The Underrepresentation of Women at Senior Excecutive Level

Despite growing public attention to the situation, the majority of top management positions across the globe has been perpetually held by men rather than women. As a matter of fact, despite constituting more than half of the global population, women are still underrepresented at every level of the corporate pipeline – and companies have been facing a continuous loss of female talent for years. The objective of this research project is to explore the potential factors influencing women’s success while they make their way to top-management positions. Once identified, the factors are discussed and used to determine concrete managerial actions to be used to promote female leadership and empower women to gain access to senior management positions. More specifically, this research looks into four pre-determined explanatory variables. - The influence of the societal group and family environment - The individual-level differences between female and male leaders - The institutionalized discrimination and unconscious biases - The limited representation of female role models and mentors. In order to do so, this research project adopted a qualitative approach by interviewing 10 females from major organizations in Belgium and France. The females interviewed were classified into two groups, namely: a-level managers (e.g., CEO, board members) and b-level managers (e.g., business unit heads, senior managers). Thanks to semi-structured interviews, the qualitative approach allowed to capture insightful details and provides a first exploration into the underrepresentation of women at senior executive level – which only presents a limited existing literature.