(MIT Sloan: Cambridge, MA) -- According to recent research in MIT Sloan Management Review, despite gains made in gender diversity overall, the distribution of women remains uneven across types of leadership roles; most of the women have been relegated to support functions.

To gauge progress toward gender diversity in leadership, Monika Hamori and Rocio Bonet, of IE Business School, and Peter Cappelli and Samidha Sambare of Wharton, analyzed 4,000 Fortune 100 executives’ career histories and demographics from the past 40 years, focusing on the 10 highest-ranking roles in each company.

“Gender representation certainly improved because there was nowhere to go but up: Not one woman held any of the top 1,000 jobs in 1980,” said the authors. “Since then, women have actually advanced more quickly than their male counterparts into executive positions. But they remain largely stuck in support functions rather than moving into more key operating roles. At the oldest companies, women’s numbers are backsliding even in those functional roles.”

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