Why Do Too Many Women Fall Off the Career Ladder? — Effective Strategies for Advancement

Ladies Drive No. 62 and Knight Gianella: Recommendations for More Women in Key Roles

Women today are better educated than ever. Yet despite conscious efforts to promote women, the upper echelons of most Swiss companies and organisations remain male-dominated bodies.

Many companies currently complain that the Swiss labour market lacks sufficient qualified, diverse female talent. However, with women holding 44% of non-managerial positions, the starting point is actually strong — companies already have the diverse talent they need, according to the Gender Intelligence Report 2023. The real problem is that women are significantly underrepresented in senior management, accounting for just 17%.

The true issue is not a lack of female talent, but the permeability of the talent pipeline, which slows women down on their career path. Long-term studies show that the power gap between female and male representatives grows with each successive management level.

One important career booster for promoting women to the next hierarchical level would be taking on personnel responsibility and budget ownership. Unfortunately, women too often gravitate towards expert or administrative roles, which reduce the likelihood of climbing the career ladder — significantly increasing their risk of becoming stuck at the lower or middle management level.

What Are the Most Commonly Cited Pitfalls?

- Positioning: Line experience, personnel responsibility, and P&L experience; targeted, tailored investment in one's career

- Mindset: Expectations; experiences; corporate culture; role models; priorities and insufficient time for business matters due to childcare, caregiving responsibilities, or personal life

- Visibility: Profile-building on key topics, upward stakeholder management, participation in relevant business networks

- Prerequisites: Clarifying within the partnership the desired lifestyle models, professional plans, career aspirations, and division of childcare responsibilities

What Effective Strategies Help in Climbing the Career Ladder?

Foundational prerequisites for a career include:

1. Build your own positioning: Own a relevant area of expertise. The greater your specialist and up-to-date knowledge on a business-relevant topic — and the more clearly demonstrated your leadership competencies — the better you can position yourself in that environment.

   
   

2. Gain an advantage through an active mindset: Find out about the talent pipeline in your organisation. Clarify what criteria you need to meet in order to be included or nominated. Send clear signals that you have a long-term interest in your career development. Identify potentially open, strategically relevant positions and understand the rules of the game for getting there.

   
   

3. Increase your visibility: Find your Unique Selling Point (USP) that differentiates you from the competition. A strategic competency portfolio supports your thematic visibility and simultaneously serves as a record of achievement. Effective self-marketing is essential.

   
   

4. Create the right conditions in your partnership: Before committing to a long-term partnership, clarify whether your partner will actively support your career. Only strong partnerships with a fair division of responsibilities and sustained mutual support enable successful careers — including supplementary arrangements and the distribution of roles across multiple shoulders.
   

5. Work on your presence and communication in three steps: Develop a confident, polished appearance. Invest in your personality and always pay attention to a well-groomed image. Long-term studies show that those who make promotion decisions can more readily envision a well-dressed employee as a leader than one who does not follow these unwritten rules.

Extended prerequisites for a career include:

1. Signal your willingness to go the extra mile: The greater your readiness to take on visible, strategically relevant activities and go the extra mile, the more this will support your advancement on the career ladder.

   
   

2. Familiarise yourself with top management competencies: Anticipate the unspoken, taken-for-granted rules at the top management level — such as in the executive board — and play in the right network. This includes investors.

   
   

3. Have the courage to make decisions: When an opportunity for promotion presents itself, be bold and embrace the new challenge. Otherwise, all the groundwork will have been in vain and you risk falling off the career ladder for an extended period. These rules, incidentally, are equally relevant for men who aspire to reach top management.

Conclusion:

Executive Career Sparring and Positioning sharpens focus on one's own career, opens up new perspectives, and makes a valuable contribution to the successful implementation of jointly developed goals. In particular, in-house workshops with high-potential female talent — in which company-specific career obstacles are identified and actionable solutions are developed — sustainably improve the permeability of the talent pipeline, resulting in more women reaching senior and top management levels.