Barriers & Bias: The Status of Women in Leadership
In 2024, women are more ambitious and career-driven than ever, with the rise in workplace flexibility enabling this for many. However, despite some hard-fought wins, women remain underrepresented across the corporate ladder.
According to Statista, only 11% of FTSE 100 companies had a female CEO in 2023, compared with 4% among FTSE 250 companies. This data gap is significant and will take a combined effort from education, business and government to bridge.
Even though we are seeing fewer women in leadership roles, women are just as successful as their male counterparts as leaders across industries and play an integral role in business growth. However, inspiring and supporting women to fulfil their potential in leadership roles is still a challenge faced by many recruitment businesses – but why?
In this blog, we’ll break down some of the reasons why women still struggle to reach leadership roles, as well as taking a deep dive into gender gaps in male-dominated STEM roles.
There are various obstacles to female representation in senior roles, including:
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Gender stereotyping, which can unfairly impact perceptions of women’s leadership abilities and affect their ability to get selected for senior roles. This remains one of the biggest barriers for women seeking leadership roles, where men are seen as more competent, even with the same qualifications. This can also result in male-dominated recruitment teams favouring male applicants.
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Unconscious bias from recruiters can end up driving away talent. The use of gendered words or phrases in job descriptions may appeal more to a certain gender. Words like ‘ninja’ and 'guru’ can typically appeal more to male candidates, whereas phrases such as ‘supportive’ and ‘collaborative’ will attract more female candidates.
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Lack of relatable role models which can deter women from seeking leadership positions. Organisations must focus on promoting and recognising female leaders and highlight the skill-sets women contribute to these roles.
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Imposter syndrome is a term that commonly comes up when discussing women in business and it can lead to missed opportunities for advancement and lack of job satisfaction. It can manifest itself in various ways, including striving for perfection, overworking, being reluctant to face new challenges and downplaying achievements.
It's important for organisations to start to take positive steps forward, including the creation of policies to promote unbiased hiring practices as well as establishing formal mentorship and sponsorship programmes, which can provide women with the right support to boost their career progression. Now you’re more familiar with some of the reasons why women may face these barriers to senior level positions, let's look at how STEM careers can influence the gender gap.
Addressing the gender unbalance in STEM
Placing women in senior roles already has its challenges, but if we add STEM into the mix, there are even more factors to consider.
Women have long been shattering the glass ceilings in male-dominated roles, from engineering to tech, yet we are still witnessing a significant level of gender segregation in these industries where women remain underrepresented.
Research shows the STEM industry is growing the fastest, and gender gaps are resulting in missed opportunities for women. With a less diverse workforce, STEM companies run the risk of hindering business growth – so it is important now more than ever to attract female leaders into the industry.
According to a 2021 UNESCO report, women make up only 28% of engineering graduates and 40% of computer science graduates globally.
The digital skills shortage across the UK is also another concern amongst technology teams due to the rise in digital transformation. Advances in technology mean that IT professionals need to have an increasingly advanced skillset, and the industry is struggling to keep up. While women are underrepresented, it will continue to be difficult to close the digital skills gap in STEM.
What representation challenges are faced in STEM?
There are various reasons why there are gender gaps in these industries, including societal, educational, and professional barriers. Some of these include:
Gender bias in schools: Breaking gender stereotypes in STEM roles starts from early childhood education, as gender biases tend to have a significant impact on study paths. Even in 2024, more could be done to promote STEM careers in schools. Materials and resources for these careers are typically tailored towards males and young women may face a lack of encouragement from teachers.
Career promotion and retention: Women can face barriers to achieving promotions due to unconscious bias as we explored above. A factor that also contributes to this in STEM is that it is a fast-paced, time demanding industry. Women can require flexibility if they have care-giving responsibilities, so may be overlooked for promotions or key projects. It is important for STEM and companies across the board to recognise that women need to have the right support, and this doesn’t mean they are less competetent or committed to succeeding in their career.
Confidence: Despite the need for women being greater than ever in STEM careers, women might feel less confident about their ability to reach the top in these male-dominated industries. Women are likely to underestimate their technical abilities and STEM career prospects despite performing just as well as men. How do we increase the number of women in STEM?
We need more effort from governments, education systems and business to close the gender gap by appealing to more women and boosting education around STEM prospects with the right support and mentoring.
The best place to start would be with the younger generation. With the new Government in place, there is the opportunity to offer more support and training programmes to encourage and empower females from a young age to pursue STEM subjects.
The way forward for female leadership
Attracting and retaining women in senior roles is good for business, yet we still find men to be at the top in most companies. It’s clear that more work needs to be done for women in leadership across all industries for the workplace to become more balanced.
It’s worth remembering how far we have come, and although there are still challenges, the number of females in leadership roles is on the rise. A study by Grant Thornton highlights a positive data increase in the number of female managers. According to the research, senior management roles grew from 29% to 31% in 2021, with 83% of countries having 30% or more female managers.
Our Women in Leadership programme, developed at the request of APSCo members, will help to address the challenges women face and offer practical tools to enable women to navigate barriers more effectively.
Previous participants, Phaidon International, said “Through the Women in Leadership Programme, I’ve learned several tips on how to insert myself even more in conversations and meetings with other Leaders and how to ensure I get my point across while also supporting and engaging others to speak up. It also helped me gain more confidence in my own leadership style as well as helping me define my own leadership style more.”
As well as this, to help firms leverage the opportunity to train and develop their people we are delighted to be able to offer members a 10% discount on open courses booked in August and taken before the end of the year.
Find out more and book your place here.
