IBM‘s global women in leadership study has found that the pipeline is being swiftly outpaced by perceptions of progress.

In reality, women are still struggling to enter leadership positions across the industry, and not enough companies are making the strive for equity enough of a priority for change to occur.

The study Women in leadership: Why perception outpaces the pipeline – and what to do about it from IBM and Chief has provided some not-so-surprising statistics for the global outlook. The Scotland-centric Stewart Report held similar results: though women appear to be doing better in enterprise, progress has remained minimal.

IBM’s and Chief’s study of 2,5000 organisations in 12 countries and 10 industries found a small increase overall in the number of women at the C-suite and board level, now 12% for both.

The report also found an increase to 40% representation of women in junior professional/specialist roles (37% in 2021).

However,the pipeline for top leadership positions still hasn’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels – 14% representation of women in senior vice president roles (18% in 2019) and 16% in vice president roles (19% in 2019).

In addition, fewer than half (45%) of organisations surveyed report they have made advancing more women into leadership roles a top, formal business priority.

“While we’re pleased to see slight progress in the representation of women at the C-suite and board levels, it’s imperative that companies do more to fill the pipeline that leads to these powerful positions,” said Lindsay Kaplan, Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Chief.

She added: “Women are significantly underrepresented at nearly every level of the workforce. If companies prioritise gender diversity across their entire organisations through policies, investments, and a culture that meaningfully supports women, we’ll see a transformative impact — equity for everyone in the workplace and stronger, more resilient businesses.”

“Enabling equity and inclusion gives organisations a competitive edge, yet many companies donor act as if their success depends on it,” said Kelly Chambliss, Senior Vice President and COO, IBM Consulting.

She added: “To thrive in a rapidly changing world, organisations must prioritise advancing women – and all historically under-represented groups – and take action to challenge structural barriers and unconscious bias.”

While optimism is rising, industries appear disconnected from reality. Respondents estimated their industry will see gender parity in leadership in the next 10 years, compared to 2019 when the average industry estimate was 54 years.

But at this current rate of change based on the survey data, gender parity is decades away.

Further, structural barriers and unconscious bias continue to hinder the advancements of women.

While more organisations have implemented career development planning for women, diversity training, and the creation of women’s networking groups, bias persists.

For example, the report found that, when asked if women with dependent children are as dedicated to their jobs as women without children, the majority of respondents said yes, only 40% of male managers agreed.

Gender bias again permeates expectations on attributions – respondents shared that men are primarily valued for creativity and being results-oriented with integrity. Women, however, were expected to be strategic, bold, but also people-oriented.

Respondents said the pandemic was the most serious recent disruption to women, recognising the immense toll it has taken on them.

“The research data shows the hollowing out in the middle is real,” said Salima Lin, Sr. Partner and Vice President of Strategy, Transformation and Thought Leadership, IBM Consulting.

She adds: “Structural changes, including reimagining leadership tracks and role descriptions, improving pay transparency, and setting representation goals, can open new pathways for women to progress to more senior roles.”

The study did present a roadmap for sustainable progress in light of their findings.

Reframing women’s leadership advancement in the language of business results, such as quantifying the concrete economic gains that can accure from righting gender imbalances would be a vital step in strengthening perceptions around women leaders.

Setting measurable goals and timescales for women’s advancements in your organisation would give a gender strategy teeth, setting it apart from ineffective initiatives without proper benchmarks.

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Changing this up is also encouraged, like enacting an action plan aimed at driving gender equity across the full leadership pipeline by going beyond awareness training, to instead use experimental learning techniques like role playing and reverse mentoring to help shift biases.

Re-designing roles to a core criteria of gender-neutral requirement is also advised by the study. This can range from simple changes in language to offering more flexible working hours.