Breaking through the glass ceiling – what can smooth the path to progress?

Which factors affect women’s progression into management roles? Answering this question is vital because female representation at this level will affect the proportion of women in senior management and leadership roles. This paper examines four organisation-level factors that help to explain the current gender imbalance in management roles.

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Reviewed by

Jill Miller, Senior Policy Adviser, Diversity and Inclusion, CIPD

Jill is Senior Policy Adviser for Diversity and Inclusion at the CIPD. Her work focuses on the areas of gender, age and neurodiversity and she has recently led work on race inclusion, managing drug and alcohol misuse at work, and supporting employees through fertility treatment, pregnancy loss and still birth. Earlier in her career, Jill specialised in small business growth through good people management and employee wellbeing.

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