A word from the president.

AuthorBaird, Harold

The opportunities for management accountants to get to the top of the career ladder have never been greater. But a flurry of recent reports has made it clear that male finance professionals are having a better time of it than their female counterparts. As we move into the second decade of the 21st century, this is hard to believe. But the figures speak for themselves.

The Harvard Business Review recently found that women hold just 3 per cent of Fortune 500 CEO positions. Private companies aren't doing much better. A review of 11,000 businesses by recruitment firm Grant Thornton International calculated that globally, the number of women in senior management positions recently dropped to 20 per cent.

The reasons behind this disparity have been studied by CIMA in depth and I am confident that the challenges can be overcome. Although management accounting used to be a male-dominated environment, women now make up a third of CIMA's members and 44 per cent of its students. In fact, CIMA has had one of the highest growth rates in female members of all the accounting institutes since 2003.

However, there is still some way to go before female leadership is widespread. Our research has shown that despite an increase in professionally qualified women, female CIMA members are ten times less likely than their male counterparts to be in a senior position, such as CFO or CEO. This pattern is repeated across the business spectrum.

Research carried out by CIMA's Centre of Excellence at the University of Bath School of Management found that female members still lag behind in terms of salary and seniority after the early career stage. The gap increases after ten years and most significantly after 20 years. So, we have future female business leaders in the pipeline, but the attitude of both members and their employers needs to change if a more balanced picture is to emerge in the near future.

One of our latest reports, "Breaking Glass - Strategies for Tomorrow's Leaders", highlights the key obstacles faced by women in the workplace. It also presents the business case for increasing the number of female high flyers. Our research found that one of the contributing factors to the current imbalance is a trait among women to...

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