Having children hinders our career advancement: Female Execs

New global survey showed 45% of female executives feel their careers were "somewhat" stymied by child-bearing.

On the extreme scale, 8% believe motherhood limited their career progression to a "great extent," according to the latest Korn/Ferry Survey.

As such, many women often choose between rising in their career and becoming a mother.

"As further evidence of the challenge, 29 percent of the female respondents have either postponed (19 percent) or decided not to have children (10 percent) based on their careers," said the survey.

But on the other hand, 95 percent of female professionals think raising children has provided them with unique skills portable to the workplace. The top transferrable skills, according to the respondents, are motivating and inspiring others, learning agility (applying past experience in new ways) and confidence.

The study also highlighted the dramatic impact that technology is making on work-life balance in the context of parenting. Nearly 80 percent of working women believe that technology has made it much easier to balance work and family by connecting them to the workplace whenever and wherever they are.

Still, women continue to perceive work challenges unique to their gender, from career advancement ceilings to pay gaps.

"The survey also found that female respondents were evenly split on whether a "glass ceiling" still exists that limits their career progression (27 percent said "yes;" 23 percent said "no;" and 50 percent said "maybe," depending on the company or industry)," said Korn/Ferry Institute,

"Despite the split in perspectives, women still hold fewer than 15 percent of corporate executive positions at organizations globally, according to Korn/Ferry data. And a pay gap still exists across all levels of leadership, even among senior management posts. (Women earn 25 percent less than their male counterparts in the C-suite.)," it said.

"Such disparities remain, even though female executives often possess unique and difficult-to-develop attributes," it said further.

According to past Korn/Ferry research, women executives tend to excel more than their male counterparts at being integrative (the ability to process complex social information and inspire others), socially attuned (an ability to perceive subtle signals),and comfortable with ambiguity (the skill to "wing it" and make "good-enough-for-now" decisions until more data are available).

But the survey notes that female executives have hope for better career prospects in the future. According to the survey, 86 percent of the respondents believe females graduating from college in 2025 will have more career-advancement opportunities than today's working mothers.