2007 Women’s Research: Expectations & Achievement: Empowering Women from Within

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Read the Accenture Corporate Blog: Celebrating International Women's Day

Accenture has released Expectations and Achievement: Empowering Women from Within, a research report based on a survey of more than 2,200 executives in 13 countries across North America, Europe and Asia. The purpose of the report was to see whether gender issues continue to affect individuals who are clearly among the most driven and successful in their organizations; to examine how career and life expectations change over time for these women and men, and what factors enhance or hinder career progress; and to identify differences, if any, in the expectations and the experiences of our respondents based on gender.

Our research shows that gender still plays a key role in limiting women's advancement. While male and female executives generally believe their careers are progressing as they had expected, women overall have lower expectations than men about how high they might advance in their professions.

The report was released to coincide with Accenture's celebration of International Women's Day, a global celebration held each March 8 and commemorated by the United Nations. The celebration recognizes the role of women in history and the centuries-old efforts of women to gain equal footing to men in all aspects of society, including the business world.

Career Advancement

• Globally, the perceived pace of career development was similar for men and women. A plurality of men and women said their careers have developed at the pace they had expected, while slightly fewer (around a third) said it has developed faster than they expected.
  
  
• Women in the Netherlands and Norway were approximately twice as likely as their counterparts in other countries to say their careers have developed faster than they had expected. Countries in which women were more likely to say their careers have developed more slowly than expected were Italy, Canada and the United Kingdom.
  
  
• The majority of both men and women said their pace of advancement was faster than that of their female colleagues. However, just over half (51 percent) of male respondents, versus only 37 percent of female respondents, said that they advanced faster than their male colleagues.
  
  
• Countries in which men were most likely to say their progress has been faster than that of their female colleagues are China (90 percent) and Japan (71 percent). Countries in which men were least likely to say they advanced faster than women are the United States (47 percent), Canada (44 percent), the United Kingdom (39 percent), France (44 percent) and the Netherlands (38 percent).

Top factors that contribute to career advancement: The majority of both women and men attributed their career advancement to themselves—that is, their ambition, hard work and passion for their chosen careers. Women, however, were significantly more likely than men to credit their advancement to passion for their careers and to family/spousal support.

Top factors that hinder career advancement: Women view gender as the top factor hindering their advancement, while it ranked second-to-last among men (only religious background scored lower for men). Women and men both ranked the need to devote energy to children/family and their unwillingness to sacrifice work/life balance as one of their top three hindrances.

Work/Life Identity/Balance

• Despite the fact that only one in three respondents said they live to work, half of all respondents said they find it challenging to balance their personal and professional lives.
• The amount of energy that women devote to work is fairly similar across countries—roughly half said they devote more energy to their life at work than to life outside of work. Some notable exceptions: Compared with the global average, the percentage of women focused primarily on work is much higher in China and somewhat lower in Germany and Austria.
• About 40 percent of the respondents said they are satisfied with where their energy is devoted (work/life outside of work). Satisfaction is lowest in Switzerland, Japan and Sweden and highest in China (where more are focused on work).
• Globally, male and female executives reported finding themselves in similar work/life arrangements:
  • about 40 percent said they have careers flexible enough to accommodate family needs;
  • about 30 percent said they are in a challenging career that may require personal sacrifices; and
  • about 15 percent said they would like a second more-flexible career that enables them to tend to family matters.
• There has been an increase in the number of people – both men and women – pursuing a challenging career involving sacrifice and a decline in those who were expecting to shift from a challenging career to one offering more flexibility.

Leadership

• There is consensus between men and women regarding the traits they believe are required to be an effective leader. The top five selected by the majority of men and women are:
  • "Is calm during a crisis"
  • "Is decisive"
  • "Is aware of his/her weaknesses"
  • "Gives credit to others"
  • "Is concerned about the welfare of employees"
• Only about half the respondents considered "leads by asserting authority" and "makes profitability the top priority" as important leadership characteristics
• When assigning gender characteristics to leadership skills, both men and women were more likely to associate women with some of the "softer" leaderships traits, such as "is aware of his/her weaknesses," "gives credit to others," "is concerned for the welfare of employees" and "is ethical," while associating men with some of the "harder" leadership traits, including "is decisive."
• Men tended to see remaining calm during a crisis as a more male characteristic, but women were divided on whether it is more male or female.
• Intelligence was the only characteristic seen as gender-neutral by both men and women.