Despite a lot of hard work on the matter in recent years, gender parity in the C-suite is still a struggle. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of women CEOs at Fortune 500 companies has steadily increased, but still only represent about 10 percent of the total; on the governance side, women only make up about 30 percent of corporate board members.
A recent report from Gallup points out that part of the reason for the gap is work-life balance—more women are charged with parenting and other caregiving roles that can wear away at ambition to climb the ladder. But the report suggests that there’s also more happening.
For one thing, the perception of what top leadership roles require can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. A larger percentage of men tend to express interest in those jobs than women, but that gap narrows when you ask men and women who already have leadership roles about their interest in leading. "As people gain experience managing others, they may also gain confidence in their ability to do so and leadership roles likely feel more within reach," according to the report.
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