Why So Few Women Reach the Top – And What You Can Do About It

 

Think of someone on your team who does consistently excellent work but rarely puts their hand up for the stretch project, the promotion, the seat at the table where decisions actually get made.

If a woman comes to mind, you’re not imagining a pattern. You’re looking at one of the most well-documented gaps in leadership development.

The shortage of women in senior roles isn’t a talent problem or an ambition problem. It comes down to a few overlapping dynamics: some playing out in someone’s own head, others built into how organisations and networks actually function. Once you can name them, you can start to do something about them.

 

The voice that says ‘you don’t quite belong’

Impostor syndrome doesn’t discriminate. It shows up in graduate hires and top executives alike, across every industry. But it carries extra weight for anyone who’s often the only person like them in the room. When you’re surrounded by evidence of your own success but still feel like the exception rather than the rule, it’s easy to write your wins off as luck, timing, or other people being generous.

Jodie Foster has talked about half-expecting someone to come and take her Oscar back, convinced it was meant for someone else. If an Academy Award winner can feel that way, it’s worth asking how often something similar is happening in your own building, among people whose work you’d happily put your name to.

It often shows up in how people describe their own contributions.

“I only just managed the budget” or “it was really just luck” can sound like humility, but it’s often ‘impostor thinking’ wearing a humility costume.

Left unchecked, it tends to play out one of two ways: either someone over-prepares for everything, working twice as hard to feel they’ve earned their place, or they leave things to the last minute so any success can be put down to luck rather than skill. Either way, the win never quite lands, and the cycle starts again.

The advice for anyone experiencing this is straightforward: talk about it, build a support network, keep a record of what you’ve actually achieved.

As a leader, you can’t do that work for someone. But you can make it easier: a team where people occasionally say “that was a genuinely good call” out loud goes further than most people expect.

There’s one more distinction worth holding onto here:

Self-doubt that comes from inside someone’s own head is one thing – it responds to perspective, support, and the kind of conversations above.

Self-doubt that’s been put there by being treated as though your identity makes you less capable is something else entirely. That’s not a confidence issue to coach away. It’s a culture issue, and it needs to be raised with the people who can actually change things.

 

Networks don’t work the same way for everyone

Networking gets sold as the great equaliser of career growth. Get out there, meet people, and opportunities follow. There’s truth in that: a strong network opens doors that never make it to a job ad, exposes you to ways of thinking outside your usual circle, and gives you somewhere to turn when things get tough.

But some research suggests men and women may get value from their networks in different ways, and the standard playbook (work the room, swap business cards, follow up) doesn’t always account for that.

What’s clearer is that most professional networks form naturally around shared backgrounds: same industry, same training, same way of talking about problems. Comfortable, but limiting and it tends to produce a closed loop where everyone already agrees with everyone else.

If the women in your organisation are doing everything “right” (showing up, building relationships, putting in the work) but it’s still not translating into sponsorship or visibility, the issue might not be effort. It might be that the network around them needs to be more deliberately built, across teams, across levels, and beyond the usual faces.

 

Why this belongs on your agenda, not just HR’s

Here’s where this stops being a “nice to have” and becomes a genuine business conversation.

McKinsey & Company¹ has tracked the link between executive-team diversity and financial performance across multiple reports now, and each one shows that relationship getting stronger over time, not weaker. The most recent figures:

• Top-quartile companies for ethnic and cultural diversity outperformed bottom-quartile companies by 36% in profitability,
• The gap in likely outperformance between the most and least gender-diverse companies sits at 48%,
• And companies with boards in the top quartile for gender diversity are 27% more likely to outperform those in the bottom quartile.

That’s not a coincidence, and it’s not about optics. Diverse leadership teams ask different questions, spot different risks, and make different calls, exactly what you want from the people shaping your strategy.

 

So what actually helps?

None of this shifts with a single workshop or a well-meaning email on International Women’s Day. What works is addressing both sides at once: giving individuals the tools to recognise impostor thinking before it derails a good decision, and building the structures (sponsorship, broader networks, real accountability) that mean talented people don’t have to work twice as hard just to be seen.

That’s the thinking behind our Women Leading program. It draws on a library of practical, ready-to-use tools our coaches can tailor quickly to your organisation, and it doesn’t stop when the workshop ends. Ongoing coaching is built in, because lasting change happens in the weeks and months after the session, not just on the day.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s worth a conversation. Get in touch with the Executive Central team to find out more about Women Leading and how it could work for your organisation.

 

Take Action

If you’re an individual leader looking to build the skills and confidence covered in this article, you can sign up directly for our Women Leading program here: https://executivecentral.com.au/product/women-leading-2/

If you’re looking at this from an organisational lens, recognising that your business needs broader support, or a bespoke program tailored to your team – get in touch with Executive Central to talk through what that could look like: https://executivecentral.com.au/programs/women-leading/

Either way, the goal is the same: making sure talented people don’t have to work twice as hard just to be seen.

 

1. Diversity wins: How inclusion matters. May 19, 2020 | Report. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters ↩︎