Women to companies' top leadership positions

Abstract

This thesis focuses on feminine leadership in Finland. It investigates the challenges women may encounter in their career advancement to top management positions of a company. Finland is considered one of the leading countries when it comes to gender equality. Regardless, women remain underrepresented in upper management positions as the majority of these positions are filled by men. More and more women have reached middle management, generally as managers of support functions, but to get higher in the hierarchy, they face a glass ceiling. Glass ceiling represents the unseen obstacles for women’s career development.

The author chose the topic as she finds the research problem relevant still today. The objective of the thesis was to answer the two main research questions that were: What is holding women back from making it to the leading positions? and How can women get equal career opportunities as men? Through the theoretical framework and the empirical data the author sought to find out what serves as an obstacle in women’s career paths. The aim was also to put forward possible solutions for companies to take more actions in order to sup-port the career prospects of women.

This thesis is a qualitative research and six women, with different years of managerial experience in male-dominated fields, were interviewed. In order to obtain as much unfiltered information and views as possible from the interviews the author agreed with the participants not to reveal the companies or identities of the women interviewed. For this reason the participants remained completely anonymous throughout the whole research process. The empirical data was collected by individual theme interviews between 29 September and 8 October 2021.The findings show that one’s gender is neither seen as an advantage nor a disadvantage in male-dominated fields. However equal opportunities for promotion with male colleagues shared opinions. One’s own manager was seen as an essential part of whether or not a person was supported to advance in her career.

One of the proposed solutions for the research findings is to encourage women to reach for the fields that are considered male dominated as the more women there are, the better possibilities they have to reach higher within a company. Currently the group from which the members of the upper management team were elected was too narrow for women to show up to their advantage. In order to reach a solution, it was perceived that both the women themselves and the employer should take concrete action to improve the situation. A common finding was that the direction is right, now it must be ensured that women make it from middle management to the next level.