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Millennial Women Start Out Ahead, So What's Holding Them Back?

This article is more than 9 years old.

The gender gap separates women from their male peers in the workplace, salary, and self-esteem. But when exactly does the gap appear, cracking the common ground between men and women?

From an early age, girls take the lead over boys in academics, spanning elementary school to graduate-level education. Women also do well in the entry-level workforce, where millennial women were found to be better prepared for their first jobs by 59% to men’s 41%, according to a recent Bentley University survey. The divide begins to form in sharp relief soon after. 69% of respondents, including decision-makers and corporate recruiters of both genders, said that males are better suited to succeed in today’s business climate than women (31%). Men also came out ahead in preparedness for their entire careers, garnering 53% to women’s 47%.

“There have been institutional and structural barriers in the corporate world for women as well as unconscious bias,” says Gloria Larson, president of Bentley University and founder of the school’s Center for Women and Business. Larson, who led the survey, notes that obstacles including the wage gap, innate gender partiality, and a lack of mentorship are among the reasons women are held back in the workplace. “You lose confidence when you look ahead beyond your first job, at those moving up into higher level positions,” she explains. “You don’t see a lot of women promoted and you get discouraged.”

Results from the survey found that women beat men in decision-making, communication and interpersonal skills, while men pull ahead in leadership skills and entrepreneurial spirit. Men also are quicker to take risks, which may pay off and lead to other opportunities while women tend to act practically which may cause them to be slower to jump. “Women can be risk takers,” says Larson. “[Risk taking] comes from playing sports and opportunities in the classroom, so, it can be built.”

Possible solutions

Journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman believe women’s hesitation may be due to precaution and a lack of self-assurancedeficits that can propel men past women to assume executive level positions and achieve long-term career success. According to their book The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know, women apply for a promotion when they felt 100% comfortable with their qualifications while men took the chance and applied when they were 50% confident in their abilities.

“We watch our male colleagues take risks, while we hold back until we’re sure we are perfectly ready and perfectly qualified,” Kay and Shipman explain in a recent Atlantic article titled “The Confidence Gap.” Also noting, “The natural result of low confidence is inaction. When women hesitate because we aren’t sure, we hold ourselves back.”

However, confidence may only be a small part of the problem. Congress has addressed the issue of the institutional barriers that prevent women from succeeding through passing (some) gender equity legislation. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act turned five years old this year, but, while women can sue for equal pay, the wage gap is not mended. Women still make 77 cents on a man’s dollar.

Upward mobility in the workplace is also a prevalent bias barrier, because only about a quarter of women hold senior management positions. This phenomenon may be caused by sexism or unconscious partiality contrived from men choosing to work with other men. Another barrier includes the lack access to childcare options for working mothers. Some companies, like Google and UPS, have started offering female-specific leadership development programs that provide women with mentorship, professional feedback, and the opportunity to perfect their leadership skills. But, generally, the business world has been slow to catch on.

“There are innate assumptions that most successful founders and CEOs are men because you go into the boardroom and see that there are more men than women in those seats,” says Erica Bell, co-founder of e-commerce startup Hukkster. “Helping women into those roles will break down cultural expectations and encourage more women to push themselves to the top.” She add: “[It also depends on] more investors taking risks and supporting female founders once we have females in these roles.”

The problem of perception

Among the many walls that separate professional men and women, the perception problem may be the hardest to root out. The sense that women are not as prepared as men for the business world is a deeply-ingrained cultural bias. Recently, however, beauty companies such as Pantene are challenging these perceptions by encouraging women to build their confidence by rejecting gender labels and stopping “sorry.”

Pantene’s #ShineStrong campaign recently launched a “Not Sorry” viral video that illustrates how women unnecessarily assume guilt or blame. The video asks why women are always apologizing and portrays them saying “sorry” in their personal and professional lives for speaking, occupying space, and other situations where nothing is their fault. The video tells women “Don’t be sorry” and goes on to show the same situations subtracting “sorry” from the equation. And just like that, the women immediately appear more bold, decisive, and confident.