Gender gap | Does the US produce more ambitious female leaders?

According to the latest data from Deloitte, the gender gap across the globe is still in a woeful state, especially among senior leadership.

There is, as innumerable reports have found, much that companies can be doing to ensure that women are in the leadership pipeline and actively being considered for management roles. For example, simply doing away with the cultural bias against women in the workplace.

Yet new findings from Kearney discovered that for many prospective senior leaders, the prospect of joining management isn’t an appealing one. What’s more, the data found a notable split in ambitions of women in the UK versus the US.

Findings pulled from polling over 1,000 female professionals ascertained that a lower proportion of UK respondents wanted to progress to the C-suite or go freelance, at around 22%. In the US, only 14% of women noted that they had no upward ambitions on the career ladder.

However, 14% of UK respondents said they are unhappy in their current role and wished to change career, compared to only eight per cent of US respondents who felt the same.

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In short, US female workers are happier in their organisation than their counterparts in the UK, and are therefore keen to rise through the hierarchy.

Age also plays a key role in this decision. Whilst respondents in the UK were on average equally split between ambitions for the C-suite and ambitions for going freelance, the younger age demographic was notably more focused on achieving a seat at the high table, with 32% of 25-34 years olds expressing this desire compared to 26% of 35-44 year olds, and just 15% of those aged 45 and over.

This split in attitudes between the UK and US may be, in part, owing to new ways of working, with US respondents seeming more cynical to the apparent benefits of workplace flexibility for career progression.

Across the more modern workplace paradigm including hybrid working, taking a leave of absence, virtual meetings and job sharing, in every instance more US workers were more likely to believe that these offerings wouldn’t make any difference to women’s chances of reaching the C-suite.

US firms shouldn’t take this as a sign of success however; much work needs to be done to create gender balance within senior leadership. According to Zippia data, women represent 58.4% of the US workforce as of late 2022, but only held 35% of senior leadership positions.

In addition, just 8.8% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women.