International Women’s Day: What’s Still Standing Between Women and Leadership

International Women’s Day offers an opportunity to pause and reflect on how far women have come — and why progress into the highest levels of leadership remains uneven. Today, women hold just 10% of CEO positions at Fortune 500 companies, a gap that persists despite comparable education, experience, and performance. 

Research from Hogan Assessments, the global authority in workplace personality science and leadership assessment, shows that men and women in executive roles demonstrate similar personality traits linked to leadership effectiveness, challenging long-standing assumptions about who is best suited to lead. 

“When we analyze decades of personality and performance data, we don’t see meaningful differences between men and women on the factors that truly predict leadership success,” said Allison Howell, CEO of Hogan Assessments. “What we do see is that many organizations still rely on outdated ideas of potential that don’t reflect the evidence.” 

Leadership Potential Criteria That Lag Behind the Data 

In practice, leadership potential is often associated with visible confidence, dominance, or self-promotion. Hogan’s research suggests these signals are frequently overvalued, while equally important leadership traits — such as judgment, self-regulation, learning ability, and motivational alignment — receive less attention, despite being strong predictors of long-term effectiveness. 

For many women, the challenge is therefore less about readiness and more about access. Early promotion and development decisions are often shaped by informal judgments that quietly influence who is encouraged, supported, and advanced over time, long before leadership roles are formally in sight. 

The Myth of Declining Ambition 

Another common explanation for women’s underrepresentation in leadership is a perceived “ambition gap.” Hogan’s data tells a different story: motivation and ambition remain present throughout women’s careers, but are strongly shaped by organizational context. 

“Women aren’t less ambitious than men,” Howell explained. “What changes is how people respond to environments where advancement criteria feel unclear or inconsistent. Stepping back is often a strategic choice, not a lack of aspiration.” 

In those conditions, many women make deliberate decisions about when — and whether — to pursue advancement, responding rationally to systems that don’t always reward how they lead. 

Where the Barriers Truly Emerge 

Hogan’s Myths of Women in Leadership research shows that differences between men and women largely disappear at the executive level. Yet women remain underrepresented at the top because the most significant barriers tend to form earlier in the career journey, during hiring, mid-career promotions, and sponsorship decisions, when subjective judgment often outweighs objective evaluation. 

“Much of the inequality we see at senior levels takes shape well before leadership titles are on the table,” Howell noted. “Those early moments quietly determine who gains visibility, support, and access to leadership-building opportunities.” 

A More Objective Path Forward 

For Hogan, International Women’s Day is not about prescribing simple solutions, but about encouraging reflection — both organizational and individual. As a woman leading a global organization, Howell emphasizes the importance of questioning long-held assumptions about leadership, while also encouraging women to understand and use their own strengths intentionally. 

“As women, we’re still too often assessed through expectations that were never designed with us in mind,” Howell said. “Science shows those distinctions don’t hold up. Knowing how you lead, what motivates you, and where you’re most effective can be a powerful source of agency — even when systems are slow to change.” 

Leadership, she added, doesn’t require fitting a single mold. “It requires staying visible, staying engaged, and leading authentically in ways that align with who you are — even when recognition comes later than it should.” 

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About Hogan Assessments: The international leader in personality insights, Hogan Assessments produces valid, reliable personality assessments grounded in decades’ worth of research. More than 75% of the Fortune 500 use Hogan’s talent acquisition and development solutions to hire the right people without bias, boost productivity, reduce turnover, and promote diversity and inclusion. For more information, visit hoganassessments.com.