Gender gap: This is why women are less likely to apply for leadership positions

Gender gap
That’s why women so rarely apply for leadership positions

Of course, it’s not just books, series and the Internet that have an influence on young girls’ self-confidence – but they definitely play a big role. Especially when every day over many months and years they form a very specific image in our heads of what a girl is like, what she looks like and what adventures she has to experience.

Girls think they are less talented than boys

And so a PISA study from 2018 among a whopping 72 countries was shocking, showing that despite better qualifications, teenage girls generally considered themselves to be less talented than boys do; that the self-confidence of girls between the ages of eight and 14 plummets by 30 percent, and that – and so the circle closes – girls as teenagers expect a significantly lower salary for their future professional careers than boys do. No wonder that, according to studies, young women only apply for jobs later if they meet 100 percent of the requirements, while men send out their applications when they meet 60 percent of the requirements!

So much for the question, “Why women don’t apply for management positions.” Although that could perhaps also be because women in… Leadership positions face much more headwind compared to men, are twice as likely to be classified as interns or assistants in external appointments and are generally encouraged much less often to take leadership at all.

Marriages of women in leadership positions are more likely to end in divorce

There is also a still completely unexplained, rather private reason for so few women in the executive chair: At the end of 2022, a video by the US journalist Stefanie O’Connell Rodriguez went viral in which she cited studies that all show that women are the main earners are in a relationship and fully finance their husbands, are more likely to be cheated on by these men; that partners’ stress levels increase when their wives contribute more than 40 percent of household income; that women in leadership positions are immediately at a significantly higher risk of their marriage ending in divorce. Feel free to decide for yourself how many monkey-covering-its-eyes emojis would be appropriate at this point.

Would you like a second helping?

Women are more likely to die if operated on by a man rather than a woman; Inflation caused prices for women’s clothing to rise higher than for men’s… Alexandra Zykunov provides further hair-tearing facts in “What else do you want?!”. (304 pages, 16 euros, Ullstein)

Bridget