Thank you for commenting on hectormon. I am hitting the glass ceiling right now, together with other women of my age who have been very succesful and experienced in science but who are delayed in their carreer because of having a blooming family life. My understanding is that male senior manager are reluctant to hire women in the highest positions because they cannot recognize the same, male, features as they think a senior manager should have. Although the male senior manager can recognize unique outstanding qualities in a female candidate, they simply discard them because they do not observe the same leadership characterics of a male leader. Therefore time after time they discard the female option. This prejudice out of ignorance is terrible and can be helped on its way out by well documented articles like yours.

I think that the data I cited are not random, but quite relevant to the topic. Examining the proportion of women in low- and high-level positions helps us evaluate whether women’s presence in various segments of the workplace mirrors their share of the greater population. If women account for slightly more than half of the world population, but only 17% of senior managers, we have an imbalance.

You’re right to point out that skills, experience, and talent matter in hiring decisions. Your observation is an argument in favor of hiring women as managers. Women demonstrated academic skills by earning two-thirds of the graduate degrees, 60% of master’s degrees, and about half of doctorates in the 2007–2008 school year. Executives have observed that women in the pharmaceutical industry remain calm under pressure, are organized, deal well with obstacles, and are good facilitators.

I agree that the pharmaceutical industry is not the same as the textile industry, but I believe that women’s abilities do not limit them to working in one or the other. The group at the London Business School that found evidence in favor of gender-balanced teams studied men and women working in various sectors, including the automotive, biotech, consulting, education, financial-services, insurance, manufacturing, media, and technology industries.

Womens’ talents, the observations of researchers, and industry professionals’ experience all seem to indicate that hiring more female managers would benefit everyone involved.