Unbossed and Unbroken: Personal Resilience in Women Leaders Who Experience a Lack of Respect in the Workplace

Abstract

The percentage of women CEOs remains stagnant at 6% and has not risen since 1955 when Fortune 500first published the list according to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Women in Leadership: Tackling Corporate Culture from the Top (2017) report (p. 2). Creating an environment where women feel welcomed and can contribute their best requires an understanding of respect and inclusion. Adding respect as a component to the gender, diversity, equity, and inclusion frameworks being used to understand how women navigate the work environment can potentially improve women’s ability to advance successfully and remain in leadership positions, as well as accurately assess job satisfaction, motivation factors, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions. Research suggests that employees view respect as an important component of job satisfaction, yet many employees report that they often feel a lack of respect in the workplace. This study focused on the impact of disrespect and respect on the well-being of the individual. It explored the impact of resilience in women leaders who succeed when faced with a lack of respect (disrespect) in the workplace and the relationship between respect and resilience in successful women leaders. This was an exploratory study utilizing semi- structured, one-on-one interviews to obtain narrative accounts and uncover patterns in the participants’ experiences of disrespect and respect in the workplace. Twenty-four current and former female senior leaders participated in qualitative interviews. Data analysis revealed five themes that emerged as the most significant contributors to their resilience when dealing with disrespect in the workplace. This research contributed to the literature by examining in depth the intrinsic characteristics contributing to the success of women in leadership positions when dealing with disrespect in the workplace.