Top execs at Walmart, AT&T, and more open up about America’s lack of female CEOs and how companies can level the playing field

• Of all the leaders of Fortune 500 companies, only 41 are women.
• Companies with women CEOs or top executives perform better, S&P Global and McKinsey research showed.
• This article is part of a series called “The Cost of Inequity,” examining the hurdles that marginalized and disenfranchised groups face across a range of sectors.

For Anne Chow, the CEO of AT&T Business, one of the biggest obstacles to becoming a corporate leader wasn’t graduating from Cornell University or mastering the technicalities of the business world. It wasn’t spending her mornings on red-eye flights and her nights at the office. It was dealing with unconscious bias as an Asian American woman at school and at work.

“I’ve been asked where I’m from. I’ve been told that I’m surprisingly articulate and a good public speaker. I’ve been talked over in meetings and oftentimes been the only female and/or only female of color,” she said.

In fact, she cowrote a book about the topic, “The Leader’s Guide to Unconscious Bias.”

“There is unconscious and conscious bias in the corporate system — the notion women can’t be technical, that they’re great support, but they aren’t great leaders,” Chow said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Over the past two years, three women have taken the helm of major corporations. In March 2021, Citigroup named Jane Fraser its chief executive, and Walgreens Boots Alliance named Roz Brewer its CEO. And in May of that same year, JPMorgan’s Thasunda Brown Duckett became the CEO of TIAA.

Still, the most recent data showed that women represented just 8.2% of all Fortune 500 leaders. And it’s not just an American problem, only 8% of all CEOs of Londn’s FSTE 100, according to the Fawcett Society’s Sex and Power 2022 report.  This is despite a 2019 report by S&P Global that found that companies with newly named female CEOs performed better than companies with newly named male CEOs. Other 2022 research by LeHigh University found that companies with more women in leadership were more open to change and more interested in developing research and development within their companies, two strategies that could benefit many businesses. 

Standing in the way of this progress are roadblocks — such as bias and lack of sponsorship — that prevent women from reaching the C-suite, multiple CEOs and leadership consultants told Insider. The lack of female CEOs in corporate America is not just a diversity problem, they said. It’s a financial one — a company’s bottom line fares better when there’s diversity at the top.

“This is not just about a nice thing to do,” said Jane Stevenson, the vice chair at the leadership consultancy Korn Ferry. “This is about good business.”

Traditionally, the onus to carve out one’s path has fallen on the backs of women, but to make America’s executive ranks more representative of the country’s population, companies need to make concerted efforts to hire CEOs based on merit, not just connections. The women CEOs of Walmart International, Ancestry.com, and Deloitte’s accounting divison shared the similar experiences they’ve had to Chow and opened up about barriers holding women back from entering the C-suite. 

Bias starts from the beginning

Whether it’s a teacher’s expectations or comments, stereotypes, or lack of female representation in STEM fields, young women are slowly guided away from exploring technical and quantitative subjects, research has shown. But those are the very same skills at the heart of profit and loss, or P&L, roles.

Although Chow said she was dissuaded from enrolling in advanced math and science classes in high school, in 1988 she graduated from Cornell with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. In the following years, she continued her education at Cornell, earning her master’s degree in electrical engineering and her MBA.

After business school, Chow landed a role as a network architect at AT&T and later worked a series of jobs in product management, customer service, and marketing. A position in sales leadership, she said, led to a P&L vice president role, which was the beginning of her ascension to AT&T’s C-suite.

Chow is a rare exception to the typical path, said Laura Morgan Roberts, professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. She added that bias continues throughout a woman’s career and is often amplified for women of color.

Damaging stereotypes portray Black women as angry or difficult and Asian women as submissive or docile. This affects the types of opportunities women are afforded, as well as their ability to lead, Roberts said.

A 2016 Yale study found that people believed women were more likely than men to have their emotions affect decisions and therefore were less likely to want a woman in a position of power. Separate 2021 research found that people believed character traits associated with men, such as aggressiveness and forcefulness, made for more successful leaders.

“People are not accustomed to celebrating women of color in leadership positions and following them and respecting their authority,” Roberts said. “They will often bristle at having a woman or woman of color in a position of power.”

While Abrash, Deloitte’s CEO of accounting, did not experience the racism Chow did, she deeply identified with the sexism she faced. 

Male colleagues, Abrash recalled, would tell her she was “too harsh” in giving feedback and that she should instead take a more “indirect” approach. 

“I’m someone who speaks her mind,” the CEO said. “So for me, over the years, a struggle I had was determining when I could use the real authentic me and when I couldn’t use the real authentic me.” 

Women have to do this exercise in “shape shifting” in order to manage people’s perceptions of themselves in ways men don’t, she said. To combat this, leaders need to question their biases before giving feedback that might be rooted in unconcious stereotpyes. 

“Bias happens in small moments, when women don’t feel they can be their authentic selves,” Abrash said. “Leaders need to set the tone about what they expect so that those small moments don’t occur.” 

Leaders need to encourage managers to have more difficult conversations, said Bonnie Gwin, the vice chair of the leadership consultancy Heidrick & Struggles.

For example, managers need to make sure they’re not assuming anything about a woman’s career.

“Sometimes corporate leaders assume that you don’t want to move or take on an additional project because you’re a woman who has kids. I think it can be as simple as asking the question: What do you want to do?” Gwin said. “Where do you want to go?”

Don’t just mentor, sponsor

Deb Liu, the CEO of Ancestry, said she’s unsure whether she would have become a top corporate executive had it not been for one key sponsor in her career, Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook.

Liu met Sandberg when she was interviewing to be a project manager at Facebook in 2011. The pair immediately clicked and have continued to build a professional relationship over the years.

“Her sponsorship has been pivotal in my career. She really opened a lot of doors for me,” Liu said of Sandberg. “She placed a bet on me and gave me opportunities that I otherwise wouldn’t have.”

A sponsor is different from a mentor, who offers professional advice and coaching. A sponsor advocates on an employee’s behalf for promotions and new opportunities, touting their work to senior leadership and mentioning their name in important meetings.

One of the most crucial things Sandberg did for Liu was introduce her to Brad Smith, the former CEO of Intuit. Sandberg recommended Liu for a role on the company’s board.

Liu joined Intuit’s board of directors in 2017, where she learned from people such as Scott Cook, the company’s founder; Smith; and Jeff Weiner, the former CEO of LinkedIn. Cook sponsored Liu and served as a reference for her when she interviewed for the CEO position at Ancestry.

“Women are mentored more than men, whereas men are more likely to have sponsors,” Liu said. “Sponsorship is what opens the door.”

Research showed that women, particularly Black women, are less likely to have a sponsor than men. It’s not enough, in other words, to work hard and drive results, she said. People on executive committees have to also notice who is driving those results.

“Becoming a CEO is not just a meritocracy,” Stevenson said. “In order to be given the role, people have to believe that you are a safe pair of hands to lead. That involves results, but that also involves perception.”

Rethink key assignments

Before becoming the CEO of Walmart International, Judith McKenna was the company’s US COO. Across multiple industries, the role of COO is well known for being a pathway to CEO. 

McKenna said getting the COO role boiled down to not only having sponsors but seeking out and raising her hand for experiences outside of her “swim lane,” specifically P&L projects.

For example, she helped in a large M&A transaction. When then-Walmart International CEO Doug McMillon later encouraged her to move from the UK to the US to take on more P&L projects, she agreed. In 2018 McMillon, now Walmart’s global CEO, asked McKenna to lead Walmart’s international business.

McKenna said more executives need to consider women as candidates for P&L roles like McMillon did in her case.

A 2019 study of more than 3,000 workers found that men were three times as likely as women to have been encouraged to consider a P&L role. Nearly half of the men surveyed reported getting detailed advice at work on how to chart their path to a P&L job, compared with 15% of the women surveyed.

More women also need to raise their hands for P&L roles, McKenna said.

“You can still learn on the job,” she added. “Things you don’t know can be found from other people. Your knowledge can be built from the teams around you.”

Embrace the business case

Kellie McElhaney, a teaching fellow at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, knows that in order to make social progress when it comes to corporate America’s leadership, you have to speak the language corporate leaders speak: profit.

“I hate that we have to make the data-based case that there is a strong return on investment for having women in leadership. I hate it because nobody has ever asked me to prove the data-based case for hiring white men,” McElhaney said.

In 2019, S&P Global analyzed company earnings and share prices after some 5,800 new executive appointments. In the two years following the naming of a new CEO, the stock price for companies that appointed female chief executives outperformed those that appointed men by an average of 20%. The takeaway: Female CEOs delivered greater returns and improved stock prices.

Recent corporate pledges aiming to increase diversity in executive ranks and among board members are signs that leaders are embracing the business case.

In January 2020, Goldman Sachs announced it wouldn’t take companies public without “at least one diverse” board candidate, with “diverse” meaning a person of color or a woman.

Months later, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, announced that it planned to push companies for greater ethnic and gender diversity on their boards and workforces. BlackRock is asking companies to disclose data around the racial, ethnic, and gender makeup of their staff, as well as measures they’re taking to advance diversity and inclusion.

While these mandates alone might not change the face of corporate American leadership, they could force companies to take diversity, equity, and inclusion more seriously.

“I am the most hopeful now than ever before. I’m realistically hopeful,” McElhaney said. “We need to increase the velocity and pace tenfold, but I am seeing shifts.”

This article originally published in June 2021.