Where are All the Senior Women?

The call for more women to be represented at senior management level has changed from an argument about equality and fairness to one about business benefits. The business case for women at the top is strong and growing; almost half of the workforce and talent pool is female, and there is evidence that organizations with three or more women at board level do financially better when measured in the form of return on sales, return on equity and return on invested capital.1 Nevertheless, there are still only very few women in senior leadership positions. There is no doubt that it takes tremendous commitment to make it to the top, and this applies to both men and women. Senior managers need to be determined and invest considerable amounts of time and energy in their jobs, and some argue that women have to be even more ambitious than men to make it to the top as they face additional hurdles along the way. Some of the reasons why women have a hard time getting to the top are increasingly well documented, and cultural and structural disadvantages are frequently held up as reasons for women’s reduced career progression.