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This study aims to identify the critical barriers to women’s leadership in Indian corporate sector using the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach.

Through data obtained from extant literature and the expert opinion of women seeking higher managerial positions in the Indian corporate sector, this study identified total 18 barriers to women’s leadership. Thereafter, this study used the Delphi technique to identify the most critical barriers and ISM to understand the causal relationship among them, and then ranked them based on relevance.

Of the 13 critical barriers identified, corporate policies, conscious organizational bias and family responsibilities had the highest driving power. By contrast, inadequate career opportunities and the lack of risk-taking ability and assertiveness had the highest dependence power. Unconscious organizational bias and occupational segregation were other prominent barriers.

This study establishes the interrelationships between women’s leadership barriers. It provides a well-defined model which helps to get theoretical insight considering barriers for women leaders in their career progression in the Indian context. Based on the ISM model, these findings can help academicians and researchers gain deep insights into the barriers to women’s leadership in the Indian context, as no studies have been found in the literature concerning the given subject.

Based on the findings, corporations and policymakers can design inclusive leadership policies to support women as they climb the corporate ladder and to enhance their contribution to organizational success.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to identify barriers to women’s leadership in India using ISM analysis.