Women may face gender bias on the path to leadership, and even once they've attained a CEO role.A Wall Street Journal study found that men are more likely than women to get jobs that involve profit-and-loss responsibilities. Those jobs directly affect the company's bottom line and the people who hold them are better positioned to be CEO.Other research suggests women CEOs are more likely than men CEOs to be dismissed, even when their organization is performing well.Click here for more BI Prime content.Across companies and industries, women often encounter gender bias as they work their way toward the C-suite.The list of CEOs who helm the top 3,000 companies in the US includes 167 women. That's double the percentage from a decade ago, according to The Wall Street Journal.A Wall Street Journal study of executives at the biggest public companies illuminates one key reason why: Men are more likely than women to get jobs that involve managing profit-and-loss (P&L), such as managing a division or a unit within a larger organization. These jobs directly affect the bottom line, and the men who hold them are better positioned to be CEO.Women, on the other hand, are more likely than men to hold C-suite positions like head of human resources or legal, The Wall Street Journal reported. These jobs tend not to have the same direct line to the CEO role.Other studies indicate that, even once they've reached the top, women may find their colleagues have preconceived notions about women's capabilities.Taken together, this research suggests that gender bias in the workplace has deep roots, resulting in limited opportunities for women at all stages of their career. Promoting one or two women to an executive role, or appointing them to a board of directors, may seem like a step in the right directionbut there are more systemic issues to tackle.Women may still face gender bias once they become CEOsAccording to a 2018 study by Vishal K. Gupta at the University of Alabama, Sandra C. Mortal at the University of Alabama, Sabatino Silveri at the University of Memphis, Minxing Sun at Clemson University, and Daniel B. Turban at the University of Missouri, CEOs who are women are more likely to be dismissed than CEOs who are men.For the study, which was published in the Journal of Management, the researchers looked at 641 CEO dismissals between 2000 and 2014. "Dismissal" is tricky to define, since company leadership may obscure the real reason a CEO is leaving. But the researchers scoured media reports and identified "dismissals" when the CEO was younger than 60 years old and didn't leave the firm because of poor health or because they had accepted another position.Results showed that women CEOs were 45% more likely to be dismissed than men CEOs. Interestingly, men and women were equally likely to be fired when the firm was performing poorly; but women CEOs were more likely than men CEOs to be dismissed when the company was performing well.To Gupta, that second finding was surprising. "We know that when performance is bad, the board has a lot of pressure to dismiss the CEO," he said. "But I would have expected that, when performance improves, male and female CEOs are both protected from dismissal."Implicit biases about women and leadership could be to blamePrevious research suggests that women executives are viewed as less likable than men executives, Business Insider's Rachel Gillett reported.As Facebook COO and Lean In founder Sheryl Sandberg wrote in The Wall Street Journal, men are expected to be assertive and to advocate for themselves. Women aren't."Women must be communal and collaborative, nurturing and giving, focused on the team and not themselves, lest they be viewed as self-absorbed," Sandberg wrote. "So when a woman advocates for herself, people often see her unfavorably."Managers also tend to promote people who look and act like them, even if they don't realize they're biased in this way. That means men in leadership roles often see other men as their natural predecessors.Gupta and Mortal said the 2018 study results could possibly be explained by subconscious biases on the part of company boards and shareholders.An earlier study (authored by some of the researchers on the current paper) found no evidence of a gender gap in CEO compensation. Mortal suspects that's because compensation is widely published, whereas the reasons for a CEO's dismissal aren't always made clear. "It's easier for there to be biases," she said.SEE ALSO:Here's why you should worry if a woman just got promoted to a top position at your companyJoin the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: Taylor Swift is the world's highest-paid celebrity. Here's how she makes and spends her $360 million.
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