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&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest barriers to workplace equality for women is so commonplace that there&#39;s a convenient lexical shorthand for it. Utter the phrase &quot;the glass ceiling&quot; and almost anyone will know that you&#39;re referring to the paucity of female talent in executive positions at companies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;While there are a number of reasons for the continued existence of the ceiling—decisions/pressure related to child rearing, plus the continued prevalence of old boys&#39; networks and good old-fashioned sexism among them—the evidence is mounting that it&#39;s not just an unsavory relic; it might also be costing businesses clients and money.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2015/03/23/for-business-more-women-in-charge-means-bigger-profits&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;this recent report&lt;/a&gt; from U.S. News, which cites a McKinsey study that &quot;found that those whose leadership roles were most balanced between men and women were more likely to report financial returns above their national industry median.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The reason: apparently having members of both halves of the population represented in the decision-making process enables firms to better tailor their products and services to customers who are also not all the same gender. Or, as Tim Cook put it in a much more memorable turn of phrase quoted in that same U.S. News piece: &quot;&quot;You&#39;re building a puzzle […] You don&#39;t want to stack Chiclets up and have everyone be the same.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which brings us neatly to the research featured in the slideshow above, which was recently carried out by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.expertmarket.com/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&gt;Expert Market&lt;/a&gt;, a B2B market place, into female representation in management positions around the world. Their key finding: only 3 countries out of the 126 that they studied had more than 50% representation of women in top jobs. And, with all due respect, none of those countries are exactly global powerhouses, as you can see from Expert Market&#39;s top 10 countries for percentage of female managers:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;Jamaica (59.3%)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Colombia (53.1%)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Saint Lucia (52.3%)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Philippines (47.4%)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Panama (47.4%)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Belarus (46.2%)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Latvia (45.7%)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Guatemala (44.8%)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Bahamas (44.4%)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Moldova (44.1%)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately (or, perhaps, unfortunately), would-be female executives don&#39;t need to move to the Caribbean to have a shot at getting big jobs: the United States, while it still has work to do on achieving gender equality, was rated 15&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; on the overall list, with 42.7% of management positions filled by women.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In fact, compared with other advanced economies such as Australia and Canada (tied in 36&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt;, with 36.2% each), the U.K. (41&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt;, 34.2%), and Japan (96&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt;, 11.1%), the U.S. appears to be a bastion of gender equality enlightenment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there&#39;s a world of difference between having a job that has &quot;manager&quot; in the title, and actually being the person who gets to call the shots in an organization. Consider, for example, the S&amp;amp;P 500, which currently boasts just 24 female CEOs, a rate of just 4.8%.That stat indicates that, no matter how much progress has been made, there is still a long way to go before equality can be seen to have been reached—provided that the definition of &quot;equality&quot; that we&#39;re working off includes not just job titles, but the ability to make decisions that actually matter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What&#39;s your take on the equality data presented here? Have your say in the comments section below.&lt;/em&gt;&#160;&lt;/p&gt;

Phil Stott

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