42 PERSPECTIVES ON BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS | VOL 41 | 2023 Workplace issues The gap between women and men in management roles is actively perpetuated in the workplace, sometimes consciously, often unconsciously. As such, women are 30% less likely to be promoted as well as 30% less likely to be recommended for projects. Other actions in the workplace also disproportionately affect women. Women face more microaggressions in the workplace, which may contribute to either others or themselves not advancing in a company: 50% of women reported experiencing a microaggression compared to 20% of men. Microaggressions can discourage and demoralize women, as discomfort in the workplace can decrease enthusiasm for one’s position. Given that there are fewer women in higher positions who face many more microaggressions than do men, this behavior must be more targeted than general. A common example of a gender-specific microaggression is that Danish women are more often questioned on their expertise than are men. Additionally, one study found that the higher the position, the more microaggressions toward women exist (Diversity Council, 2022). Aside from microaggressions, there are outright instances of sexual assault toward women. While these are not exclusively tied to women in business, Denmark was ranked as the country with the highest incidence of male physical violence and sexual assault against women in the EU (Leine et al., 2019). It may be that this ideology also affects the corporate workplace and is connected to microaggressive behavior there. While the above are concrete examples of why women do not climb the corporate ladder, there are also general misconceptions that perpetuate the situation. In one study, two-thirds of those interviewed, including women, believed that women do not wish to be promoted or that they lack motivation. Ironically, that same study found that 73% of women were looking to be promoted (Poulsen, 2021). This disconnect between what individuals believe and what actually occurs may be a significant contributor to the lack of women in leadership positions. From another perspective, 53% of women consider the promotion system in top management positions to be fair versus 71% of men (Diversity Council, 2022). Another study found that Danish women themselves believe that they have less of a chance of being promoted than do men (Poulsen, 2021). Many women want to be promoted but think they do not have a chance at a promotion, thereby mentally blocking themselves from success. Thus, it may be the case that women end up not applying for promotions because they do not think they will be chosen. Employment pipeline issues Denmark’s labor pipeline is one of the most segregated among the Nordic nations, with greater than 60% of workers in occupations where their gender makes up 75% or more members. Men are much more likely to pursue employment in the private sector, including engineering, technology, and mathematics, whereas women are more likely to pursue public sector service positions. Even when both men and women have similar educational backgrounds, the men are more likely to enter the private sector compared with women, who more often opt for the public sector (Sørensen, 2019). It appears there is also a leaky pipeline occurring where the percentage of women who initially pursue business is not the same as that reflected in the top positions. There are more women than men who attend college in Denmark—one source found that around 50% of top leadership-producing degrees are awarded to women; yet, only 29% of managers and 19% of executives are women with these degrees. This gap reflects a lack of promotion and an issue with the talent pipeline post-education. As one climbs the rungs of the corporate ladder, increasingly fewer women are present, which presents a problem. For example, if a company is seeking a new CEO and the pool of possible candidates is only 19% female, gender bias aside, the statistics suggest a man will likely be chosen four of five times. Therefore, this problem must be approached at the lower levels to increase the number of women with the requisite experience to have a chance of being promoted (Diversity Council, 2022). While many problems arise once individuals are in the corporate world, there may also be some sort of barrier limiting the number of women desiring to start their own businesses. A 2013 study determined that about 50% of women in Denmark feel that they have access to the proper training needed to start a business. That same feeling hovered around 60% for men. Overall, the numbers of both men and women who felt that they had the proper training tools for a business career were lower than Sweden’s, Iceland’s, and Finland’s. The availability of education on business start-up resources was overall quite low, but especially so for women (OECD, 2016). Sociopolitical issues In addition to workplace and employment pipeline issues, there are broader sociopolitical issues that affect public awareness and hence the availability of policies to rectify the management gender gap. Perhaps surprisingly, many Danes do not seem to be aware of the low number of female managers. In
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