Women in C-Suite | Adam Holton Chief Human Resources Officer

Before women reach C-level, they need to navigate their way through the corporate ladder minefield. From unconscious bias and misogyny to the gender pay gap and lack of female role models, you may be starting to feel that women face obstacles at every corner of their career journey, making it near impossible to achieve high-level positions – and you wouldn’t be wrong.

At the start of the career ladder, women appear to be ahead of the race, representing 57% of recent college graduates. However, as we move further up, the representation of women declines – starting as early as entry level positions – until we’ve climbed all the way up to C-level. At this point, only one in five C-suite leaders is a woman (21%), but worse still, fewer than one in 30 is a woman of colour, according to McKinsey. Women of colour therefore account for just 4% of C-suite leaders, a figure that hasn’t moved significantly in the past three years.