Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how women managers themselves interpret the factors that constrain and those that facilitate management careers for women. We will do this by first reviewing some of the interpretations that have been put forward in the academic literature to explain the relatively small number of women managers and particularly the small number of very senior women managers. In the light of these interpretations, we will examine the opinions of a sample of intermediate and senior women managers in the public and private sectors in Ontario and Québec. More specifically we will look at their answers to questions about what blocks and what facilitates management careers for women generally and what obstacles they themselves have met. We will then compare their interpretations of their own career development with the interpretations that exist in the literature