Many women were a-twitter when data released last month from the 2011 Canadian Nonprofit Sector Compensation and Benefits Survey showed men earning more than women in the top five out of six job levels.

Although the pay gap reported was generally quite small, a dramatic difference was seen at the top level — CEO, executive director or president — where compensation for men was an average of 31% more than women.

It would seem, however, that the pay gap isn’t a simple matter of “unequal pay for equal work” that has traditionally had women up in arms.

“When we dig a little deeper, the findings indicate the main reason behind this gap is a function of the characteristics of organizations where males are working. They tend to be in higher-paying organizations, such as those in larger communities, with bigger revenues,” says Geoffrey Thacker, managing partner of the Association Resource Centre who conducted the study with CharityVillage®.

What’s just as interesting as pay differences is gender distribution in the sample.

Although the sector is predominantly female, and this survey showed females occupying a much higher share of positions than males at all levels, the proportion of men increases through the ranks: from support staff to top executives.

And while 67% of the top executive roles in this study overall were held by women, at all organizations with revenues over $5M in the sample, men held 54% of those spots. At organizations with revenues over $10M, men held 62% of these spots. Conversely, for organizations with revenues under $1M, in 79% of cases, women were at the helm.

The study excluded hospital and post-secondary organizations, some of the biggest revenue organizations, in an effort to not skew data.

Overall the gender pattern shows men holding a higher proportion of the top-paying positions than one might expect.

Results are not generalizable…but…

While this data represents only a slice of the sector, other large-scale studies exhibit similar patterns. Recent research by the Canadian Society of Association Executives shows that despite a close ratio of female to male CEOs, “male executives continue to dominate within industry and professional associations that pay consistently higher salaries at all levels. Women, on the other hand, appear far more likely to lead charitable and special interest organizations or smaller associations that traditionally offer lower salaries.”

A 2011 Guidestar report shows a similar pattern for the American nonprofit sector.

Tara George, senior vice president and lead, search practice, at KCI Philanthropy says, “On the top level I think your data is reflecting the reality of gender role distribution in our sector and throughout society. We continue to see a preponderance of women in entry and middle management levels, and an ‘executive flip-flop’ that shifts to higher percentages of men in senior management roles.”

But why in a sector largely populated by women, and one that exists, in part, to challenge these kinds of norms, is it that men are often found at the top of the heap?

“We have to remember that women really haven’t been in the work force [at these levels] for very long. We haven’t had a chance to catch up,” says Deborah Legrove, president of Crawford Connect, a Toronto-based executive recruitment firm for nonprofits.

With concerted efforts at increasing gender parity becoming more widespread, it’s easy to forget that only a few decades ago, women’s work options weren’t too plentiful at all. Considering that it’s people in their 40s, 50s and beyond placed in and vying for these top CEO roles, it’s key to think about the era in which they grew up. These are men who may well have more experience managing big budgets and women who are still breaking ground in the work-world. Of this demographic, Legrove says, “Many of us didn’t have career role models who were women. A lot even had stay-at-home mothers. In my case it was my father who encouraged me to get a good education, to go to university and plan a career.”

She says in her work she still sees men are more ambitious and move up faster than women, who may not “push the envelope” enough.

Men are often still viewed — and view themselves — as a breadwinner unless a conscious choice is made otherwise. Men have historically gone after jobs that pay top dollar, and their ambition still shows.

“Generally, while there are more women in the field proportionately, more men apply for the more senior positions earlier in their careers. I also sense that more men with fewer qualifications apply than comparable women, “says Legrove. She also says they’re successful at getting the jobs.

Tara George at KCI suspects gender conditioning is probably a key factor involved in the preponderance of men at the very top. “I think it likely centres around gender norms. This really gets into complex issues around gender and society.”

She is quick to comment that such norms go both ways.

“Think about how some people react when a young man applies for a reception job or an executive assistant job, for example.”

On that note, the one place women out-earn men in the CharityVillage® sample is at the lowest level, that of support staff.

George points to a large body of social science research showing deeply entrenched beliefs that men are the “earners” and women are the “nurturers,” and that certain jobs are viewed as traditionally male or female because we’ve grown up believing that.

“There are emotions involved in decision-making, including decisions about hiring, whether at the entry or executive level,” she says. She is certainly not the only one with that line of thinking.

Changing Companies’ Minds About Women, a recent paper by McKinsey & Company, which has been conducting research on women advancing into senior management, states that companies have been doing more to address structural barriers to gender diversity and “the next frontier is toppling invisible barriers: mind-sets widely held by managers, men and women alike, that are rarely acknowledged but block the way…in the heat of the moment, deeply entrenched beliefs cause old forms of behavior to resurface.”

Who is making the hiring decisions?

It’s also a natural bias to feel aligned with, in George’s words, “people who look like, sound like and act like ourselves.” Academics have well-established that such biases can also come into play in hiring decisions.

In the case of top executives, it’s boards who choose their CEOs, but scant data is available on the ratios of males to females of large Canadian nonprofit boards. Patricia Bradshaw, PhD , associate professor of organization studies at the Schulich School of Business headed up a 2009 survey of 240 nonprofit organizations, which showed women held 44% of available boardroom seats. Twelve of the boards were found to be all-female; four of them all-male.

Yet the organizations in this study had an average budget of just under $1M and median staff size of 11: an organizational size in the nonprofit sector where women tend to be well represented at the top level.

Big for-profit companies, however, have relatively few women occupying their board seats: the most recent research from the women’s advocacy group Catalyst shows that 14% of Canadian corporate board seats are occupied by women.

Do men better navigate high-revenue, high paying organizations?

Could high-revenue organizations be structured similarly to for-profit corporations, with organizational systems that attract male directors and are more easily navigated to the top by men? Might they emulate more “old-school” corporate characteristics and structures?

Discussing this hypothesis with Dr. Bradshaw, she says, “My research shows as organizations get larger and older and are dealing with a more difficult kind of environment, they take on characteristics that would be described as more corporate. There’s more policy governance, for example. Smaller organizations tend to have more of an enterprising or adaptive culture that do allow them to get up more in opposition to dominant structures. They tend to be less corporatized.”

“I wonder if [nonprofit] organizations taking on more corporatized structures might adopt some of the values and HR policies that might be more exclusionary.”

She emphasizes it’s important for organizations to embed diversity in all its forms into policies and practices, because “once it’s formalized and embedded, it starts to be routinized and taken for granted.”

What’s shown to stop women’s advancement to top roles?

Dr. Bradshaw also says women may self select out of very high-powered roles because the pressure is too high and they are not comfortable in their skills, training, or background.

Whether that’s reality or their own perception may be a subject for debate. Studies abound on possible factors limiting women’s rise within the work-world. Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever‘s book Women Don’t Ask, offers a raft of research suggesting that women don’t self-promote, don’t ask for promotions, are more likely to believe their circumstances are controlled by others, and have a tendency to underestimate themselves. Further, when they engage in more self-promoting behaviours, women are often perceived negatively and sometimes penalized for it.

A lot of this is explained by academics as gender role conditioning and experience.

On the organizational side, barriers to women’s advancement cited in the Canadian segment of the 2010 Corporate Gender Gap Report conducted by the World Economic Forum were, in rank order: lack of networks and mentoring, lack of role models, lack of opportunities for critical work experiences and responsibilities, lack of re-entry opportunities and masculine/patriarchal corporate culture. None of the responding companies had female CEOs.

Recent research by Catalyst shows that unwritten rules play a major role in career advancement regardless of gender. Unwritten Rules: Why Doing a Good Job Might Not Be Enough, by Laura Sabattini and Sarah Dinolfo, states “when it comes to learning about advancement strategies in the workplace, observation, seeking out mentors, and soliciting feedback emerged as the most effective ways to learn about unwritten rules for advancement.”

What about work/life conflict?

Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, frequently cited on top 50 lists of power and influence, stated in a Harvard IdeaCast interview entitled Women, Ambition and (Still the) Pay Gap that the “greedy and demanding nature of the very top jobs” is perhaps the biggest factor keeping many women out of them.

Nonprofit recruiters agree that some high-potential women simply choose not to go for top roles, while others continue to try to juggle it all by asking for flexibility.

Legrove says they recently had three out of a total of eight female candidates for a role who enquired about possible flexibility to work from home or an 80% work week.

“You find that clients are willing to consider such questions, and it’s bigger organizations that are usually more able to allow this,” says Legrove.

Such considerations go hand-in hand with gender roles and are affecting career trajectories of both men and women. Decisions must be made in dual income families with children and elder caregiving responsibilities.Who will be the primary breadwinner? Who needs flex-time?

Recent American research from the Families and Work Institute shows that men still feel the pressure to provide financially for their families and are experiencing “the pressure to do it all to have it all”. For the first-time ever, men are showing greater work-family conflict than women, as they participate in “emerging gender role values that encourage them to participate in family life and a workplace that does not fully support these roles.”

So while some women may be experiencing a ceiling of sorts across the sector, and there could be countless speculations as to why this might be, it is clear changing gender norms affect men equally as women…and such issues have the potential to affect everyone in the workplace and beyond.

Academics clearly have a lot of potential research questions. The question for organizations is how willing they are to openly discuss and address such issues.

Caroline Veldhuis is the former editor of CharityVillage®. She has extensive experience in the nonprofit sector and was formerly the International Editor at Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders in Geneva. 

Please note: While we ensure that all links and e-mail addresses are accurate at their publishing date, the quick-changing nature of the web means that some links to other web sites and e-mail addresses may no longer be accurate.