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Women in the US, Canada and the UK share similar barriers and strategies for success
Did you know that working women in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada have a lot in common? According to studies by Catalyst, a non-profit organization working to advance women in business, women in all three nations face many of the same barriers to advancement. They also share the same strategies for success.
Since 1996, Catalyst has been conducting a series on women in leadership in different countries. With the release of their most recent study, Breaking the Barriers: Women in Senior Management in the UK, Catalyst has been able to compare the experiences of senior women and CEOs in the US, Canada and the UK. What they found is that despite the countries' different histories, governments and cultures, the issues that affect women's advancement are surprisingly similar.
Across all three nations, senior women identified male stereotyping and preconceptions about women's abilities and roles in the workplace as a top barrier to women's advancement. Other significant factors included the lack of line experience (holding positions with profit/loss responsibility), being excluded from informal networking opportunities and family commitments. To be more specific: CEOs in the UK identified male stereotyping as their top obstacle (33%), while CEOs in the US and Canada cited a lack of line experience (82% and 50%, respectively). Senior women in the UK (46%) indicated that family responsibilities were more of a barrier than their counterparts in the US (18%) and Canada (32%).
In addition to sharing many of the same obstacles, senior women and CEOs in all three countries share the same success strategies. Over 96% of all women surveyed for these reports indicated that "consistently exceeding performance expectations" was their number one approach. According to the Catalyst report, developing a style that male managers were comfortable with ran a close second.
"We can now compare women's career experiences, their success factors, and the barriers they perceive, as well as the perceptions of CEOs, across three distinct cultures," said Sheila Wellington, president of Catalyst. "The bottom line is that there are more similarities among women across borders and overseas than there are differences."
Catalyst is a non-profit research and advisory organization working to advance women in business. For more information visit their website http://www.catalystwomen.org.
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