Creating 'female-friendly' organizations: companies that actively seek talented women for key senior leadership roles are learning two important lessons: A higher proportion of women executives is good for the bottom line. And it can also contribute to a more male-friendly environment.

• Author: Galbraith, Sasha
• Position: LEADERSHIP

For women, a career in finance--as well as in many other corporate jobs--has historically involved life-altering tradeoffs, such as choosing between one's children and one's job. Despite the fact that women earn more than half of advanced degrees--and 43 percent of MBA degrees--the representation of women in top roles in finance jobs is still quite small.

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Among the Fortune 500, women comprise 20 percent of senior finance managers (controllers, treasurers and tax directors), and just 35 of those companies have female chief financial officers. According to a 2007 survey of members of the Financial Women's Association, two-thirds of the respondents felt their gender was holding them back from career advancement and 96 percent believed women are paid less than men for comparable work. A survey by Financial News a year later yielded similar results.

It makes one wonder just what is going on to hinder women's advancement. A recent study by researchers at Harvard and the University of Chicago pinned the blame on three factors: Differences in educational training (men take more finance courses), the fact that women have more career interruptions that are severely penalized and that women work fewer weekly hours. But if those were the only roadblocks, then why are so few companies succeeding in their effort to close the gender gap?

Bank of Montreal has probably gone the farthest of any company in developing programs to promote women, and in the process has changed its corporate culture. In 1990, less than 3 percent of senior executives were women. By 2003 that figure had increased to nearly 33 percent. Similarly, in 1993 global accounting firm Deloitte & Touche counted a mere 5 percent of women partners, principals and directors, despite the fact that half of its new recruits for more than a decade had been women. Through an active program led by the company's chief executive officer, Deloitte boosted the proportion of senior-level women to 21 percent in 2006.

The fact is that companies can purposefully design organizations that are more female-friendly and, as a result, increasingly attract and retain highly talented women. And a nice side benefit is that those organizations are also more male-friendly.

The Best Features of Female-Friendly Organizations

Hierarchy, a necessary component of large organizations, is an inherently masculine construct and comes from the military. Women tend to prefer to build connections with other people and see...