No one today has everything they need within themselves to grow and become successful. The most successful people in the world – whether they be CEOs, elite sportspeople, doctors, entrepreneurs, experts of every kind or leaders in their chosen fields – will acknowledge that they didn't get there on their own. Other people helped them, inspired them, mentored or coached them.

As women moving up the ladder we tend to believe that we advance our careers and attain leadership by working hard. We make a 150% commitment. We give loyalty. We strive to excel by gaining additional qualifications. Behind the scenes we get a coach or mentor to improve our performance. Then we realise, after nothing happens, that it doesn't work that way.

Men, on the other hand, believe that their career is advanced by who they are close to, by knowing the right people. They devote significant amounts of time to developing these relationships. They get the right introductions. They belong to the right organisations. They take leadership positions on the right committees. They build their profile in their industry or professional group. They also make sure they are known and recognised as someone who wants to go somewhere, someone with leadership potential.

Most women have reservations about doing that. If they by chance meet the "right people" that is O.K., but it not O.K. to go out and consciously and deliberately look for the right people who will advance their careers and endeavour to build relationships with them for that purpose.

It's certainly not part of their nature to get someone who knows someone to set up introductions for them. They don't give conscious and deliberate thought to which organisations it is important to belong to for the growth of their careers. They don't either carefully plan how to make space in their lives so that they have the time to make a commitment to them by taking a leadership position on their committee or board. They feel very uneasy about putting themselves out there, where everyone knows they are on a journey to the top. They do, however, talk about wanting to make a difference, but they don't openly and deliberately focus on getting to the top. They often take a quieter, back road and hope they arrive.

Today millions of women in Australia will go to work and be paid 17 cents less per hour than their male colleague doing the same work in the office beside them.

They will earn $237.50 less this week than that same male colleague.

They would have to work an extra 63 days in 2011 to end up with the same pay as that colleague at the end of the year.

In 2011, it hardly seems comprehensible that this situation could continue to exist.

It is now more than 30 years since the equal pay for equal work legislation was passed in Australia. Some progress has been made, but there is still a long way to go when the conditions above still exist. 

I wrote about this last year on Equal Pay Day. Not wanting to repeat myself I went back to check what I wrote last year. To my surprise nothing has changed. I could have produced the same article.

Many women, when they find out that their employers are paying them less than their male colleagues, just feel so betrayed and cheated that they don't want to work for that organisation anymore and begin looking for another job.

Others, will try to correct the situation by going through all the appropriate channels - talking with their manager and HR. If that fails they also will look for work elsewhere.

If there was an easy or obvious answer to the question of why women are not more strongly represented in management and leadership positions, the situation would have rapidly been reversed long ago. In recent years there has been a growing realisation by companies that they are losing enormous expertise, knowledge, experience, skills and insight as women decline management and leadership positions, opt out once they arrive or don’t return to their leadership position after maternity leave. More disconcerting for some of these companies is the fact that, in spite of their concerted efforts, making changes in their organisations that they believe will retain their women managers and leaders, they are not successful.

Is this the glass ceiling? Some women will want to debate whether there is a glass ceiling that prevents women from attaining positions of senior leadership. These are the women who have made it. They are also the women who we want to openly and honestly share their experience of how they did it because many women are not making it. The question is, however, whether it is a glass ceiling presenting an impermeable boundary to women as they climb the leadership ladder that stops them going further, or whether as women get to the top of the ladder – or even near it – they do not like what they see and experience and choose not to stay, or even go there.

What are some of the challenges women experience as they aspire to leadership and management positions in companies and organisations.

• Some corporate cultures are foreign territory for women. They operate in ways that conflict with their value systems and challenge their sense of who they are and want to be. It becomes difficult therefore for women to find places to grow and develop in these cultures.

Many women don’t like the way some men “do” leadership. They don’t like the way these men put themselves so out there. They see them as very ego-driven.  Their leadership style is very much about them. They go after what they want very directly and specifically. This doesn’t sit well with women’s socialization and upbringing. Nor does it sit well with the way they want to create their relationships and connections.

A colleague over a 15-20 year period has therefore  been around my workplace quite a bit over the years in a number of capacities. The other day she asked me a question that I actually hadn't thought about for many years.

Why don't you ever have photos of your family around your offices?

She went on to say that in all the years she's known me and been in and out of my office many times, she's never seen a sign of photos of my family.

As a consultant also, she reminded me that she is in and out of many offices with her work and like me, sees many family photos prominently displayed around men's offices.

It was a very deliberate action on my part, many years ago when I set up my own business, not to have family photos around my work. I'm not sure that much has changed 20 years later, but certainly back in 1989 there was the attitude that women with children were a questionable item in some ways. It was not voiced publicly. That would have been politically incorrect even back then. 

It was assumed that we would put our family first before our work. That would then demonstrate that we were not committed, did not have the drive and commitment to succeed. That would then demonstrate that we probably couldn't make the hard decisions that needed to be made in business. In fact, there were a whole range of assumptions that followed on from all of that.

Assumptions have a unique ability to become beliefs and beliefs to become facts. These "facts" then shaped women's potential to advance their careers.

Today is the 100 year anniversary of International Women’s Day (IWD), a public holiday in many countries -even if not in Australia yet!

It was 1908 that the “first” International Women’s Day saw 15,000 women march through the streets of New York, protesting working conditions and better pay, as well as the right to vote. It was 1910 at an International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen that IWD was enshrined as an annual event.

Jayne Jennings and Val McDougall are two colleagues of mine from Queensland who share my passion and commitment to wanting to make a difference to the lives of women.

They have an online business called Guilt Free Business Mothers - www.GuiltFreeBusinessMothers.com - that provides tips, information, interviews with experts and a range of resources to make the lives of mothers in business easier.

The recently did an hour long interview with me exploring the question as to whether the leadership traits we demonstrate as women are actually letting us down.

If you’re reading this blog post, then you are one of the hundreds of women out there wanting to advance and grow their careers. I’m sure, however, that you all have a variety of motivations for doing that. I asked two groups of women, who did a workshop with me on “Growing Your Career”, why they wanted to grow their careers. Here are some of their responses.

“I know I have talent, expertise and potential and I want to develop it and use it.”

“I’m ambitious, and I have a vision for my life and goals I want to fulfil.”

"I’m a bit of a trail blazer. The idea of breaking through barriers, e.g., the famous glass ceiling, is a challenge that I find exciting!”

“I love the buzz of pushing the boundaries and discovering new challenges.”

“I want to prove to all the men in my family, who I don’t think really believe in my capabilities, that I have as much ability as they do.”