“Consulting has traditionally been and is still a boys club, particularly at management level”, female McKinsey Consultant.
“A lot of times I found myself the only female in the room with another 10-15 males during the steering co-meeting”, BCG project leader.
Despite a drive to make equality of opportunity a norm of modern workplaces, women are still underrepresented in the consulting arena. Why is this? And what can women do to survive and thrive in a challenging business environment?
The Boys’ Club
Despite women often achieving higher scores than men at high school and university, men turn the tables in the professional world. Whilst there are many interlinking and confounding reasons for this, below we explore 5 factors that sustain the ‘boys club’.
1. The Glass Ceiling
There appears to be a glass ceiling in the management consulting industry. Men are 18% more likely to be promoted, and while females account for 43% of junior consultants, they only hold 19% of leadership positions. This lack of upwards momentum is combined with a gender pay gap, with a study conducted by the International Labour Organisation finding that female consultants can at times earn 30% less than their male counterparts.
The causes of this perceived glass ceiling are complex. According to Virginia Valian, Professor of Psychology and author of Why so Slow? The Advancement of Women, women are assumed to be less competent than men until proven otherwise. As a result of this socio-cultural bias, women tend to be underrated and often overlooked.
This issue is compounded by the fact that, on average, women tend to be more agreeable than men. This means that women tend to be more friendly, flexible, and cooperative, but at the same time also less inclined to embrace conflict and assert their position.
2. Double Burden Syndrome
The double burden syndrome relates to a situation where female employees are promoted less often than men due to managers attempting to be considerate of their present or potential future needs.
Managers may anticipate that a female employee is likely to have a baby within the next two years. As a result, they may not want to overload her during that period with the additional work which would naturally accompany a promotion. This means that managers may fail to promote women because they don’t want to weigh them down with the double burden of both work and family responsibilities.
3. Lack of Female Role Models
Just as Harvey Spectre represents the archetypical commercial lawyer, the consultant image tends to be similarly masculine, well built, suited and booted. Fostering strong female leaders in the consulting industry, similar to Annalise Keating from How to Get Away with Murder, can make a massive difference to the aspirations and resilience of female consultants.
Inspiration is a big driver of career success. According to Consultiful, “93% of interviewed women in consulting said that having more role models in senior positions would help to keep them in consulting. … Looking up and seeing successful senior women sends a powerful signal.”
4. Standing Out versus Fitting In
Due to the male heavy nature of the consulting industry, female employees inadvertently stand out from the crowd. Such prominence brings with it a pressure to perform which can lead some women to burn themselves out or to avoid entering the workplace to begin with. Although visibility can help to magnify a woman’s successes it can also help to highlight her failures, making it harder for females to build and maintain a solid reputation as a reliable consultant.
5. Self-Discrimination
Whilst women have historically faced a rockier road in the professional world compared with men, men are not wholly responsible for this situation. Women may be even more likely to hold other women back. Taking into account the double burden syndrome, women may choose not to promote other female employees due to an enhanced understanding of the physical and psychological burden of building a career and raising a family.
In short, it would be a mistake to think that disadvantage experienced by women is caused by men, or any other single clearly identifiable source. Systemic inequalities that persist over long periods of time might only be understood and addressed if we are willing to discuss and examine big picture socio-cultural assumptions and norms that shape the business environment and the society in which we live.
Possibly the single most important point about the position of women in consulting is that it is possible to advocate for the increased success of women, without blaming men or desiring them to do worse. Equality is about creating a level not a staggered playing field. That is, one where individuals have the same access to opportunity not where one group is elevated above another.
Thriving in a Challenging Business Environment
Just as there is no one factor that makes consulting a challenging industry for women, there is similarly no simple solution for women or the consulting industry as a whole.
Below I will discuss three actions that may make a difference, but I openly admit that I do not hold all the keys to the gender consulting conundrum.
1. Fostering Self Belief
Whilst this post is not placing the burden of fixing a complex and long running societal issue at the feet of women themselves, there is a lot to be said for cultivating a strong and positive mentality when entering a professional field like consulting.
Women who internalise the idea of disadvantage or low self-worth, may perform in a way that reinforces those perceptions, and thus create a self-fulfilling prophesy. As a result, those women may be unlikely to progress regardless of how open the industry may actually be.
When discussing resolutions to the position of women in the consulting industry, it is important to note that women themselves have a crucial part to play in securing their own fortunes.
2. Overcoming the Catch 22
Beyond encouraging women to enter the industry, there is something to say about firms pre-empting the needs of female employees, and thereby inadvertently disadvantaging them. An example of this phenomenon is the double burden syndrome. Managers may try to be mindful of the needs of women by not promoting them, thereby hindering the prospects of the many women who could have successfully managed both family and career responsibilities.
In addition to women entering the workplace with strong self-belief, other employees need to allow women to take responsibility and make the decisions that affect their own workloads. Although the desire to ‘take care’ of women may be driven by good intentions, the effect is frequently the reverse.
If a professional requires targeted support in order to increase their ability to perform efficiently and effectively in the workplace, then firms should aim to provide all of the necessary training, development, and support that may be required. A potential issue arises where support or favouritism is offered to members of one group (e.g. women), but not to other groups. This approach, known as ‘positive discrimination’, is clearly well intentioned, but firms need to be aware that the practice can be unlawful in many countries including Australia and the UK.
3. Building Female Leadership Networks
One great way for women in consulting to counterbalance the ‘boys club’ is to found, join, and actively build powerful female professional networks of their own. Such networks have already been started in McKinsey with their Women at McKinsey network, and similarly at BCG with their Women@BCG scheme.
Where to go from here?
There is no denying women have made great strides in the professional world, and further success lies ahead. Despite the fundamental inequalities of the world, a combination of self-belief, supportive firm policies, and initiatives to build female leadership networks offer the potential to allow women to compete on an equal footing with the ‘boys club’.
Sukhi R. is a graduate from Warwick Law School currently studying an MSc in Business with Consulting at Warwick Business School. She has a keen interest in the business psychology of consulting and plans to enter the industry in the near future.
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