London - it will come as welcome news to ambitious career women.
The dreaded glass ceiling, long believed to be keeping females out of senior positions, could be all in the mind, a report suggests.
According a survey by management experts, the biggest obstacle on women’s climb to the top is their level of confidence - not their gender.
And even though three quarters of women in senior jobs believe a gender glass ceiling does exist, only a third believe that their own careers have been held back by it.
The advance of women to company boardrooms is slowed not by discrimination but by the decisions of women workers themselves, the report also found.
The poll of 3,000 members of the Institute of Leadership and Management revealed that women managers have lower levels of ambition and confidence than their male counterparts.
Only 30 percent of women under the age of 30 said they expect to become senior managers, it found - compared with 45 percent of men.
Half of women managers said they have a high level confidence, against 70 percent of men.
Some 73 percent of women say there is a glass ceiling limiting their prospects of promotion - but only 36 percent of women feel their own careers have been hindered. Only 38 percent of men said that they believe women are held back.
And nearly half of female managers of all ages - 47 percent - believe there should be quotas of women in the boardroom.
ILM chief executive Penny de Valk said: “Women managers tend to lack self-belief and confidence at work compared with men.
“Women feel a greater sense of risk around promotion, which leads to a more cautious approach to career opportunities.”
The report said: “At every stage the career ambitions of women were found to lag behind those of their male counterparts.
“Fewer women than men have ambitions to reach middle management, department head, general management or director level.”
But women appeared to be far more confident when it comes to starting their own companies, the survey found.
It found more young women than men are looking to start and run their own business. One in four women aged under 30 said they were planning to start an enterprise in the next ten years, compared with one in five men in that age group.
“Women are not adjusting their expectations to the same degree when it comes to the risk of starting their own ventures,” Miss de Valk said.
The most recent figures on the gender pay gap show that women aged under 30 earn more than men. But women’s pay begins to lag behind after this - mainly because 30 is the age at which many women start easing off at work to spend time looking after their growing families.
The ILM study backs up the findings of a controversial report by London School of Economics researcher Dr Catherine Hakim, which said many women do not want careers, but aspire to having a successful husband and a family. - Daily Mail