The real reasons there are so few women in leadership positions

What holds women back from reaching parity with men in the upper ranks are myths about women’s behaviour, argue Kim Azzarelli, a founder of Seneca Women, a global leadership platform for the advancement of women, and Deanna Bass, director of Global Diversity and Inclusion at Procter & Gamble.

This “fix-the-women” mentality places the onus for change on women, rather than on the real culprit: systemic flaws inherited from a time when the workplace was designed from a single perspective (male), says Azzarelli and Bass, who list, and debunk three myths:

1. Women lack ambition
2. There aren’t enough qualified women
3. Advancing women hurts men