Review: Women in Business: Navigating Career Success by Viki Holton and Fiona Elsa Dent
A In 1869, Wyoming, a territory in the United States, became the first place in the world to give women the right to vote.
Much progress has been made on the political front since. But a century and a half later, women are still underrepresented in boardrooms.
Only 15 of the Fortune 500 chief executives were women as of mid-2011. And there has been only one woman-to-woman chief executive handover at a Fortune 500 company, according to the book Women in Business: Navigating Career Success.
Why that is, and what can be done about it, is the subject of the slim new volume by two Ashridge Business School professors, Viki Holton and Fiona Elsa Dent.
They surveyed women in a broad portion of the world, including places such as Abu Dhabi, China, Japan and the United Kingdom, as part of their research into the successes and challenges for female leaders.
The result is an insightful read for any woman who is looking to break through the glass ceiling, if it still exists in the company where she works.
The book acknowledges that important progress has been made in the past two decades. At the beginning of the 1990s, the authors write, "few major employers took equality issues seriously".
"Views have changed significantly since then and many businesses now appreciate that promoting equality helps attract the brightest and best graduates," they add.
But major issues remain. These include the number of women at the so-called marzipan layer, just below senior and director level; the fact that many women are working parents who also want to have careers and that not every organisation or chief executive understands that diversity is a business issue.
Books penned by professors can often be written in a dry, disengaging style. But Women in Business: Navigating Career Success tackles heavy topics in an engaging way.
The authors set out common early career issues, approaches that have helped women on their rise to the top, as well as strategies for success, making the volume a valuable guide for any working woman today.