Despite enormous strides over the last few decades, a gender gap in leadership persists across corporate, public, start-up and STEM sectors. At JYC Girls Impact Foundation, we seek to level the playing field by building a strong pipeline of future ready girls who are both inspired and equipped to lead.
Annual research on women in the workplace by the United Nations, McKinsey, Credit Suisse and Pitchbook highlight the same crucial finding: a “broken rung” at the first step up to manager is holding women back from rising through the ranks to leadership positions.
Around the world, women:
- Comprise 6% of all CEOs[1] Gender Equality Index (Bloomberg)
- Make up 38% of senior managers in the U.S.[2] Women in the Workplace (McKinsey)
- Make up 28% of the Science and Engineering workforce[3] HGSE (NGCP)
- Receive 2.8% of all venture capital funding [4] The VC Female Founders Dashboard (Pitchbook)
- Hold 20% company board seats [5] Women’s Share of Board Seats Rises to 20% (WSJ)
In Asia, women:
- Hold 1 in 5 leadership positions (McKinsey)
- Make up 15-20% (HK)[6] A Place for Women in STEM and 25% (China)[7] Swedish Offices of Science and Innovation of the STEM workforce
(TWFHK, MFA Sweden/Beijing) - Comprise 13% of company boards (McKinsey)
- Make up 5.6% of CEOs, with numbers varying according to country:
1% in Japan, 3% in India, 9% in Thailand, 15% in Singapore and 15% in China (but 2% in Hong Kong)[8] The CS Gender 3000 in 2019 (Credit Suisse)
Despite these statistics, the fact is there is no shortage of qualified, talented women. On the contrary: Research shows that women earn the majority of doctoral and master’s degrees worldwide [9] Washington Post. Despite women’s overwhelming academic achievements, they are underrepresented at the managerial level. With the number of women decreasing at every subsequent rung of the ladder, the gender leadership gap endures.
So, what can be done to position more women in leadership roles? At JYCGIF, we believe that today’s teen girls are tomorrow’s leaders. According to a Harvard Graduate School of Education study [10] HGSE, teen girls are key to closing the gender gap in leadership, because adolescence provides a window in which to reduce, even prevent, the gender biases that contribute to the gender leadership gap.
Equipping girls today with the future ready resources – the right education, tech mindset and knowhow, and leadership skills – will allow them to reach major milestones and grow into successful adults and leaders of the families and communities, who make a major impact everywhere they go.
To close the gender leadership gap, we believe there is nothing more important than empowering teen girls today to be truly future ready: to imagine, prepare and invent a better future for themselves and for the world.
