According to the 26th Commission for Employment Equity Annual Report (2025/2026), women in the private sector accounted for 27.6% of employees at top management level in 2025. These statistics show that we can’t assume that the leadership pipeline has corrected itself simply because more women are visible in senior positions. One of the critical barriers to growth for women in the workplace is a subtle, unconscious bias that presents itself in the frameworks organisations use to identify leaders. That is why the real issue is whether organisations are equally capable of recognising leadership when it does not conform to a familiar mould.

Principle versus practice

Many leadership frameworks appear neutral, relying on concepts such as visibility, confidence, influence, availability, networking and decision-making authority. Frameworks, however, do not operate in a vacuum. While they may appear inclusive in principle, the way in which these qualities are recognised and rewarded can look different in practice. 

Organisational psychologists have long described a phenomenon known as “think manager, think male” – a form of unconscious bias, in which our mental image of a leader is more closely associated with traditionally “masculine” characteristics. It can operate quietly in the background of workplace dynamics and decision-making, influencing who is seen as having leadership potential. 

Leadership has long been associated with qualities such as confidence, decisiveness, authority and assertiveness. None of these qualities are inherently male. The challenge, however, is that we may be more accustomed to recognising them as leadership traits when they are displayed by men, while responding differently when women exhibit the same characteristics. 

A decisive man may readily fit our mental model of a leader, while a woman exercising the same degree of authority may find herself navigating a narrower line between being perceived as confident and being perceived as difficult. The root of this kind of thinking runs deep and is an infamously complex knot of assumptions to unravel.

Start asking the right questions

Each step along the management pipeline creates (or fails to create) access to the experience, responsibility and visibility from which future leaders are developed. The challenge is therefore not only to focus on promotion at the point of decision, but to ensure that women are supported and given meaningful opportunities to progress from the earliest stages of their careers. 

Without this level of support, women are made to contend with a gauntlet of invisible barriers and hurdles along the way to senior appointment. Those barriers can affect who gains experience, who is seen, who is sponsored and ultimately, who is considered ready for the next level. 

In South Africa, the Commission for Employment Equity has identified a significant gap between women’s representation in lower and middle management and their representation further up the organisational hierarchy. 

Its 2025 analysis points to encouraging growth in women’s representation at lower-to-middle management levels but also shows that this progress has not yet translated into meaningful gains at senior and top management levels.

These findings should prompt organisations to look beyond who ultimately reaches the top and examine the pathways that lead there. Critical questions include: who is given the opportunity to manage significant work? Who receives acting appointments, sponsorship and exposure to decision-makers? Who is deliberately developed and positioned for the next level? 

Are informal appointment processes the problem?

Not every leadership opportunity needs to be allocated through a formal application process. The risk arises when informal networks become the primary gateway to advancement. If the most valuable assignments, acting opportunities, client exposure, training and access to senior decision-makers are repeatedly allocated through personal networks or familiarity, organisations can lose sight of who is being developed – and who is being overlooked.

From an employment equity perspective, this matters because the Employment Equity Act is concerned not only with final appointments, but with employment policies and practices more broadly. Mentoring, coaching, acting opportunities and challenging work assignments can all play an important role in employee development. Organisations should therefore consider whether access to these opportunities is being distributed fairly, using clear criteria and monitoring patterns that may reveal who is consistently being developed, and who is being overlooked. 

The gendered lens on leadership

Section 6 of the Employment Equity Act prohibits both direct and indirect unfair discrimination in employment policies and practices, including on the grounds of gender and sex. A seemingly neutral criterion can therefore become problematic if, in practice, it systematically disadvantages a protected group and cannot be justified.

This does not mean that every difference in outcome amounts to unlawful discrimination. Context matters. So does the connection to the protected ground, the actual impact of the practice and whether there is a legitimate justification for it.  But employers should be willing to interrogate apparently neutral criteria when they repeatedly produce materially different outcomes. 

Sometimes the first sign that a system is not as neutral as it appears is not an overtly discriminatory decision, but a pattern. This is why data matters. But data on its own is not transformation. The real work lies in being willing to ask what sits behind the numbers, to understand the context in which those patterns emerge, and to act on what they reveal. 

Because once a pattern is visible, neutrality can no longer mean simply leaving the system untouched.

Written by Elgene Lutshiti, Director, Pro Bono & Human Rights Practice at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr