Raising to Top - Obstacles for Women

Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership.
By: Eagly, Alice H., Carli, Linda L.,
Harvard Business Review,
Sep 2007, Vol. 85, Issue 9

When you put all the pieces together, a new picture emerges for why women don't make it into the C-suite. It's not the glass ceiling, but the sum of many obstacles along the way

Vestiges of prejudice

Resistance to women's leadership

Issues of leadership style

Demands of family life

Underinvestment in social capital

Alice H. Eagly (eagly@northwestern.edu) is a professor of psychology and holds the James Padilla Chair of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois; she is also a faculty fellow at Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research.

Linda L. Carli (lcarli@wellesley.edu) is an associate professor of psychology at Wellesley College, in Massachusetts; her current research focus is on gender discrimination and other challenges faced by professional women. The two are coauthors of Through the Labyrinth: The Truth About How Women Become Leaders (Harvard Business School Press, forthcoming in October), from which this article is adapted.