Gender equality remains elusive, even among the best management systems

No. Although it’s true that people who have managed others reached higher levels, the women and men in our study were equally likely at every career stage to have had direct reports.

We think that gender difference in advancement may reflect another problem altogether: bad first bosses.

Moving on

And so we circle back to those fate-sealing first jobs.

A quarter of the women in our study left their first job because of a difficult manager —nearly as many as those who moved on for more money (26 per cent) or for a career change (27 percent).

Only 16 per cent of the men left because of a difficult manager.

Of course, these results suggest that women and men may be treated differently by their first managers.

Once again, early-career success is proving to be crucial.

“It’s very important who your first or second supervisor is,” says Rick Waugh, president and CEO of Scotiabank, another research sponsor.

“Many times, that determines whether you’re going to stay with that organisation and how far you’re going to advance. That first landing spot — whether you get coached, developed, and mentored or you get a bad manager — casts the die. Companies need to put more emphasis on manager direct report relationships in that first job.”

Ms Carter is Catalyst’s vice- president of research and a visiting scholar at Insead. Ms Silva is a director of research at Catalyst.