Career peculiarities of female leaders in Russia and Germany

<p align="center">Annotation</p><p>The number of women taking leadership positions in a modern world is constantly growing, and today female directors, according to manifold researchers, are very interested in building a career and revealing and developing their skills and competencies. However, in spite of the fact that the subjective factors like a women&rsquo;s wish to move along the career ladder are presented, the society does not always give these women the opportunity to fulfill their aspiration. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a comparative analysis of factors of career advancement of women, who take leadership positions. To achieve the goal a detailed description of career of female leaders based on previous research works was performed, the questionnaire was composed and the women who are currently working in private sector&rsquo;s organizations were interviewed. Additionally, the comparative analysis of obtained empirical data was conducted. Furthermore, a more detailed description of career peculiarities of Russian respondents was made in order to use this paper in the sphere of career consulting and planning. It was found out that the most significant obstacle for the career advancement that the two groups of respondents mentioned is &ldquo;the dominance of the patriarchal culture&rdquo;, which includes existing prejudices, stereotypes, unequal career opportunities and biased appraisal of women&rsquo;s work. However, the differences between the two groups were detected, in terms of family responsibilities as an obstacle for a career development. Speaking about the driving forces, &ldquo;joy from the work, sincere interest in the profession&rdquo; and &ldquo;self-actualization&rdquo; were selected as the ones that stimulate to work and gain career success the most. The driving force named &ldquo;money reward&rdquo; was appraised differently by German and Russian female leaders as well. The two groups, however, prefer to overcome the hurdles of the external environment on their way to a successful career using the methods of above-average performance and building efficient and useful networks, which is another similar career peculiarity for the German and Russian female directors.</p>