We still lack knowledge on why LGBTQ+ individuals are seldom present in corporate boards worldwide. For the few who make it to the boardroom, there’s scant information about how they did it. Ryan Federo argues that many LGBTQ+s don’t reach the boardroom because of a rainbow glass ceiling. He identifies three behavioural strategies that have enabled them to break through or circumvent it.
Members of the community of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other identities often face a rainbow glass ceiling: several barriers that prevent LGBTQ+s from reaching top corporate positions, including board membership. As a result, many organisations miss on a unique set of resources and capabilities that could make board decision-making effective and efficient.
In 2023 out-LGBTQ+ individuals occupied less than one per cent of available board seats. Sometimes the same person occupies seats in more than one board. For instance, Tim Cook serves on the boards of Apple and Nike, while Amy Lane sits at the boards of TJX Companies and Nextera Energy. This trend can be observed in several large economies such as Australia, Canada and the United States.
What makes up the rainbow glass ceiling
The barriers facing LGBTQ+s can be divided into three main categories: institutional constraints, social-psychological biases and societal marginalisation.
Institutional constraints
Many countries fail to protect and many prosecute LGBTQs+ on the basis of their sexual preferences and gender expressions. Currently, six countries impose the death penalty for private and consensual nonheteronormative relations and activities. More often, deeply rooted norms in social institutions have legitimised LGBTQ+ discrimination and exclusion. With patriarchy, male dominance has continuously prevailed in society; with heteronormativity, heterosexuality is the presumed normal form of sexual orientation and with cisnormativity, people are seen as inherently cisgendered. It is not surprising that we lack widespread policies and practices that explicitly look after and support LGBTQ+s in the workplace.
Social-psychological biases
There are many types of prejudice against a person’s LGBTQ+ status. Heterosexuals and cisgenders may discriminate against LGBTQ+s because of a perception that sexual orientation and gender identity make them different. We call it intergroup bias. Conversely, in intragroup bias, some LGBTQ+s avoid personal or professional association with other individuals from their community to prevent negative stereotypes that can affect their public image. Masked biases occur when people use other demographic characteristics such as age, disability, ethnicity, race, sex and social status as a basis for excluding LGBTQ+s from work-related opportunities.
Occasionally, LGBTQ+s who gain top corporate positions can be construed as tokens, when their promotion is perceived as a means to compliance with diversity requirements, alleviating stakeholder pressure to become more inclusive.
Societal marginalisation
Marginalisation decreases the availability of LGBTQ+ resources and motivation for leadership positions. LGBTQ+s are often disenfranchised from the training, career and capacity development, networking opportunities and mentoring programs that are typically available to their heterosexual and cisgendered counterparts. This lowers their chances of being appointed to board positions. Meanwhile, those who have the requisite qualifications often refuse to apply or accept top jobs because of the societal stigma attached to them. The LGBTQ+ penalty is often greater at the corporate apex than at low-level positions.
Behavioural adaptation strategies
In my research, I identified how LGBTQ+s adapt their behaviours within their environment to reach the boardroom.
First, they can use a closet strategy by hiding their true sexual orientation and gender identity from the public. This way, they avoid potential discrimination during the board member selection process. For example, gays and lesbians act as heterosexuals by entering in a relationship with the opposite sex or using the opposite sex’s pronoun to refer to their significant others, thus evading any sort of discrimination that can affect their promotion or appointment to boards.
Second, they may use a feather strategy, being vocal about their gender status to signal belongingness to the community. They do so to help attract interest from firms that specifically seek out members of the LGBTQ+ community to enhance board diversity. Around a quarter of Fortune 1000 firms explicitly and actively seek diverse candidates regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. With the growing (although slowly) visibility and acceptance of LGBTQ+s at the upper echelons, their inclusion’s presumed substantive and symbolic benefits for firms encourage many LGBTQ+s to be out in the open.
Third, they sometimes engage in a niche construction strategy by creating or altering environments for their community to thrive. An increasing number of LGBTQ+s start their own businesses that ultimately thrive in numbers by congregating in several cities (such as Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, and San Francisco) to form a welcoming ecosystem. As a result, they are able to showcase their management and governance capacities that can lead to subsequent board appointments. As the work and social environments become more friendly to the community, other LGBTQ+s also gain a safe space to develop their personal capacities and career paths.
Takeaways
My research has unpacked the barriers making up the rainbow glass ceiling and identified the three behavioural adaptation strategies that LGBTQ+s have been using to overcome them in order to become board directors. Although LGBTQ+s have learned how to break through or circumvent the rainbow glass ceiling to reach corporate boards, it is our societal obligation to develop and implement policies that can lower the barriers preventing the members of this community to reach top corporate positions.
The consideration of gender status during the director selection process broadens the conceptualisation of board diversity, which can be important for the provision of equal and inclusive opportunities to all individuals wanting to reach the corporate apex. Identifying whether organisations have achieved truly diverse boards is challenging, given that LGBTQ+ status is an invisible characteristic and usually a sensitive subject to tackle.
We may not really capture the true extent of sexual orientation and gender representation as many individuals choose not to disclose their status publicly and organisations have the obligation to respect such choice. It is my fervent hope that these insights can help in the further acceptance and continued visibility of LGBTQ+ directors in the future.
- This blog post is based on The Rainbow Glass Ceiling: Breaking Barriers for LGBTQ+ Inclusion in Board Diversity by Ryan Federo, Academy of Management Perspectives.
- The post represents the views of the author(s), not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
- Featured image provided by Shutterstock
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