Women make up a formidable presence in the ranks of IR. Since the inception of the formal role, they have had no problem rising to hold high-profile, well-regarded and accountable positions. The same cannot be said for other areas of business. At US Fortune 500 companies, there are only seven women CEOs. In the UK, just twelve of the FTSE 100 companies have a woman director. Depressing stuff. This despite 30 years of women pouring into the workforce, full of high hopes for gender equality. Little progress has been made and, with the commendable exception of IR, it is clear the glass ceiling is very much intact.
So what makes investor relations different? One reason is its newcomer status. The profession was finding its feet in the business world just when women were finding theirs. IR was a new industry without ingrained stereotypes or networks, thus enabling women to be part of its foundation.
Margaret Eichman, who rose from the IR post to become vice president of corporate affairs at Quaker, witnessed the progress of women in business over her 16-year career in IR, and she confirms this theory: ‘As IR developed, it coincided with a time when there were many women with finance and communications skills who were ready to fill these new roles. It gave women a new opportunity to build a career for themselves.’
Full of praise for IR’s progressive attitude, Andrew Hawkins, former director general of the UK’s Investor Relations Society (IRS), says of the profession: ‘With so many women taking the top jobs in IR, I would say the sector is definitely gender blind. If anything, women are better represented than men, which of course means it’s a great counter to some of the more masculine areas of business like the City.’
But while women in IR can enjoy the lack of gender bias, those who wish to progress to other areas could encounter obstacles. ‘It might be in the positions above IR where the glass ceiling comes into play,’ suggests Hawkins.
Stepping stone
It is certainly true that in many of the positions above investor relations – for example CEO, CFO and general counsel – there are far fewer women. A 2002 study by Catalyst, a women’s research organization, found that women held 7.1 percent of CFO positions and 16.1 percent of general counsel jobs at Fortune 500 companies. Yet many insist that the IRO role can provide as good a route as any to leadership positions.
This is something Betty-Ann Heggie, senior vice president of corporate relations at Canadian fertilizer producer PotashCorp, would agree with. ‘At PotashCorp, we view IR as a training position,’ she explains. ‘It’s an opportunity for someone we consider to be a leader of tomorrow to come in and learn about the entire company. Communications is a right-brain activity, and building the strategy is a left-brain activity. You have to be able to access both sides in order to excel in management. The IR activity gives you the opportunity to do this, so it’s a good training ground for higher ranks in the company.’
Maarika Paul, who was the first woman IRO at Canadian telecoms giant BCE, concurs: ‘IR can be a very good stepping stone because of the exposure you get within a company. It also gives you a good overall perspective of the business, so it’s a phenomenal understudy role. It’s great for giving people the opportunity to move into other areas of business.’
This opinion was also voiced at the UK IRS conference this year by Nicholas Cobbold, chairman of board practice at headhunting firm Norman Broadbent. ‘IR can be a key stepping stone for senior management,’ he claimed. ‘I would say that there’s no ceiling, and in theory a CEO position could well be within the grasp of an individual after a successful period in IR.’
No ceiling for men, perhaps, but with women currently forming only 1.4 percent of the most senior spots at US Fortune 500 companies, something is certainly keeping them from the top.
Holding back
Many blame the lack of women in the recruitment pool, something that is changing as more women continue to enter the workforce. As Janet Craig, director of investor relations at Canadian design and manufacturing company ATI, points out, ‘If you look at the average age of CEOs, they’re in their late 40s, 50s or 60s. So maybe we’re just getting to the point where women have been in the job market long enough to get to senior positions.’
Carol Gallagher, president and CEO of the Executive Women’s Alliance, takes a different view: ‘I think that’s a very optimistic way of looking at it and ultimately it’s flawed. Women have been 50 percent of the workforce for decades, so there have been a lot of women in the pipeline who should now be in the management ranks.’
Instead, Gallagher says it is partly a case of male bias which hinders female progress. ‘I could list example after example of male CEOs who have told me, I can’t put a woman in that Latin American role, she’d get eaten alive, or I can’t put a woman in that job, it’s too much travel. Men have a tendency to take care of women and try to make their decisions for them, instead of treating them like true colleagues.’
Helene Gunnarson, senior VP of group communications at Sandvik, remembers similar treatment. In 1989 she was appointed the first female group division controller at the Swedish engineering company: ‘Everyone was very welcoming and I had many daddies,’ she says. ‘But I would quite frequently hear I’ve been here since 1962, implying that was the year you were born. I have had to struggle against those attitudes.’
Data from Catalyst’s 2003 study, ‘Women in US corporate leadership’, shows that many women have encountered similar experiences. A third of women say male attitudes have been a barrier to their career advancement. Only 12 percent of CEOs agree. Marcia Kropf, vice president of Catalyst, explains these results: ‘Women raise the issue of stereotyping and preconceptions, but men are less aware it’s happening. There needs to be some education about these biases, and there also need to be more female role models, so everyone becomes aware that women can hold the corner office positions.’
Get in line
Of course, IR isn’t by any means a direct route to the corner office suite. More likely destinations are group communications, corporate affairs or corporate development – all areas where women have found greater success. However, what separates these jobs from the very highest positions is that they are not line positions.
Catalyst’s study finds that both senior women and CEOs agree that a lack of profit and loss experience is the biggest barrier to women’s progression. It’s a major reason why women are kept out of certain positions like CEO or CFO, and why they are trapped in others – including investor relations.
‘If you’re going to move into the most senior positions, you need to have general management or line experience,’ explains Catalyst’s Kropf. ‘If women choose to move into staff positions, it can be very difficult for them to move back out.’ According to Catalyst, in 2002 women held only 9.9 percent of the corporate officer line positions at Fortune 500 companies.
Monika Steinlechner, head of investor relations at South African telecoms company MTN, suggests avoiding being penned in a certain area of business by insisting on broader responsibilities. ‘There can be a glass ceiling for women IROs if IR is your sole function in the company. It’s still seen as a soft skill as you’re not actively involved in the strategy. For me, seeing this glass ceiling, I made sure that I had some sort of technical or operational function. So I’m responsible for IR, but my main responsibility is head of corporate finance.’
Listen and learn
EWA’s Gallagher, who has worked at Andersen Consulting, Goldman Sachs, IBM, and as senior principal at American Management Systems, has other suggestions for ambitious women IROs who want to move up the ranks. ‘In the 20 years it took me to get to the top, I found there were many false myths about business,’ she confides. ‘One of them is about networking. I thought if you built up your Rolodex or PalmPilot, then you’d make it. But networking is very superficial. Instead you need to build substantial relationships with people throughout your organization.’
Gallagher suggests women need to find mentors, people who will not only advise them, but who will also speak for them behind closed doors. ‘Many women think if you do a good job, you’ll get noticed and promoted,’ she says. ‘But it doesn’t work like that. You have to have solid relationships with about a dozen people across the whole organization, and that takes a lot of work.’
Navigating your way around the corporate world also means finding a way into the informal networks of the ‘dominant coalition’. As Catalyst’s Kropf explains, ‘The more senior you become in an organization, the more you find there are ways of learning how to operate – the knowledge of which is handled informally. It’s usually shared through informal personal relationships which tend to happen very comfortably between senior men and more junior men. Women have less access to those relationships because men feel less comfortable mentoring them.’
One of the things Catalyst recommends is more formal mentoring programs. ‘They may not be as perfect as informal ones,’ says Kropf, ‘but they remove some of the problems.’ Of course, women need to form relationships with women too, but the lack of a significant female presence in the highest ranks means female mentors are hard to find.
Positive progress
Despite the lack of a significant female presence in leadership roles, there are signs that times are changing. Avon was recently named best company for women for the fifth consecutive year by the National Association for Female Executives. The company has more women in management positions than any other Fortune 500 company, the top two positions are held by women, and half its board directors are women.
Carol Murray-Negron, former vice president of IR at Avon and winner of this magazine’s US Lifetime Achievement Award for Investor Relations, praises Avon’s employment strategy. ‘It is prototypical in terms of putting women into very high positions. Women have been afforded an opportunity to move forward, and it’s been done very gracefully. It hasn’t been a bumpy ride.’
In her time in IR at Avon, Murray-Negron had overseas assignments in Mexico and Asia. ‘There were very few women out there at the time, so I was unusual,’ she recalls. ‘Mexico is a very masculine business environment and I was the first woman in the boardroom there. At the time, they were not comfortable with a woman in the ranks. In Asia, too, it was unusual to have a woman more senior to a lot of men.’
But, as Murray-Negron explains, the situation has now completely changed: ‘In the 30 years I was at the company, there was an incredible change in the mix of women and men. There are now so many women running overseas markets that it’s no longer an exception; it’s just a natural thing.’
Slowly, slowly
A woman taking a seat at the table among executive managers is becoming more natural, but it’s happening at a snail’s pace. Between 1999 and 2001, the number of women holding board seats at US Fortune 1000 companies increased by a tiny 0.9 percent; and the number of Fortune 500 companies with at least one woman board director increased by just 2 percent.
Many people think that once the number of women in senior management positions reaches what’s known as critical mass – around 25 percent – then the real progress will start to be made. But, by all accounts, that’s still at least a decade or two away.
One ray of hope is provided by the expected labor shortage over the next 20 years – the result of the ‘baby bust’ as post-war baby boomers leave the workforce. With the predicted decrease in available candidates for top spots, companies will have no option but to broaden their search for candidates.
Until the effects of that are seen, women in IR can continue to enjoy the luxury of working in a gender blind environment. But those moving upward will still find themselves bumping into all sorts of barriers. The cracks may be showing, but the glass ceiling remains unbroken.
