Women in Leadership — What’s Going On?

Abstract

Maya attends a major sales event in Rome, an industry-wide showcase for new products with everyone from the telecoms sector present. During her time there, Maya stumbles across a networking event on women in telecoms and, intrigued by the subject matter, she decides to attend. During this session, Maya listens to the statistics on women in leadership and is amazed that the numbers globally are still so low. As the evening progresses, Maya finds herself talking to a group of women who are broadly at a similar level. As she listens to them sharing their experiences, the thing that strikes her most is how similar each story is to her own. The real eye-opener is hearing some of the women speak candidly about their desire to set up their own business and be their own boss. Maya is somewhat taken aback since up until this moment she had thought she wasn’t focused enough and hadn’t tried hard enough to stay on the fast track for promotion. However, as she listens to the discussion unfold and witnesses women from other continents nod in agreement when one or the other talks about missed promotions, not getting a tap on the shoulder to go for promotions, and their shock when a more junior colleague gets the position, for the first time she realizes that she is not alone. She finds herself nodding vigorously when another jokes about a recent article in the press on women’ salaries being less than the men’s.