did they all experience? Yeah, Microaggressions, personal attacks, unconscious bias about their leadership. Who feels safe working in that environment? Female Quotient recently came out and noted that 76% of high-performing women reportedly received negative feedback from their managers, compared to just 2% of high-performing men, and this comes from data collected by 23,000 employees across 250 organizations. The reason for that Unconscious bias against women. So here's the thing All of this unconscious bias exists.
Speaker 1:Yet there is a ton of research to show women leaders make work better. The APA published an article back in 2023, noting when more women are empowered to lead, everyone benefits. And they had decades of studies that show women leaders help increase productivity, enhance collaboration, inspire organizational dedication and improve fairness in the workplace. And there are a ton of ways women excel and I'm summarizing here, so please read the article. We'll link to the API article, but they noted these ways Female leaders demonstrate more transformational leadership styles. Women are now seen as equally or more competent as men in the workplace. Team collaboration is greatly improved by the presence of women in the group. Women rank better than or equal to men in seven of eight traits relevant to leadership. The mere presence of a female leader relative to a male leader led perceivers to anticipate fairer treatment in the workplace, and appointing women to the top tier of management can even help mitigate deep-rooted stereotypes that are not expressed in our language.
Speaker 1:A few ways that orgs can start to make this better, or even, as individuals, what you can do. The APA reported four ways that orgs can begin to support women leaders more effectively. One identify leaders early, very early, and nurture them. Establish mentorships that focus on sponsorship, which are two very different things supporting women and joining women-led professional organizations that help lift them up. And really focusing on allyship.
Speaker 1:So what does allyship mean? If you're a dude and old misogynistic shit happening, you should be standing up for women in the workplace and more unconscious bias training, recognizing your own biases for women leaders, so that you can start to support them more. And on a personal note, I just want to say can we stop giving a separate set of rules for women leaders and move away from completely tearing them down professionally and personally when they speak up, when they share ideas, when they call people out for their bullshit or make same errors as male leaders do in the workplace. I really think we have to stop expecting women to show up as your caretaker when you don't expect the same from men.
Speaker 2:There are new sides in the office debate this week, Two articles I want to highlight. There are new sides in the office debate this week. Two articles I want to highlight work resorts and remote CEOs, because I don't think there's anything more polarized. That's not true. Let me tell you. There are a lot of things that are polarizing in the US right now. We can name a thousand different things, but I think one of the things that's going to make the top 10 is the office. Yes, CEOs want everyone back in the office. People want to be able to work remote and not be in the office. Right, Office sucks. You can be on any side of the debate, but there were two new narratives that came into the ether this week that just really struck my fancy, so I thought I'd talk about it. There's new sides in the office debate. The first are work resorts Work resorts.
Speaker 1:Mel, what are we talking about here?
Speaker 2:New York Times article by Stacey Freed the hotelification of offices. Is this a new ping pong table? It might be. It might be. This is a really interesting article about how a lot of companies and office management groups are trying to lure workers back to their desks by these things called work resorts, and what it's trying to do is tackle that age old question of employees showing up to the office and wondering why the hell am I here when I can be doing the exact same thing at home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this particular answer to this problem is hotelification. You've already started to see some of this pre-pandemic, but it's a new iteration of office buildings that offer an additional layer of what they call hospitality. So some of the things that look like hotelification where the space feels beautiful, welcoming, it inspires new thinking. Other things that were called out in the article things like off-white walls with Roman clay finish, a gray and white marble coffee table, white leather benches and a resin canvas etched with the words hello tomorrow. Things like signature scents, hints of salty seawater, white lilies, dry musk, or they can include premium amenities like nine restaurants, outdoor working spaces, italian grocery stores, all this good jazz, golf simulators, and they'll have events like cocktail fairs and silent discos hotelification- I'm not trying to do a silent disco with my coworkers, I'm not trying to do a silent disco ever right?
Speaker 1:Listen, it is fun. I will say I did it at the Color Factory in New York with my BFF and it was a little fun. It was fun. But you're listening to music. Yeah, you have headphones on so you're hearing the music and you're just like vibing out. Man, I love it. I just don't know if I'm like it's like the sensory deprivation because it's so in your ear so you don't have other surrounding noises. You like really get into the music.
Speaker 1:Anyway, this just sounds like a regurgitation of early you remember early days of tech. Oh, google offers you free food and sleeping pods and ping pong tables and happy hours. So this feels like something old that they're now trying to make it seem fresh again. Yeah, but at the end of the day, no matter what kind of air you've got pumping through the walls, I'd rather light a candle in my living room and sit in my joggers on my couch. If I'm just checking email, yeah. Or it's an option to come in if I need a change of scenery or a meaningful working session with my colleagues. Other than that, no, why would I do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm torn on this one, because I'm all for being in person. If we need to be in person, if it's really intentional working, hands down, that's the only time we ever really need to be in person. And I also think listen, there is a absolute benefit to having things like office as an amenity. I think that's a really smooth move right when you can be like oh, I just need a different space or I like to work in person. I also think office buildings have sucked so freaking hard for the long time, so this is the next chapter of office as an amenity. I think it's much needed. Do I think it's going to solve the entire issue of Absolutely not, absolutely not.
Speaker 1:Absolutely not. Yeah, I just shared this with you Culture Amp. They're so great and they have chapters all over the US and I'm part of the New York City chapter and they just invited us to come in. For anyone who's local to New York City 22 Vanderbilt You're probably familiar it's right across from Grand Central. It is a stunning location to work from, great, but I love the concept of as an amenity.
Speaker 2:I know we're having a hard time today. What the heck.
Speaker 1:Sorry, amenity. I like that concept of the option to come in if you need a change of scenery or to your good. You come in for meaningful work together, absolutely great, and you want a beautiful space for that, for exactly the reasons they noted. But other than that, no, no one wants to be in the office mandatory five days a week and then go to a silent disco after work so I be on the lookout, friends, for these ideas of offices and amenities, these work resorts, the qualification of your workplace.
Speaker 2:It is coming and again it is an amenity. I would look at it as an amenity, as a welcome change.
Speaker 1:beautiful spaces Absolutely.
Speaker 2:But I would also argue that the organizations to your very good point, the organizations that have intentional work and set up office as an amenity, are the ones that are going to win Absolutely. The second article that came up in terms of this whole debate around the office I don't know if you've seen this, but CEOs working remotely are absolutely under fire. This week the big news in the CEO world was Brian Nichols coming in as the new CEO of Starbucks. Yep, Fortune, Axios widely reporting that more CEOs are enjoying remote work life, but employees are starting to resent it. By the way, this happened before the pandemic, where you'd have a CEO that did not live in the state that the company was headquartered in, but they were commuting in or they were working completely remotely, but it's coming under fire.
Speaker 2:This week alone there were two stories that dropped One incoming Starbucks CEO, Brian Nickel, won't have to relocate to Seattle, where the chain is headquartered. He's gonna be working from his current home in Newport Beach, California. And then two was Hillary Super, who just came over from Savage Fenty to be the new CEO of Victoria's Secret, who won't be relocating to the company's headquarter in Ohio. Okay, Instead, she'll reportedly be flying in from her home in New York. Okay, here's the deal with this right when CEOs are working, quote unquote remotely. Most of these organizations also are requiring their employees to come in at least three days a week, requiring their employees to live within an hour of the headquarters as well, and so there is this feeling of how come it's okay for the CEO, but it's not for me. Yeah, I think that's fair, I think that's a fair sentiment to have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's a fair sentiment to have, unless your job duties require you to be close in location. I don't really understand the RTO piece. I really don't Because one as an organization, you're cutting off national talent pool if you're open to this hybrid concept or virtual working concept, and now you're narrowing that talent pool significantly by saying it needs to be within a one hour radius or you need to come into the office. Why are you cutting off your own talent pool with these decisions? And two, yeah, it looks really bad when the expectation is everyone else needs to do this, but there are special exceptions over here. Yeah, and it's starting at the top and setting the tone. So I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think the objects of it are really bad. The reality of it is most likely these folks are flying in to the home office for three days a week. Typically, what happens to CEOs? Either have an apartment or they'll just get a hotel, whatever. But they're flying in also because they can afford to fly in too. I have worked for organizations that required people to be on headquarters and I've seen anywhere from director on up fly in because they can afford it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they can afford it. The thing that I think is interesting here is like the optics suck on this Right, and there's an element for me in terms of shadow of a leader that when you take on these roles, the response here is, if you're a CEO, buy yourself some damn property in the headquarter in the state where this is located and have a house and diffuse the optics. I don't know why people would perpetuate the optics of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or if you're expecting everyone else to be in the office three days a week, then they should visibly see you there too. Yeah, model that, model the action, if that's what you're expecting if you're going to fly, in fine, but you need to be there too.
Speaker 2:Here's the other thing with this article. You and I've been paying attention to this stuff for a really long time. You're very good point. I would never see articles like this drop before the pandemic, and I just think, because there's been this push to get people back in the office for whatever reasons whether it's organizational leadership just wanting to see people, whether it's we're going to do that just so we can call our workforce and fire a bunch of people and trim it down, and that's the easiest way to do it, which, by the way, that's happened. I don't think that's what the reason is. I think what's interesting, though, is you start to see, okay, what are the leaders doing? Then? Are a cold coming out? You would have never seen this five years ago. I think it's interesting that you're seeing it now.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriendscom. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.
Speaker 1:Thanks.
Speaker 2:Brian, thank you.