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Literature around the careers of female academics is targeted mainly toward identifying and examining career progression inhibitors, while the drivers appear largely unexplored. This paper aims to contribute to contemporary knowledge by identifying drivers to the career progression of female academics in Australia. With COVID-19 currently impacting the careers of female academics this knowledge can assist universities and human resource (HR) professionals in developing policies and practices to better facilitate female academic career progression.

Empirically this paper draws on a qualitative study of 18 male and 29 female academics, as well as nine senior university stakeholders. The authors employed semi-structured interviews and a novel methodology, Draw, Write, Reflect.

In line with attribution theory, senior stakeholders mainly identified organisational efforts, including leadership, gender equity endeavours, recruitment and promotion approaches, as well as a construct known as “relative to opportunity considerations”, as drivers of female academics’ career progression. Female academics, however, largely attributed their career progression to personal factors, such as family support, informal mentoring, and determination and persistence.

The findings have implications for universities and HR practices seeking to facilitate female academic career progression. Implementation of the drivers identified may enhance female academics’ abilities to progress their careers.

By focussing on the drivers of, rather than the barriers to, female academic careers, the research is novel in its identification of a previously unexplored mismatch between organisational attribution and individual attribution of career progression drivers thereby advancing knowledge of gender differences in academic careers.

In the UK financial services and retailing sectors there is a clear anomaly between the numbers of females employed and their representation at management levels. The aim of this study is to investigate the nature and significance of factors that actively enable the career development of female managers in these contexts, in organisations with an above industry average representation of female managers.

A cross case analysis of seven organisations, four from the financial services sector and three from the retail sector, forms the basis of the empirical evidence. In total 62 management interviews and 87 focus group participants contributed to the development of the case studies.

Recognition of the business benefits of a managerial gender mix at a senior organisational level emerges as a significant enabler, as does the congeniality of the organisational context in terms of transformational management styles and supportive organisational cultures that limit reliance on impression management in career development. In more practical terms, flexible working arrangements as well as accessible training and development opportunities for all employees, emerge as an important enablers of career development for female managers.

The results highlight the importance of the key human resource policies and their application by operational managers.

By adopting a cross‐industry study, the paper highlights that, while different barriers may exist for female career progression in each sector, a similar set of enabling factors are common to the organisations studied, regardless of sector specificity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how French managers picture their careers, specifically female careers.

The sample was composed of 93 women and 5 men attending a professional women’s networking event in France. Participants answered a questionnaire, including images to choose from to best describe how they perceived their own career development.

The results indicate that a female career is closely associated with work-life balance by both women and men. Also, women acknowledge three times more than men, the existence of a glass ceiling in their organisation. Women and men choose both traditional and contemporary images of career.

As the sample was taken from a women’s network event, the male sample size is small. Despite the small sample of men, giving voice to male participants leads to rich insights which challenge gendered and non-gendered career models.

On an individual level, reflection on one’s career path fosters awareness and ownership of career choices. Further, working with career images enhances discussion and experience sharing about personal career choices, and offers opportunities to organisations concerned with developing female talent.

The study contributes to the career literature by providing insights into how female and male managers perceive female careers. The study’s originality lies in the methodology, based on using images of careers to better understand how managers picture their own careers.

This study aims to examine both male and female accountants’ perceptions of female career progression in the Accounting Profession in Ireland. This study is set in the context of a steady rise in the total proportion of female members across the seven accountancy bodies worldwide and the recent acknowledged failure of larger accountancy firms to promote women to senior levels in equal measure compared to male colleagues.

A quantitative study (with a qualitative component) was undertaken to gather the opinions and perceptions of Irish accounting professionals on their career progression, gender-related barriers and obstacles, the “glass ceiling”, networking and flexible work arrangements. The sample of respondents reflected the diversity of accounting disciplines and gender divide in the wider population.

Evidence of a divergence between the perception and the reality of the lived experience of female accountants, across the gender divide, was found. While respondents believe they have not experienced gender-related barriers in their career progression, it is clear that both genders believe that women succeed in this profession by adapting to masculine occupational values and norms.

These findings contribute to the extant literature on career progression of women and augment the female management and career development literature. The inclusion of the perception and comparison of male colleagues is of particular interest.

The paper aims to explore the increasing feminisation of the medical profession and career progression of women in the medical profession. Furthermore, the paper explores the implications of gender segregation in the medical profession for health service provision.

The paper presents an overview of studies in this area and draws upon primary, empirical research with medical practitioners and medical students. However, unlike most other studies the sample includes male and female participants. The research involved élite interviews and self‐completion questionnaires in order to provide perspectives of both male and female medical practitioners and medical students.

The findings are consistent with those of other studies; that gender discrimination and segregation is still prevalent in the medical profession. But there are significant differences in perceptions between the genders. Moreover, it is concluded that the gendered career structure and organisational culture of the health sector and medical profession create a role conflict between personal and professional lives. The current difficulties in reconciling this role conflict create barriers to the career progression of women in the medical profession.

Further research in this area could include a longitudinal study of medical students and the impact of changes in the design of medical training and career structures to assess whether these changes enable female career progression in the medical profession. Further analysis is needed of gendered practices and career development in specific specialist areas, and the role of the medical profession, NHS and Royal Colleges should play in addressing gender and career progression in medicine.

Gender segregation (vertical and horizontal) in the medical profession will have implications for the attraction, retention and increased shortages of practitioners in hospital and surgical specialities with the resultant economic and health provision inefficiencies.

The paper provides a review of literature in this area, thereby providing a longitudinal perspective of gender and the medical profession. Moreover, the research sample includes both male and female medical practitioners and medical students, which provides perspectives from both genders and from those who have experience within the medical profession and from those beginning their career in the medical profession. The research will be of value to the medical profession, the NHS and Royal Colleges of Medicine.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the social capital factors of career advancement of female academic staff in Nigerian universities.

A measurement and structural analysis were conducted for the three independent variables and a dependent variable on 20 public universities. Data were collected using a structured self-administered questionnaire. The dependent variable was female academic staff career advancement and the independent variables were mentoring, networking and government machinery. Using stratified random sampling, 532 academic staff were selected as the study respondents. They represented sampling criteria such as federal and state universities.

Structural modeling analysis showed that social capital variables, specifically mentoring, networking and government machinery variables, were significant contributors to the career advancement of the female academic staff in Nigerian universities.

This study creates an insight into the knowledge of career advancement among female academic staff in public universities. These institutions dominate the university system in Nigeria and serve as the main avenue for university education in the country. At the level of higher institution, HRD is significant, particularly in creating awareness among academic staff about their career planning and aspirations, the role that the perceived environmental factors play in their advancement to higher positions in the university and how they should further utilize those factors.

The paper examines social capital factors (limited to mentoring, networking and government machinery) that are of concern to managing the career advancement of female academic staff in public universities.

The particular focus of this paper is female expatriates in Europe, which is a relatively under‐researched area. A total of 50 senior female expatriate managers were interviewed, representing a wide range of industry and service sectors. The aims of the paper are to highlight a number of critical factors which are necessary for successful female expatriate assignments. The results of the study show that female expatriates are disadvantaged in their careers because of the lack of organizational support which is readily available to their male counterparts. This lack of organizational support, together with the invisible barriers which constitute the glass ceiling, explain the relative scarcity of female expatriate managers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which – and how – female expatriate role models support women to take up expatriate assignments in the male-dominated oil and gas industry.

The research uses data from a census survey of female expatriates supported by semi-structured interviews with a stratified sample of the survey respondents, triangulated with interviews with human resource (HR) professionals and analysis of organizational policy relevant to expatriation.

Potential assignees value the information that women role models can provide on living in challenging, masculine locations. Role models are particularly important to women undertaking unaccompanied assignments and also when assignment periods exceed traditional lengths. Current female expatriates do not view themselves as role models, despite HR professionals recognizing their value in inspiring women's expatriation.

This research was set in a sector with very few female expatriate role models. Further research is needed to understand the influence of role models on women's expatriation in different sectors and organizations with greater female role model representation.

Training for current assignees, time to be set aside within work duties and communications links to enable current and returned female expatriates to connect with potential assignees are needed to widen expatriate gender diversity.

This research contributes to theory by linking the importance of role models to women's career stages. It proposes a new theoretical contribution by linking role model importance to the types of assignments women undertake. Practical suggestions for organizations are given to widen expatriate gender diversity via support for role models.

This chapter investigates the role of gender, mentoring and social capital and contributes to literature about the career development of women in senior management roles in the National Health Service of the UK. It draws on a doctoral study of senior-level managers in a Scottish NHS Board. The data collected are: (i) documentary; (ii) quantitative; and (iii) qualitative. The quantitative data are collected through questionnaires, while the source of qualitative data is in-depth semi-structured interviews. The doctoral study is embedded within an interpretivist and feminist paradigm. Although access to mentoring and social capital was seen as likely to enhance the career progression of females to senior managerial roles, gendered work and family expectations, gendered organisational culture, and normative performances of gendered senior management were identified as obstacles in taking advantages of mentoring and social capital. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only piece of work that explicitly investigates the role of mentoring and social capital in managing gender diversity at the senior managerial positions of the NHS.

There are significantly fewer women than men in managerial positions, mainly project management. This problem is noticeable in the construction and engineering sectors, traditionally male-dominated industries with leadership much dependent on masculine qualities. This study examines the obstacles to the career progression of professional female project managers (PFPMs) in the Ghanaian construction industry.

Twenty potential obstacles to women's career progression in the construction industry were identified from a comprehensive review of the literature. A questionnaire was prepared and administered among eighty project managers who work in large construction firms in Ghana. Data obtained were analysed using one sample t-test, Kendall's concordance test, Chi-square test and exploratory factor analysis.

The findings suggest the significance of all the twenty factors as potential obstacles to the career progression of PFPMs. The exploratory factor analysis identified five underlying grouped obstacles: “leadership and human capital related issues”, “issues related to discrimination of all forms”, “career aspiration and planning issues”, “female related role conflicts”, and “recruitment and selection issues”.

The subjective nature of the views of the respondents could influence the evaluation of the obstacles. With this study only exploring the dimensions underlying the significant obstacles, future studies could examine the interrelationships between the various obstacles and move on to determine their impacts on the career progression of professional female PMs as well.

Having an in-depth understanding of these obstacles, stakeholders and other industry practitioners in Ghana could make informed decisions on measures to put in place to address some of these critical issues to raise the standard of professional female PMs in the construction industry. Policymakers and gender advocates in Ghana could also take up some of the critical obstacles identified and provide suitable strategies to educate and create the needed awareness of the industry on those obstacles. Practically, the findings from this study can be valuable for informing decision-making at different management levels in the construction industry.

With country-specific (Ghana) obstacles identified, the findings significantly contribute to the literature on the career advancement of females in the construction sector.