This research examines the factors underlying women’s progress through organisations and the reasons why women in senior management in the US and Europe accept or decline board-level jobs. It is intended to inform the debate and help more women progress to board positions.

Methodology
We carried out a literature review and then conducted 32 interviews with experts and senior women in Germany, Greece, Sweden, the US and the UK.

Findings
Our interviewees had experienced a range of barriers to progression to senior management and board level. These included perceptions about women’s management style, difficulties with masculine organisational cultures, general discrimination, difficulties in gaining the right experience and access to the right people to advance, and difficulties with managing family commitments. Many of the interviewees talked about how important it was for women to have the confidence in their own abilities to take advantage of development opportunities.

We asked interviewees how coaching could help them to progress in organisations. The areas in which they said it can help included:
- Confidence building
- Providing a sounding board for ideas
- Dealing with organisational cultures
- Networking
- Identifying values and goals
- Identifying and obtaining access to development opportunity
- Making the right impression
- Coping with a new role
- Achieving specific goals

It was recommended that coaching be offered as early as possible as well as at key career transition points and that coaching for men – as gatekeepers to board-level positions – should focus on how they can help women into senior positions. We also found that, despite different national contexts, the experiences recounted by the women in the five countries studied were remarkably similar in terms of the barriers they had come up against in their careers and the ways they had dealt with them.

Learning points
- Barriers facing female managers who wish to progress to senior management remain many years after identification of the glass ceiling, and are similar across all five countries studied.
- Coaching can help women to progress in their careers by addressing many of the barriers identified.