The Brief
- A Welsh survey raises concerns about flexibility, visibility and promotion.
- Its findings reflect respondents’ perceptions, not proof that hybrid work causes career setbacks.
- Separate experimental research shows hybrid work can support retention without reducing promotions.
- Sponsorship should provide access to consequential work, with transparent selection.
- Indian employers need to examine their own decisions rather than import another country’s conclusions.
Women and senior leadership roles: The race and the catch
Before a promotion panel meets, much of its work may already have been done. Someone has led the difficult account, controlled a budget or presented a recovery plan to the board. Someone else has kept the team running. Any serious conversation about women and senior leadership roles must begin with how those opportunities were distributed.
Our concern is with the advice that women must become more visible. Visibility can be useful. But when a capable employee has to do her job and then run a separate campaign to make decision-makers notice it, management has left part of its own job unfinished.
A new report from CBI Wales and the University of South Wales gives employers reason to examine that failure more closely.
Read the warning without blaming flexibility
The 2026 Women’s Leadership Benchmark for Wales draws on 220 voluntary online responses. Some 65% of respondents viewed flexible working as supporting women’s access to leadership, while 57% believed it reduced visibility to managers and senior leaders. Only 39% reported clear promotion pathways.
The researchers explicitly caution that this self-selected survey is not representative of the Welsh workforce as a whole. It captures experiences and perceptions at one point in time and cannot establish causation. These figures are neither Indian estimates nor a count of women denied promotion.
They nevertheless raise a useful question: Can an organisation make working arrangements more accommodating while leaving advancement dependent on informal access?
That question connects with the wider relationship between workplace conditions and women’s career progression. A flexible schedule offers limited reassurance if the important assignment goes to whoever happens to be nearest the person allocating it.
There is also evidence against treating hybrid work as inherently damaging. A randomised trial involving 1,612 graduate employees at Trip.com in China, published in Nature in 2024, tested two home-working days a week. It reduced quitting by a third and found no evidence of a difference in promotion rates over periods of up to two years.
That trial cannot settle every question about executive careers. It concerned one company and a particular arrangement, rather than fully remote work or every route to the boardroom. Still, it gives us good reason to resist a convenient conclusion that women must return to their desks to rescue their ambitions.
Who gets the experience that makes someone promotable?
Consider an illustrative promotion discussion. 2 managers have delivered strong results. One has been asked to lead a commercial turnaround and brief senior executives. The other has repeatedly resolved team problems, trained new colleagues and covered staffing gaps.
At review time, the first has evidence of strategic leadership. The second is praised for reliability.
There may be sound reasons to select either candidate. But the panel should investigate how one received the opportunity to demonstrate strategic ability while the other accumulated support work. A fair assessment at the final interview cannot, on its own, correct an unfair distribution of experience beforehand.
Sponsorship belongs here. A useful sponsor recommends someone for a demanding assignment, explains why they are ready and ensures their contribution reaches the people evaluating it. Advice alone cannot provide the authority to manage a budget.
Nor should sponsorship become a private favours system. Advertise significant assignments, explain selection criteria and allow employees to express interest. Senior leaders can advocate for talent while remaining accountable for whose talent they repeatedly choose.
Bias also deserves more precise treatment than a compulsory workshop. When a panel describes someone as lacking executive presence, it should explain the behaviour at issue.
- Was the recommendation unclear?
- Did the candidate mishandle disagreement?
- Could they not defend the numbers?
Those are assessable concerns. An unexplained impression gives stereotypes too much room.
India needs its own questions
A Welsh study cannot tell us how often these problems occur in an Indian bank, manufacturing business or technology company. Nor do all Indian women have the same resources, responsibilities or ambitions. Household support, disability, location, income and the nature of the job can change what an employee needs.
India’s own Time Use Survey supplies relevant context. In 2024, female participants aged six and above spent an average of 289 minutes a day on unpaid domestic services, compared with 88 minutes for male participants. These are averages among people doing that activity, not measurements of corporate leaders.
The data helps explain why redistributing domestic and care responsibilities deserves attention alongside workplace flexibility. Moving paid work home does not automatically create uninterrupted time or redistribute household labour.
Employers should also stop guessing which opportunities a woman will accept. A mother might welcome a regional role if travel is predictable. Another employee might decline it. Ask about the actual requirements and available support before making the decision for either of them.
Some senior jobs genuinely require travel, on-site judgement or urgent availability. Those requirements should be stated and tested against the work. A factory leader’s presence during a safety incident has a clear purpose. Habitually staying late to look committed requires a different justification.
Flexibility will therefore take different forms. For an on-site role, predictable rosters or advance travel planning may be more valuable than home-working days. Men should be able to use appropriate care arrangements too, so that responsibility for family life is not treated as a female exception.
Examine the decisions before the promotion
We would start with the last few senior appointments. Trace each successful candidate’s preceding assignments.
- Who received commercial responsibility, access to influential clients and opportunities to deputise?
- Who was considered but never asked?
- What reasons were recorded?
Then examine promotion outcomes by gender and working arrangement among employees in comparable roles, grades and eligibility groups. A difference should trigger investigation, not an automatic verdict. Small numbers, tenure and job requirements matter.
For employees, the conversation should produce something more useful than “keep doing what you’re doing”. Specify the capability still to be demonstrated, an assignment through which to demonstrate it, the support available and a review date. Where there is no vacancy or budget, say so. Development should not be sold as an implied promotion promise.
Senior leadership is demanding work. Women should be assessed seriously for it, including where they need further experience. The same seriousness should apply to examining who was allowed to acquire that experience.
Women and Senior Leadership Roles: Change the Route Up
We would judge an employer’s commitment to women’s leadership by the decisions that come before the announcement: who receives authority, who is trusted with consequential work and whose readiness gets a fair hearing.
Women can build networks and advocate for themselves. Managers must still know what their people contribute. A company that keeps asking capable women to become more visible should first ask why its own leaders cannot see the work.
Editorial note and sources
This independent opinion interprets the CBI–USW report alongside experimental hybrid-work research and Indian time-use data, checked on 18 October 2026. The Welsh survey is self-selected and non-representative; the Chinese trial concerns one employer; Indian time-use figures are not a leadership survey. Examples are hypothetical. Recommendations and judgements are the author’s, with no invented interviews or personal experiences.
- CBI Wales and University of South Wales: The 2026 Women’s Leadership Benchmark for Wales.
- University of South Wales: Findings announcement, 16 October 2026.
- Bloom, Han and Liang, Nature (2024): Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance.
- MoSPI: Time Use Survey 2024, official release.
