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This study aims to explore organizational factors that impact women’s career advancement. Knowledge of organizational practices that promote or obstruct women’s career progress is vital for women, firms and governments.

A total of 237 women participated in the study from the service sector in Johannesburg (South Africa). Participants were selected using a convenient sampling approach. Researchers used a questionnaire, consisting of demographic and open-ended questions, to gather data. Comments were analyzed using a thematic content analysis approach.

Findings reveal that prioritizing women, offering skills development opportunities, providing growth opportunities, assisting women in managing their careers, offering mentorship and having work-family support initiatives are practices that promote women’s career advancement. Conversely, practices that foster stagnation of women’s careers, distrust in women’s leadership abilities, preference for external candidates, people–related malpractices, male domination/preference, lack of role models and work-family balance support, hamper women’s career advancement.

The findings of this study will contribute to women’s empowerment. Organizations should provide a conducive atmosphere by instituting practices that promote their female employees' career advancement. Firms also should intentionally take practical steps to address practices that impede women’s career progression. The results of this study will also help the government to design appropriate policies that will promote the career progression of women employees.

This study presents findings from an analysis of qualitative data collected from 237 women to provide insight into the experiences of women working within the service industry in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand women’s working relationships and career support behaviors, by investigating expectations women have of other women regarding senior women’s roles in (and motivations for) helping junior women succeed, and junior women’s engagement in their own career advancement behaviors.

The authors surveyed self- and other-reports of senior women’s engagement in career assistance behaviors on behalf of junior women colleagues, and junior women’s engagement in their own career advancement behaviors. One sample of respondents indicated to what extent they believed senior women did engage in career assistance toward junior women, and to what extent they believed junior women did engage in career advancement. Another sample indicated to what extent they believed senior women should engage in career assistance, and to what extent they believed junior women should engage in their own career advancement.

Results suggest a disconnect between the expectations and perceptions junior and senior women have of each other. Junior women expect senior women to engage in career assistance behaviors to a greater degree than they believe senior women are engaging in such behaviors, and junior women think they are doing more to advance their careers than senior women are expecting them to do. The authors examine individual and organizational implications of these unmet expectations and perception mismatches.

Women-to-women working relationships are under-studied, and typically viewed in either/or terms – good or bad. The findings provide a more nuanced understanding of women’s perceptions and expectations and offer suggestions for how women can influence female career advancement.

The use of women's networks is emerging as one method of advancing women's careers within organizations. However, the value of these networks has been questioned. The purpose of this study is to examine how potential differences in the perceptions of network members and the firm's executive leadership about the purposes and anticipated outcomes of a women's network may impact women's career advancement.

The authors interviewed 21 members of an intra‐firm women's network and six members of the executive leadership team of a global organization. To examine the qualitative data, they used a process of thematic analysis to discover prevalent themes in the transcribed interviews.

Both members of the women's network and the executive leadership team placed responsibility for women's career advancement upon the individual; the firm's male‐dominated culture and organizational constraints were not emphasized. While members of the women's network recognized how the network could be used to contribute to the firm's strategic goals, the executive leadership team did not recognize the network's possible effect on the firm's bottom line.

Examines how potential differences in the perceptions of network members and the firm's executive leadership about the purposes and anticipated outcomes of a women's network may impact women's career advancement.

This paper explores the experiences of women in Saudi Arabia who have been managed by other women, and examines how junior women perceive senior women's role in advancing their career.

The paper is based on qualitative data gathered using in-depth semi-structured interviews undertaken with 30 women working in Saudi public organisations.

This study's findings shows that the hierarchical relationships between women and their woman manager are complex due to a multifaceted web of contextual factors including sociocultural values, family values, religious beliefs and organisational cultures and structures. These factors shape the quality of relationships between senior women and their women subordinates. Also, this study reveals that there is solidarity and ‘sisterly’ relationship between women in the workplace that plays a role in facilitating women's career development and advancement. In addition, this study shows that despite senior women's having supported other women's career advancement, this support tended to be conditional and limited. This can have an influence on women-to-women work relationships, where such relationships can be described as being disconnected and fragile. Furthermore, the study depict that there is evidence of the existence of ‘Queen Bee’-like senior women who distance themselves from other women and block their career advancement. The Queen Bee phenomena can actually become a form of hierarchy that mimics the patriarchal structure and excludes women from serving at top management levels.

This paper provides an in-depth understanding of the hierarchical relationships between women in the workplace and how these relationships have an influence on women's career advancement. Therefore, the paper makes a valuable contribution to the scarce knowledge that currently exists within the field of management research in relation to women's career development – and the advancement of such research within the Arab Middle Eastern context. Also, the findings of this study could potentially inform practitioners and HR department personnel within organisations about the connections between women's hierarchical workplace relationships and women's career development and advancement.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of gender, work factors, and non‐work factors with aspirations to positions in senior management. A process model of senior management aspirations was developed and tested.

Data were collected via an online survey that resulted in a sample of 368 working professionals. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was used to analyze results.

Women were less likely than men to desire promotion into a senior management position. Moreover, women's lower desired aspirations for promotion to senior management were due in part to the smaller degree of congruence that women perceive between personal characteristics and senior management positions and in part to the less favorable prospects for career advancement that women perceive relative to men.

The cross‐sectional, correlational research design does not permit strong inferences regarding the causal direction of observed relationships. In addition, the specific nature of the sample (working professionals enrolled in graduate study at one university in the USA) may limit the generalizability of the results.

Because women's career aspirations are affected by their perceived congruence with senior management positions and by their perceived opportunity to reach senior management, organizations should assure that senior management roles are not predominantly associated with masculine characteristics and should evaluate their promotion systems to eliminate artificial barriers to women's advancement into senior management.

This research distinguishes between desired and enacted aspirations as well as provides insights into some factors that explain why women hold weaker desired aspirations for senior management positions than men.

The purpose of this paper is to address the research gap on Lebanese female managers and to examine female managers' perceptions of their organizations in relation to women's career progression.

The research was quantitative in nature. A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 450 female managers. Measures included personal and demographic characteristics, organizational culture, organizational practices, organizational networks, mentoring and role modeling, tokenism, and the usage of wasta.

Descriptive statistics and analysis of variance were used to explain the results. The results reveal that female managers perceive their career progression to be affected by organizational culture, practices, and networks, while mentoring and tokenism were shown to be less critical. In addition, the women in this sample perceived wasta to be a powerful determinant.

The findings contribute to a wider appreciation of the implicit barriers to women's career development and retention, will help organizations engage with the diversity agenda in this region and provide a better understanding of how these companies and their members can make progress, will help inform managerial interventions to make managers better able to make the most of the issues faced, and will help organizations make a much more concerted effort to manage junior female managers through helping them accelerate in their progression and development.

The paper contributes to the limited literature on women in management in Lebanon as well as the Middle Eastern region in general.

The field of supply chain management (SCM) needs to attract and retain workers to solve the current talent shortage. The purpose of this research is to identify and evaluate factors that influence career advancement in SCM and compare male and female supply chain experts' perceptions of the importance of those factors.

First, 32 factors perceived as affecting career advancement in SCM were identified by conducting a literature review and consulting 36 experts. Those factors were grouped into four categories: “environmental and structural”, “human capital”, “individual” and “interpersonal”. Those factors were validated via the Delphi method, and ten factors were retained for further study. Second, the voting analytical hierarchy process was used to determine the priority weights experts assigned to these factors. The weights assigned by male and female experts were compared to determine if there were differences between the women's and men's perceptions of the factors' importance.

The findings reveal that the category of human capital factors is the most important, followed by individual factors and the least important is interpersonal factors. The experts consulted for this research emphasized “skills”, “a good fit between an individual and an organization” and “self-confidence” as important factors for career advancement. There were two unexpected results. First, the experts rejected all the environmental and structural factors. Second, no significant difference was found between the male and female groups' evaluations.

Prior to this study, no integrated approach to identify and evaluate the factors perceived which affect career advancement in SCM had been developed. This research is a single empirical and integrative study in France that provides valuable insights for academics and practitioners.

This research aims to study the effect of gender, supervisors' support, and tenure of service on objective and perceived career advancement among engineers employed in Malaysian manufacturing organizations in Northern Peninsular Malaysia. It begins by noting the centrality of inequality in gender and career advancement and also aims at providing a direct picture of tenure of service, which is among the factors least looked at when analyzing career advancement. The study also attempts to analyze the supervisor's support in relation to career advancement. Moderating the elements above are the demographic variables such as age, marital status, education level, and the location of the tertiary education institution.

By using a judgemental sampling method, a total of 158 engineers from ten multinational manufacturing companies were identified for this study.

The findings suggest that career advancement is very much related to gender, supervisor's support, and service tenure. It was also noted that women in male‐dominated occupations, which is in this case the engineering field, tend to be subjected to the problems of performance pressures, social isolation, and stereotyping.

This study's framework has allowed for a better understanding of how perceptions are formed and the mechanisms linking these variables to the career advancement. This study perhaps is the first that has systematically attempted to integrate the various constructs as mentioned and employees' career advancement in organizations.

There is a gap in the literature concerning how demographic factors influence career advancement. This study has revealed that there is no clear distinction between career advancement and marital status for either male or female engineers as the statistical result disclosed no significant differences in marital status as a moderating element to the independent variables.

This study aims to assess whether differences exist in the barriers reported by, and in the person‐ and situation‐centred factors related to the managerial advancement of, women with and without children. The study also seeks to examine whether having children influences women's advancement, by affecting person‐situation factors such as training and development or work hours.

A confidential, voluntary survey was mailed to 1,183 female staff who held from non‐manager to executive positions in the banking industry. The response rate was 65.23 per cent or 848 respondents, of whom 209 (24.6 per cent) had children and 639 (75.4 per cent) did not.

The survey results indicate that, although the links and barriers to the advancement of mothers and non‐mothers are similar, important differences exist. Specifically, internal networks are negatively related to the advancement of women with children, but unrelated to the advancement of women without children. In addition, having children weakens the relationship between work hours and managerial advancement.

This is a cross‐sectional study that included women currently in the workforce. Future research needs to include women who have left their organisations and needs to examine causal effects. The interaction of marital status and children should also be examined in future research, because marital status may not be a barrier to advancement for women but being a single mother might be.

The results provide some support for the belief that mothers experience additional barriers to advancement when compared with women without children.

This study uses a Kaleidoscope Career (KC) approach to explore how UAE women managers experience their careers, the advancement in management and the career models they encounter.

This study employs an interpretative phenomenological approach to analyse in-depth face-to-face interviews with 22 Emirati women in middle and senior management positions across various industries in both the public and private sectors.

This research is significant in uncovering career advancement mechanisms and three career models: “my life is not elsewhere,” “seizing opportunities” and “wholehearted dedication to the country.” These models highlight women managers' pivotal role in UAE's economic development.

This study is confined to a convenience sample of women managers from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah. While not fully representative of all local women, the findings on career advancement mechanisms and Emirati women managers' non-traditional career paths hold theoretical significance. The results challenge the uncritical adoption of Western career models, highlighting the need to consider alternative career models and advancement mechanisms.

This research expands the authors' knowledge of career advancement mechanisms and models experienced by Emirati women, offering insights for enhancing gender equality in Arab world managerial roles.

These findings open new research avenues to explore Emirati women's careers beyond the largest Emirates and assess their broader economic and societal contributions.