Women managers — A wasted retail resource? Available to Purchase

Like catering or teaching, retailing is traditionally regarded as “women's work”. As such it suffers from the familiar downgrading of “feminised” industries with low pay, poor status, and few prospects. But, even in retailing, as one moves up the company hierarchy the numbers of women rapidly diminish — the boardrooms are, as elsewhere — strictly a male preserve. Why do so many women never make it beyond the bottom rung of the promotion ladder?