The number of women holding bachelor and post graduate degrees has steadily increased. And more and more postgraduate degrees are in the field of business management and law - the credentials that are now considered prerequisites for senior management positions. Despite identical education attainment, ambition, and commitment to career, men still progress faster than women. What's really going on here is more a matter of perception than statistical fact. In 1990, Financial Women International surveyed male CEOs and female vice presidents on the existence of a glass ceiling.
Surveys explode some other myths about women executives.
Only 14 percent refused to relocate as compared to 20 percent of the male colleagues. And only a third of the women surveyed had ever taken a leave of absence and 82 percent of these were for maternity or other family reasons. Yet stereotypes and misperceptions about women malign and impede us from consideration for career opportunities. Statistics and anecdotal data do not confirm the perception, now gaining unwarranted credibility, that women and minorities have made wholesale gains in the workplace at the expense of white men. To the contrary.