Women's careers: What helps? What hinders?

10Eighty is delighted to sponsor Gill Amos’s research into what helps and what hinders women’s careers. It has long since been known that women suffer a pay gap when compared to men doing similar jobs. This research focuses on the why and more importantly what can be done about it.

Released on International Women’s Day 8 March 2016, Gill’s White Paper ‘Women’s Careers: What Helps? What Hinders’ reveals two factors.

• Extrinsic factors determine whether you are able to exploit opportunities as they present themselves, these are: you need informal career support, the support of your manager, luck, and you need to have developed your personal brand.
• Intrinsic factors such as drive, resilience, adaptability, confidence and the ability to take career risks are also essential to career success.

The research goes on to identity blockers. Again using the extrinsic and intrinsic factors model: extrinsic factors are children, a poor manager and male behaviour that looks after blokes; intrinsic factors such as self confidence and self esteem.

More importantly, the research identifies what both individuals and organisations can do to eradicate these blockers. The individual needs to know themself. 10Eighty’s CareerCENTRE™ helps to identify what motivates the individual and what it is that they enjoy doing and are consequently good at. These three are essential to successful career planning. You need to build a network. 10Eighty believe that investing in helping people in your network is vital to them helping you. You need drive and resilience. Being prepared to negotiate around your career goals is also important.