Women’s career progression: pitfalls and how to avoid them
This contribution is by Ruth Davis, who is Director of Digital Communications and New Business at Oxford HR. Ruth joined Oxford HR in 2018 after graduating from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is particularly passionate about social impact and how purpose-driven businesses can communicate their impact. Working within the Oxford HR communications team, Ruth works on supporting regional hubs with their marketing needs, alongside content creation and partnerships. She also leads Oxford HR’s impact measurement as a business and is part of the BCorp working group.
At Oxford HR, we are proud to champion women in leadership roles and strive to embed feminist leadership principles in all our work. In celebration of International Women’s Day 2024, our team shares the common challenges women face in their career progression and the steps organisations can take to avoid them, creating a more inclusive and engaged workforce that values the strengths women in leadership roles can bring.
- Gender bias
Gender bias can present itself in many ways, including stereotypes about women’s abilities, expectations about their roles, and unconscious biases that can affect hiring and promotion. In some cases, bias can even be overt and intentional.
To avoid gender bias within teams, organisations can look to conduct equity, diversity and inclusion training, which highlights pertinent areas such as microaggressions and unconscious bias.
Investing in this type of development can help create a culture that values inclusion and where all employees feel respected and supported. You can learn more about Oxford HR’s EDI services here.
- Lack of Mentoring
In 2015, the New York Times published findings that there were more male CEOs named John than female CEOs overall.
Last year, in 2023, this statistic was reversed (Bloomberg, 2023). It is no surprise, then, that women in leadership positions can struggle with a lack of proper mentoring or guidance. Being able to find growth opportunities and navigate the complexities of advancement can slow career progression.
Investing in a mentoring program or encouraging peer mentoring can help women gain confidence
Contribute to career development and offer guidance in complex or challenging times. Training existing leaders, even men, on how to advocate for women, can make a huge difference to an organization’s inclusivity and even its productivity – 70% of companies report increased productivity thanks to mentoring. (Forbes, 2023)
- Work-life balance
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is crucial for all employees, yet three in five women say their caring responsibilities have prevented them from applying for a new role, compared to one in five men (The Guardian, 2022).
Hybrid working policies that have become widespread due to the pandemic have undoubtedly helped employees maintain a greater work-life balance, but new research suggests that flexible working extends beyond “where” someone works and that, especially for women, “when” work is done can have a profound impact.
Women @ Work found that 14% of its respondents left their previous job due to “lack of flexibility around when to work” – the second reason after not being paid enough.
Offer flexible arrangements
Organizations can support women in their workforce by offering truly flexible work arrangements, including flexible hours, remote work, and part-time options.
Offering leadership roles as a job share can increase flexibility, allow for sharing of responsibilities, reduce workload, and allow people to have more time for non-work commitments.
- Pay equity
One of the most well-known challenges facing women in the workplace is the gender pay gap. No country in the world has closed the pay gap, with a current closure rate of 68.4% (World Economic Forum, 2023), and the overall rate of change has slowed significantly.
Organizations can implement policies that ensure pay equity and conduct regular pay equity audits to address any discrepancies in pay and publish regular, updated company-wide pay scales.
Pay transparency during the hiring process can help ensure women are paid fairly and allows them to better advocate for themselves. It can also help reduce gender and racial pay gaps by shedding light on potential discrepancies.
- Lack of representation in leadership positions
As a result of the systematic and societal barriers that have historically limited women’s access to leadership positions, many senior management teams remain dominated by men. Even though the proportion of women in leadership positions is set to increase to 32% by 2022 (Forbes, 2022), progress remains slow.
Countless studies have shown that diverse organizations are more innovative, in addition to the benefits that “soft skills” and emotional intelligence can bring to a workforce.
Additionally, many social and environmental impact organizations have some level of focus on gender equity within their programming. Having women represented at senior levels can help improve an organization’s impact in these issue areas.
To empower women and achieve greater representation in leadership positions
Organizations must make room for all voices to be heard and recognize the unique contribution that women can bring.
A focus on incorporating feminist leadership principles can also allow women to lead authentically, using their natural strengths rather than viewing leadership through an exclusively male lens.
At Oxford HR, we recommend using a bias decoder in job descriptions and person specifications to ensure women feel empowered and motivated to apply for leadership roles.
- Lack of supportive policies and practices
Organisations that lack policies and practices that support their female employees may struggle to retain talented women. The business as a whole can benefit from introducing family-friendly policies, flexible working policies and best practice training and development.
Doing so results in benefits such as increased productivity, reduced absence and higher staff satisfaction – recent McKinsey research suggests that both men and women view flexibility as one of the “top three” benefits to the employer (McKinsey, 2023).
Women need to feel their sense of purpose in the workplace, and having inclusive policies can help women feel valued. This International Women’s Day, let’s put into practice tools that support women in our organizations and support those within our networks.
Masterclass Series: Top Challenges to Advancing Women in the Workplace
The following contribution is from Women’s Leadership Today, a driving force for positive change, committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“After 20 years as a leader in the business publishing industry and serving the needs of tens of thousands of professionals across the country, our parent company launched an executive education division. Based on the feedback we were consistently receiving from professional women attending our audio conferences, it was abundantly clear that there were not many reliable resources specifically for women.”
“In response, we launched our Women’s Leadership division in 2005. Since then, we have grown into a leading provider of high-impact training designed to help professional women improve their leadership skills and achieve better results. And now, as Women’s Leadership Today, our platform has evolved into a community hub for learning and collaboration.”
The author is Tim Besecker.
Women have come a long way on their path to greater visibility and opportunities in the workplace, but significant disparities remain.
On average, women still face more than twice as many obstacles in their careers compared to men.
From struggling to meet work-life expectations to facing harassment, women face systemic barriers that stifle their advancement and undermine their potential at every level.
Work-Life Integration
A major struggle for women in leadership positions is achieving healthy work-life integration.
Working women still tend to shoulder a disproportionate share of domestic and caregiving responsibilities at home, even when working full-time. This “second shift” leads to increased stress and burnout.
It also hampers women’s ability to work extra hours, take on special projects, and attend networking events—things that often lead to promotions for male colleagues who don’t have the same expectations outside of work.
Lack of training
Another barrier is the lack of training and mentoring needed to advance. Too often, women don’t receive the same mentoring and sponsorship that prepares employees for management roles.
They lack exposure to responsibilities that give them visibility and opportunities to develop new competencies. Targeted training programs, a focus on upskilling, and intentional mentoring relationships early in the career can help close this gap, but many companies miss the mark.
The challenging climb
There’s also the issue of the “broken rung” on the upward ladder. Research shows that the biggest hurdle exists at that critical first step into management.
McKinsey’s 2023 Women in the Workplace report finds that women, while they make up nearly 50% of entry-level roles, still account for only 40% of management roles. And the gaps only widen as you move up the hierarchy.
Harassment
Workplace harassment remains a major career-limiting barrier. Research shows that more than 25% of women report experiencing harassment at work, including sexual harassment and microaggressions.
This type of harassment has a huge mental and emotional impact, as well as threatening the job security and prospects of those who speak out.
Unequal Representation at the Corporate Ladder
The collective impact of disadvantages like these significantly limits women’s advancement and contributes to unequal gender representation the higher up the corporate ladder you look.
We cannot maximize innovation and sound decision-making without diverse voices and talents equally represented at all levels of an organization.
The Three Barriers to Women’s Career Progress and How to Address Them
The following contribution is from the STANTON CHASE portal, which defines itself as follows: “Our story is one of courageous entrepreneurs making bold decisions. It all started in 1990 with a small international group of friends. Each of them ran their own executive search firm. They wanted to offer forward-thinking companies a new way to find exceptional leaders.”
“They were unhappy with the “standard” practices of the time. Clients felt insecure and anxious rather than supported and empowered. They could face questions like: Who is my point of contact? Will they keep me informed about how the search is going? Can I trust that they will find the right person?”
“Partnering with an executive search team should eliminate stress, not increase it. And so, these entrepreneurs joined forces and created Stanton Chase, a global executive search firm focused on building partnerships with pioneering companies. This committed family of experts wrote the rules that would set us apart into our DNA.”
The author is Eleri Dodsworth, Partner and Regional Functional Leader for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging for EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), based in London.
Did you know that only 4% of CEOs and 18% of CFOs are women? Women still face unfair barriers to entering the C-suite.
On March 7, 2024, Stanton Chase partnered with Sharon Peake, CEO and Founder of Shape Talent, for a webinar called “The Three Barriers to Women’s Career Advancement and How to Address Them.” Shape Talent is a leading consultancy known for helping global companies become more diverse, fair and inclusive.
The Three Barriers to Women’s Career Advancement
Based on extensive research involving 2,352 women, Sharon shared three major barriers that unfairly prevent women from reaching the C-suite. Let’s take a quick look at each of them.
Social barriers
Research tells us that children begin to associate intelligence with men and “niceness” with women at the age of six. This perception forms the core of the social barriers women face on the path to senior management.
Reaching senior management is hard enough for women, but taking on the CEO role can seem almost impossible
This is partly due to society’s lukewarm acceptance of female CEOs. In the UK, only 74% of women and 63% of men are comfortable with having a female CEO. I
n the US, those figures are 70% of women and 54% of men. The figures fall even further in India, where only 44% of women and 37% of men express high levels of comfort.
These statistics reflect long-standing historical stereotypes that continue to pose challenges.
And parenthood presents another challenge
A Bain survey showed that while 80% of women view men and women as equally competent caregivers, only 56% of men share this view.
As a result, women often take on full responsibility for childcare, even when a capable co-parent is present. This discrepancy is important because research indicates that women with supportive parenting partners are 21% more likely to advance professionally. That means true gender equality must begin at home.
Organizational barriers
Intersectionality compounds discrimination against women in the workplace, especially for those with additional diverse attributes. For example, in the U.S., Black women struggle with more barriers and receive less managerial support. Because of this, they are promoted less frequently than their peers and remain underrepresented in senior positions.
Women’s access to high-profile business opportunities is also often limited within organizations
Research reflects mixed reasons, from reluctance due to potential backlash to “benevolent sexism” that assigns them less challenging tasks.
This narrative of perceived lower ability could push women away from roles that typically define the career path to senior management positions. And it’s an organizational problem that every company serious about inclusion must address.
Personal barriers
What about ambition and self-perception? While ambition may not inherently differ between genders, it does seem to evolve divergently. One study showed that women over time display reduced career aspirations compared to men.
But other research points to gender norms influencing these perceptions, not an inherent difference in ambition. It could well be that as women are passed over for high-profile positions and promotions, their ambition declines over time.
When it comes to confidence, there is a disturbing trend: women often underestimate their performance, in contrast to men, who tend to exaggerate it.
For example, while 70% of female MBA students believed their performance was similar to that of their peers, 70% of their male colleagues felt they outperformed them.
Companies must address these issues by encouraging women to be ambitious and not confusing confidence with competence.
