The video starts innocently enough. A young couple are outside chatting with their two little kids. Then a starter gun goes off and we realise they’re on an outdoor running track. The woman gives both of the kids to the man and she starts running as fast as she can. He also starts running, while awkwardly juggling the two kids. We all know who will lead and win this race.
This provocative story forces us to imagine what might happen if we reverse the social, cultural and structural burdens of being a woman and a man today. Men are still expected to be out in front – at work, in the public sphere – and women behind the scenes minding the children and home in the private world. These stereotypes play out in leadership dynamics at work too.
Interventions designed to level the leadership playing field – gender quotas or targets, training, mentors, sponsors and role models – have had mixed results and progress is slow.
Even though it’s 2025, women in Ireland are still underrepresented on boards, as board chairpersons, as CEOs, on leadership teams and in the upper payment tiers at most organisations. Men are leaders and women are still largely on the support team.
RM Block
What’s really holding women back from leadership? Is it stereotypes, a lack of talent or ambition? Are they studying the wrong subjects? Or is the deck stacked against them from the start?
What about the role of employers in women’s progression? Companies talk a good game but very few have achieved equality in their top teams. In 2023, campaigning group Better Balance for Business found that, in large Irish-owned private companies, women held 22 per cent of board seats and occupied 28 per cent of senior roles.
Progress is possible, though, when there’s a focus on the numbers and a determination to solve the problem. Since 2017, female representation on the boards of publicly listed companies has increased from just 18 per cent to 40 per cent thanks to a mix of interventions within the companies and pressure from campaigning groups.
But do interventions actually work longer-term, especially when the spotlight moves on to other business priorities?
A just published World Bank report – Promoting Women’s Leadership: What Works, What Doesn’t, and What’s Missing – found the barriers to women’s progression to be opportunity, motivation and capabilities.
[ Women hold fewer than one in five chief executive positions in IrelandOpens in new window ]
The report tried to find out which efforts to promote women’s leadership work well and which ones don’t.
Why is this important? Accelerating women’s leadership is crucial for several reasons that go beyond equity and fairness, says the World Bank report. “When qualified women face barriers to reaching top positions, society misses out on the competence they bring and organisations, institutions and communities lose the opportunity to have the best person in leadership roles.”
Our own Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Peter Burke TD, has said: “In a more volatile world, realising a more balanced system of business leadership is important to enhancing the future growth and competitiveness of Irish business.
“More inclusive organisations are better equipped with the capabilities and diverse perspectives to advance innovation and successfully navigate change.”
Real power vs tokenism
Leadership, whether it’s in politics or business, is the opportunity to influence outcomes and the authority to make decisions. When more women are in political leadership positions, research shows better policy outcomes for everyone in society. In business, women’s ownership and leadership has been found to further job creation and support economic growth.
Unsurprisingly, the World Bank report found that these positive outcomes are only possible when women are given actual authority and power instead of tokenistic representation.
In Norway, for example, growth in numbers alone made no difference. “The increased participation of women in corporate boards did not increase female employment, part-time work or employment of women with children, raising questions about women’s ability to influence decision-making,” the report found.
The World Bank says ‘substantive representation’ “is the ultimate benchmark for evaluating the effectiveness of policies promoting women’s leadership, as it captures not only presence in leadership roles but also the actual ability to influence policies, priorities and organisational or political agendas”.
Sadly, tokenism is rife in Ireland: in senior management teams, at conferences and in the media. If one woman is part of the leadership team – or a woman chairs an all-male conference panel – that’s the diversity box ticked for many.
They’re not fooling anyone: featuring a single woman does not change culture, improve work practices or promote innovation. Companies need to stop using women as “show ponies” and start promoting them to leadership positions with real power to copperfasten future organisational growth and competitiveness.
Workplace culture
How can companies and organisations design interventions that actually work and last? The World Bank says the entire pipeline needs to be examined. The report says its analysis builds on three premises.
“First, increasing the representation of women in leadership roles requires a sufficiently large pool of talented women.
“Second, the path to leadership is long, and women encounter barriers at every stage of career advancement. These barriers contribute to the well-documented ‘leaky pipeline’ phenomenon, whereby many women exit the trajectory before reaching leadership positions.
“Third, attaining a leadership role – the ‘last mile’ – may entail either the emergence of new barriers or the persistence of previously encountered ones in a more severe form.”
In Ireland, we certainly have a large enough pool of talented women – women’s educational attainment surpasses men’s, for example – but the leaky pipeline is an issue. Women are underrepresented in higher-paying fields, particularly Stem. They face barriers entering Stem industries and, if they do gain access, they exit these field at higher rates than from other sectors.
Thankfully, there has been some success with interventions designed to get more women into middle management.
“Certain interventions, such as role models and training, can enhance women’s participation in decision-making even in the absence of a leadership role,” says the report.
However, the last mile – leadership with power and authority – is the biggest challenge in Ireland, as we can see from the persistently low percentages of women in leadership and the pay gaps at the top of organisations.
Overall, increasing women’s leadership remains a multifaceted challenge. Well-designed structural efforts and continued support, instead of short-term women-only interventions, have shown effectiveness in promoting lasting advancement, the report found.
“Comprehensive approaches that simultaneously target multiple barriers at various stages of the pipeline of women leaders and support women entering leadership positions through quotas are needed for sustainable progress.”
Culture is everything when it comes to organisational change.
“Leadership development does not occur in isolation but depends on access to challenging opportunities as well as recognition and support from key decision-makers. When women are systematically less likely than men to access these opportunities and networks of support, stand-alone interventions cannot fully close the gap.”
Let’s stop pretending and instead start giving women a real seat at the top table.
Margaret E Ward is chief executive of Clear Eye, a leadership consultancy. margaret@cleareye.ie
