Calling on organisations to do more to accelerate progress, EY has published a report that highlights how organisations can create more supportive environments for women to succeed and help companies and economies achieve greater economic returns.

The survey of leaders in 400 companies around the world was commissioned from Longitude Research by EY in response to an October 2014 report from the World Economic Forum that predicted it would take until 2095 to achieve global gender equality in the workplace.

The report, Women. Fast Forward: The Time For Gender Parity Is Now, asks what are the biggest barriers and accelerators to women’s career advancement.

Interestingly, men and women both believe that more female leadership leads to stronger companies, suggesting closing the gender gap may be, at this point, less reliant upon education and more dependent upon men and women working together to create supportive working environments that allow all talent to flourish.

While 33 per cent of women and 30 per cent of men agree that women must take a proactive approach to their own careers, this would not be enough to accelerate change, the report found.

Companies EY identified as “high performers” within the survey – those growing at more than 20 per cent on an annualised basis over the past three years – appear to be doing more than others to encourage women’s advancement.

The report identified three clear steps organisations can take to help accelerate gender equality: illuminate the path to leadership; speed up culture change with corporate policy change; and establish a supportive environment and work to eliminate conscious and unconscious bias.

http://ey.com/womenfastforward