Addis Ababa — There may be greater number of students in the finance field of study, but it is highly unlikely that women will reach on top in the professions ladder, a research said on Wednesday.

The research conducted by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) reveals that over 63% of finance leaders felt that it was easier for men to become finance leaders than for women.

The study was conducted on over 3,381 ACCA members, plus in-depth interviews with 19 finance leaders from 116 countries, including Ethiopia.

Make no mistake though that this was not anything to do with there intellectual capacity but something related to their 'work-life balance', the study said noting that was a dominant reason (67%).

Institutional bias and cultural expectations, however, were cited by 46 of respondents as barriers in the survey "Clearly, this remains an issue for the profession and employers to focus on more as insufficient progress appears to have been made in the last few decades," the study observes.

The research defines 'finance leaders' as 'professionally qualified accountant who have reached senior management roles, for example CEO, CFO, FD, managing partner or a director The results of the research were made public at half day session held under the theme: World Class Leadership Development in the Global Finance Profession: ACCA Insights and Perspectives, at the Sheraton Addis.

The study further stated other two financial barriers to develop financial leaders in general, involving men and women.

The study identified low investment in leadership development and poor HR capability in developing leaders as the two most significant barriers to developing financial leaders Speaking on the occasion, Head of Learning and Development, ACCA international Tony Osude said during the session financial profession and its leaders should come up into a consensus He said the low investment appears to be related to another finding that is the ". . . lack of buy-in from the top" "It is widely recognized that programmes without such sponsorship will rarely succeed, therefore finance profession and its leader have some work to do in order to catch up with current good practice," he said indicating the indirect role of finance leaders through sponsorship.

The research points out five attributes, outside management and technical knowledge, which are seen as being very important for finance leaders to be able to demonstrate.