Sixty years ago, executive leadership was considered no place for women. Six decades of women succeeding at the top of companies have proven that outmoded belief wrong.

Texas A&M researchers surveyed 193 U.S. senior executives across industries for the latest installment of a Harvard Business Review study first conducted in 1965 and repeated every 20 years since. Authors Dwayne Whitten, Wendy R. Boswell and Susan Oldroyd found that attitudes about women in leadership have improved considerably over the past 60 years. In 1965, many male executives objected to women in management not because of their competence or leadership skill, but because they believed the executive suite simply wasn’t a place for women.

In the years since, women have proved that they not only belong, they quantifiable make companies they lead more successful. Grant Thornton’s “ Women in Business 2026 ” report found that companies with gender-balanced leadership teams are more likely to report stronger revenue and workforce growth. The 1965 belief that women didn’t belong in leadership wasn't just biased and, frankly, untrue; it was bad business.

Women Report Experiencing Gendered Promotion Criteria While Men Describe Meritocracy

Despite the business case for gender equity in leadership, a majority of women leaders say they are held to a higher standard than their male counterparts. When the Texas A&M researchers asked whether women must be more exceptional than men to succeed, 83% of women agreed, compared with 28% of men. This misalignment extends to the way decisions about upward mobility are made. The researchers found that just 37% of women feel promotion criteria are applied equally across genders, versus 70% of men. In other words, as the study noted, “merit is interpreted rather than simply measured,” and while women experience this first hand, most men don’t seem to notice.

The Texas A&M researchers also point to data on how few women reach the roles that lead to CEO. Women held just 16% of COO positions in 2025, a role executive-search data identifies as one of the most common advancement paths to CEO. The researchers note that women more often advance into support functions like HR and legal than into operational P&L roles, and that recent C-suite gains came from companies creating new support-function positions rather than women breaking into operational ones. Grant Thornton’s research reinforces this, finding that in the U.S., women hold 46% of CHRO roles, 38% of CMO roles, yet only 28% of CEO positions.

A Lack of Clarity Around Advancement Holds Back Women’s Careers

A study titled “ Whether to Apply ,” published in the journal Management Science , analyzed what happens when companies aren’t clear about specific job requirements. The researchers posted real jobs on the freelancing platform Upwork, tracked who applied, and then ran the same test again with 2,243 U.S. participants. In the experiment, when the requirements for a higher-paying role were left vague, only 6% of qualified women applied, compared to 22% of qualified men. Contrastingly, when the requirements were stated explicitly, 29% of qualified women applied, while the percentage of qualified men who applied remained the same. Nothing about the job itself or the women changed. Only the information available to them did.

Gender Biases Work Against Women At Every Level

Higher standards and greater scrutiny for women in the workplace combined with a lack of clarity when it comes to hiring and promotion requirements may both contribute to women’s lagging career advancement. And this is in addition to other gender biases that typically take root earlier in a woman’s career. As previously reported , the broken rung, the barrier that often keeps women from being promoted into their first management role, remains one of the most significant hurdles women face when advancing in their careers.

And later on, the glass cliff compounds the problem. The Texas A&M researchers describe the glass cliff as women being appointed to leadership roles during moments of organizational crisis. This often leads to what the researchers call the “Savior Effect,” where women are ultimately pushed out of their positions and replaced by white, male leaders. The failure is then attributed to the woman’s leadership rather than the pre-existing crisis, discouraging boards from making similar appointment decisions in the future.

The researchers also reference "prove-it-again" bias, where women are presumed to lack competence until they show otherwise, then asked to show it again. Men aren’t held to the same requirement. As the researchers put it, men's mistakes are "absorbed into an overall favorable impression” while women’s mistakes “are catalogued.”

Three Ways Companies Can Overcome The Factors Stalling Women’s Careers

Each of these biases in one way or another stems from an unexamined judgment or an unstated requirement. Three structured solutions can help companies address these patterns systemically.

  1. Identify the informal dynamics that lead to bias: The Texas A&M researchers noted one woman respondent who was hired to succeed her organization’s departing CFO. Despite being vetted and approved for the position, she was asked to join a board dinner but not the actual board meeting, so that board members who had already approved her could "become comfortable" with her in the role. As the researchers note, "no policy was violated," which is what makes the situation difficult to address. The researchers suggest companies take a closer look at the unwritten habits that often decide who gets noticed, coached and trusted with leadership responsibilities.
  2. Clearly define role requirements: The researchers also point out that merit often gets interpreted rather than measured when role requirements aren’t specified. They cite research showing that managers at organizations considered meritocracies actually exhibit more bias in favor of men over equally performing women. This was because when managers assume the system is fair, they are less likely to examine their perceptions for potential biases. The researchers argue that predefined criteria and clear career pipelines for roles that lead to executive leadership can reduce the potential for subjective, biased judgments to substitute for actual job qualifications.
  3. Make career conversations routine: Katherine Coffman, a Harvard Business School professor who coauthored "Whether to Apply," found that companies aren't always aware of how much bias affects which workers put themselves forward to advance. In an interview with Harvard Business School's Institute for Business in Global Society, she offered the company Progress Software as an example. According to Coffman, women at the company were less likely to have career conversations with their managers and, as a result, struggled to understand how they could move up. The organization responded by requiring that managers have quarterly career conversations with every employee where they map clear promotion pathways. As Coffman put it, this ensures that applying for senior roles is "a routine expectation rather than an act of self-advocacy," which in turn "can level the playing field."

Women were once told they didn't belong at the top of companies. Now they run them, and the companies they lead perform better for it. That’s extraordinary progress, and it happened because attitudes centered on bias around women in leadership changed. Now what’s standing between women and leadership isn’t a belief about whether they’re capable. It’s a set of unfair standards, unchecked biases, and unclear expectations that make it harder for women to reach leadership. The tools to support women's careers already exist. What's missing is the decision to define the standards, put them in writing, and apply them consistently.