Challenges Blocking Women’s Career Graph

Women are making remarkable strides in every sphere including the corporate world. Top business magazines with successful stories of master projects being led by ladies are highly encouraging. But, a greater women representation at leadership ranks and other senior line positions is still a far-away goal. Men continue to outpace women at every level across the industry spectrums.

Inhospitable corporate culture, lack of proper mentoring and women leadership program, outdated norms and biases, absence of role models, commitments to personal or family responsibilities, etc are some of the factors that are often attributed to gender disparity.

We often hear of the ‘glass ceiling’ metaphor and rightly so. Most women find it difficult to break through the invisible existing barriers that stop their career to take off. At any given point in a woman’s career, she is likely to witness one or more of these barriers. Sometimes the barrier is explicit, and other times it’s hidden behind different agendas. Either way, it’s a tough journey to reach the top of the organizational ladder.

From time to time surveys and researches have been conducted to study the causes that hinder the growth of women in the corporate space. The outcomes suggest that a multitude of individual, cultural, and organizational factors interplay to limit their career graph.

Interestingly, some studies reveal significant disparities between female executives’ and CEOs’ perceptions about the hurdles to women’s advancement. Many women executives have cited issues like exclusion from informal networks, stereotyping, lack of mentoring, lack of accountability on the part of senior leadership, limited opportunities, etc as hurdles to their career growth. While in most cases the respective CEOs agreed with the above factors, they considered ineffective women leadership style and lack of talent and commitment among women as the key issues.

Even the top business experts, leadership coaches, and corporate trainers agree that the failure of senior leadership to accept accountability for the advancement of women to top authority roles is a major barrier that cannot be undermined. Men are the preferred lot for positions with profit-and-loss responsibility, while equally capable women counterparts are channeled for the support roles.

Solutions to leadership barriers

The institutional, structural, and individual barriers are now changing for the better, thanks to the dynamic organizations that are redefining the existing norms and mindsets.  Addressing the underlying causes of the leadership gender gap is the right way to promote a corporation’s diversity and inclusive & balanced leadership.

To bring the desired change at the organizational level mindsets and biases need to be rightly shaped. Companies must be more responsive to women employee’s needs and emphasize developing programs that promote leadership skills amongst them.

Leadership training programs that refine leadership talent, develop application-based workshops, create training reinforcement, and educate employees about the existing barriers can play pivotal roles in bringing significant results.

At Pragati Leadership, we create strategic training programs that promote the growth and development of deserving talent. Regardless of culture, industry, or sector, we believe that women should be empowered to take up leadership roles everywhere. Our training programs are tailored to improve the strategic thinking of top leaders and help them build a vision that supports inclusive, diverse, and productive approaches.

If you are seeking any guidance or assistance regarding women leadership training programs then you can trust us completely. Contact us for more details.