Breaking through the glass ceiling? Not really !

As women in the workforce, we all hear about this mystical thing that no one will tell you is there, we can’t see it, but it will prevent us from moving up. At the beginning of my career I believed that coming from a young, dynamic generation my peers and I would easily hit through this so called glass ceiling and break it for future working female generations. We are strong, focused and driven. It puzzles me that this glass ceiling still prevents us from going further in a company, mainly because, yes, we are women in a corporate world run by men.

We are working for decades, backing up CEOs, developing business verticals, engaging with millions of customers in consumer campaigns, lead communications and shape the brand image. We’re the fixers who get the job done. Yet when it comes to climb up the ladder men simply overrun us. They learnt how to sell themselves in front of the top management. They use part of their work time to keep their names in front of the VP's and CEO, while we’re getting the job done. It surprises me even today to see women whom I have worked with experiencing the exact same challenge. We’re called in for meetings to shape the business but in the end our inputs are never asked for, when asked it is not heard or overshadowed by men trying to get some CEO attention. Instead of leading us to get our goals in sync and growing into the next leadership force that we’re looking for, we’re getting put into a place where men think we’re better taken care off from a business point of view. Or worse if you lead a project and it develops in a good direction, it will be co-opted by a male colleague and added to his management portfolio. We realise that we’re not members of the men’s club, as we will never will be and hit the ceiling hard. We didn’t learn to speak up at the right opportune moment. Why? Because in the end getting the work done is more important to us and we know that’s exactly what we will repeatedly do.

We don’t have lower aspirations, but we tend to not directly aim for the stars straight in the beginning. We might use the word ‘I think’ instead of making a strong statement that would work better, we apologise rather than moving quickly onto a solution and we’re presenting our achievements less in front of everyone. We create more internal barriers and hesitate.

The question is no longer if we should have women in leadership roles, the framework is all done. The better way to ask is how to get them there? We’ve to remove the unconscious bias. It sound simple but not always - women have to grab challenging opportunities and keep their thoughts away from barriers, while men need to champion change, and give women based on potential in their companies the chance to make an impact on their own terms. 

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