In France, the proportion of women in the management committees of large companies remains minority, despite successive laws on parity and professional equality. Initiatives are multiplying, discourses are evolving, but progress towards positions of responsibility remains slow. The glass ceiling, this invisible barrier that hinders women’s access to leadership roles, continues to shape careers in most sectors.
Internal practices of companies: the real lock of the glass ceiling
For a long time, the dominant explanation for the glass ceiling relied on individual factors: lack of self-confidence, self-censorship, personal career choices. This perspective is losing ground. Men and women surveyed in recent studies increasingly reject the argument that women do not want responsibilities.
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The identified barriers are now structural. Recruitment through informal co-optation, a culture of long hours, and internal networks that are almost exclusively male: these practices exclude female candidates without any explicitly discriminatory decisions being made. The issue does not lie in women’s competence, but in the invisible selection mechanisms within organizations.
Initiatives led by organizations like futureaufeminin.org document these dynamics and support women’s professional journeys by acting on collective levers rather than solely on individual will.
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In practical terms, a woman holding a middle management position in a company where promotions occur through informal dinners or recommendations among male peers finds herself excluded from the decision-making circuit, regardless of her measurable performance.
Impostor syndrome and internal barriers: what coaching reveals
The psychological aspect of the glass ceiling is receiving increasing attention in support programs. Structured coaching pathways aimed at executives and entrepreneurs focus on what some practitioners call the hidden archetype that hinders professional advancement.
Three internal barriers frequently recur in these support programs:
- The impostor syndrome, which leads experienced professionals to downplay their achievements and hesitate before applying for a higher position.
- The relationship with money and salary negotiation, often marked by a form of self-censorship from the early years of one’s career.
- The internalization of leadership norms coded as masculine (assertiveness, speaking up in meetings, direct conflict management), which leads some women to adapt their style instead of valuing their own approaches.
These programs do not claim to replace policies for professional equality. They complement them, addressing a field that laws and quotas cannot cover: the perception that women have of their own legitimacy.
Heritage and historical models: a lever for female leadership
One angle that is still underutilized in corporate policies concerns the use of heritage, meaning the visibility of pioneering women’s trajectories, as a tool for professional development. Conferences and training sessions in companies draw on stories of historical female figures to deconstruct implicit leadership norms.
The idea is not to produce an inspirational discourse disconnected from daily life. It is based on a documented observation: the visibility of past female pathways changes the perception of what is accessible. When a young executive discovers that a woman led a department similar to hers decades ago, under far more hostile conditions, it reframes the norm.
This approach distinguishes itself from traditional mentoring programs by its collective dimension. It does not rely on the individual relationship between a mentor and a mentee, but on the construction of a shared narrative within a team or organization.
Equality policies in companies: between legal obligations and real effects
Legal obligations regarding professional equality have strengthened in recent years in France. The gender equality index requires companies to publish their results, and sanctions are imposed in case of insufficient scores. Quotas in boards of directors have led to significant female representation at this level.
However, feedback from the field varies regarding the actual effect of these measures at intermediate levels. Having women on a board of directors does not guarantee that internal promotion practices change at operational levels. The discrepancy between gender-balanced governance and daily management remains a blind spot in many corporate policies.
Several areas could be strengthened for legal obligations to translate into concrete results:
- Regular audits of promotion processes, not just recruitment, to identify the stages where female applications disappear.
- Training for middle managers on selection biases, as most career decisions are made at their level.
- Transparency regarding promotion criteria, to replace informal co-optation with documented processes.
The glass ceiling cannot be broken by a single lever. Available data shows that the most tangible advances combine legal constraints, transformation of internal practices, and individual support. None of these three axes, taken in isolation, is sufficient to sustainably change women’s professional trajectories within organizations.