Women carving their way into remote leadership – Now is the perfect time to step up.

Let’s do a quick fact check.

Studies reveal that even today, globally, women account for less than a quarter of management positions.

 They also state that in the 63-year old history of Fortune 500, we stand today at the highest proportion of women making it to CEO positions and that is 6.4%.

A Global Gender Gap report estimates that it will be another 217 years before we achieve gender parity.

Then why do I say that it’s the best time for women to step up and prove their leadership mettle.

Well for one, stats are on our side here. Remote.co conducted an elaborate research on the CEOs and founders of 128 completely remote companies. 

The organisation found that remote companies have a higher percentage of women in leadership roles than traditional office-based companies - 28% of these companies have either women founders, or presidents and 19% have women CEOs. 

Why is that? What is different with a remote work environment? 

Hard to single out definite reasons. But one theory that holds true is that - “remote work is inherently more supportive of women progressing in the workforce because it’s a more flexible way to work for everyone.”

REMOTE WORK FAVOURS SINCERITY OVER FACETIME.

Something that should have always been a parameter for gauging efficiency and leadership attitude. But we all know that sometimes it’s the choices that are not in our control that lead us to the right dynamics. Many conventionally run companies have favoured employees who put long hours at work, who were more visible in the office. For many obvious reasons, women struggled on this part including additional responsibilities towards family.

With the remote work set-up, facetime as a factor to measure success is out of the window. And that has led us all to shift our focus towards things that matter – sincerity and sensibilities – attributes that women already ace.

REMOTE WORK ALLOWS HANDLING CONFLICTING RESPONSIBILITIES.

Sandra Lewis, founder and director of Boldly, says “I believe having a virtual company creates more space for work-life balance than a traditional office environment…less distraction, shorter meetings and more structured processes make for a shorter workday.”

There is no denying that it takes a toll on one when trying to juggle between different roles at the same time – the roles involving personal relationships and the roles we play in our professional lives.

Unfortunately, globally, it’s women who face this conundrum more often than their counterparts. Remote work culture offers to level the playground for them.

REMOTE WORK DEMANDS BEING EXPRESSIVE.

There is no other way around it, in a virtual work environment. I have spoken about it in several prior conversations and articles that one of the limitations of a virtual world is that it deprives us of picking on non-verbal cues of people. It demands us to be more expressive and adopt more humanized leadership models. Guess what, women excel there too.

Studies such as Fabes and Martin (1991) show that women are perceived to express emotions more than men but that there was little difference in the perception of men and women’s emotional experience.

Between 2007-2017, the proportion of female leaders has increased by an average of just over 2% across the 12 industries studied. Yes, that is slow progress.

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), “Women in leadership roles is exactly what is needed to close the gender gap.”

When women are better represented in leadership roles, the percentage of women participation in workforce increases by huge margins. And this holds true for organizations across countries.

Let’s do this. Let’s leverage every opportunity there is to get closer to building a fair and balanced workplace. Let’s step up.