Yahoo Finance A fifth of women have missed out on a promotion to a male colleague
One in five women say they have been passed over for a promotion at work in favour of a male colleague, a new survey has found.
The figures rise to 24% of women aged between 16 and 24 and 28% of women aged between 25 and 34 years old, according to the survey of over 2,000 UK employees by Censuswide for jobs site Glassdoor.
Over half (51%) of women say they are not comfortable putting themselves forward for new opportunities at work and nearly a fifth (18%) believe their gender holds them back at work.
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Over a third (35%) of women feel that their company should do more to promote women into senior positions, and 38% of men agree.
Several government and company-level attempts are being made to open up senior positions to more women and stop women missing out on promotions. The Hampton-Alexander Review recently revealed that the target of 33% women on boards of FTSE 100 companies had been met, but also underlined that very few women are in senior and executive roles.
Women earn 82p for every £1 that men earn due to the gender pay gap, according to Glassdoor Economic Research. Glassdoor puts this down to occupational sorting with women overrepresented in lower paying, flexible and part-time jobs, and women having less confidence when it comes to negotiating higher salaries for themselves. Just over a fifth (22%) of women feel comfortable asking for a pay rise at work, compared to a third (33%) of men, according to the research.
Jo Cresswell, careers expert at Glassdoor, said: “While women have traditionally taken on lower paid jobs which provide them with flexibility to start and look after a family, we’ve gone through a step change with women now increasingly prioritising career progression.
“This means we are seeing more women reaching more senior positions before taking a career break. However, salaries have not kept up with this trend and women are still, on average, paid proportionally less than men.”
Read more: Women in the UK ‘work for free’ for two months a year
However, workplace culture and a company’s values are more important to workers than salary and compensation when it comes to workplace satisfaction, according to the research. Over half (51%) of women are working in businesses where they feel comfortable asking for time off work for family reasons, 57% feel able to ask for time off for medical reasons, and 47% feel comfortable talking to their manager when they have a personal problem.
“Employees want to work in an environment in which they feel professionally challenged and personally supported, no matter what they have going on in their lives. It’s encouraging that women in particular feel comfortable raising personal challenges and situations with their managers, this will go a long way towards workplace satisfaction and a feeling of work life balance,” Cresswell said.
