Why Aren't There More Women CEOs?

It's one of the more depressing stats I've come across: The S&P 1500 has more CEOs named John than women CEOs. Across the broader landscape of the C-Suite women make up about 16%. And we are now, in 2018, 30 years since women began to outnumber men in college.

One answer that is often offered is that women just don't want to be CEOs. And one reason given for this lack of desire is the punishing schedule of a CEO.  This is seen as untenable with motherhood -- either because men don't do their fair share at home or because mothers just aren't as wiling as fathers to spend so much time way from their families.

That's a pretty big "or" in the middle of that sentence. But let's take the second part. Women, mothers, just want to spend more time with their kids than fathers do. (Wow, when you write it like that it kind of makes those CEO dads sound like monsters, right? Hmm. Funny how a quick a little change in the POV of a sentence can totally change the frame.)

Is a CEO job really so all-consuming? This HBR study suggests yes ... and also no.  The study, which examined time diaries of 27 large-company CEOs found they worked an average of 62.5 hours per week. That's not a small amount, to be sure. But it still leaves plenty of time, in a 168-hour week, for sleep and family. In fact the study found the CEOs averaged nearly 7 hours of sleep per night. That leaves them with about 58 hours a week of time spent awake and not working. In one sense their lives are perfectly balanced between work and life. And the diaries show they spend a good portion of that nonwork time with family -- about 3 hours per day. They also spend about 45 minutes per day exercising and a little more than 2 hours on leisure activities like reading, TV or hobbies. Yes, they did work on weekends and vacations. How much? About 4 hours on a weekend day, about 80% of the time and about 2.5 hours on 70% of vacation days. Importantly that leaves roughly 12 hours on a weekend and 13 to 14 hours on a vacation day.

Here's my point: Does everyone want to work this way? No way! Plenty of people would find this absolutely grueling. But there's no specific reason why women should be uniquely unsuited.

I also think it's worth reminding ourselves that we don't question whether or not the CEOs who keep these hours can be good dads. Why do we assume -- both of ourselves and of others -- that you can't be a good mom and work this way?