How Ready for the Future Do Women Feel? - Building Gender Balanced Business

Accenture quizzed 4,100 business professionals around the world to see how ready they felt they and their country were for the challenges of 2011. The results show that women have great concerns about how they will handle the increasingly globalized and technical nature of the business world.

• Neither men nor women feel particularly ready for the challenges of 2011. But women, at 43%, were even less likely than men, at 47%, to say they possess the necessary skills to succeed.

• The richer the country, the more qualms the respondents had. Also, the older the respondent, the more likely she or he was to report concerns about skills possessed.

• The most confident women were in India (at 68% of respondents) and South Africa (63%); the least confident were in France (24%) and Britain (26%). Only 32% of women in Germany and Sweden expressed comfort. Brazilian women deemed their peers to be the best equipped for the challenges they face.

• Women reported themselves as better prepared in four of the six skills categories Accenture measured, trailing men only in Agility (“willingness to take on added responsibilities and complexity”).

• Around the world, women deem technology to be the most important skill for future business success. They overwhelmingly said they are ready to take on the challenge of mastering technology. On average, they reported themselves to be slightly more prepared in technology skills than men.

• Women were much more likely than men to rate their own ambition as a leading factor in their success to date.

• Women expressed greatest concern about their ability to build better global business relations, a skill they also deemed among the most critical in the increasingly globalized future for business.

• 22% of women said needing to spend time with their families had significantly hindered their careers; only 14% of men said so.

Download the 27-page One Step Ahead of 2001 report