Marla Nelson, founder of WomEnterprise, says the pipeline continues to be a problem for women working in middle as well as senior management positions. “We still have a glass ceiling effect where it is difficult for women, firstly, to be paid on par with their male counterparts and, also, to achieve quite senior level positions,” she explained. “Now, without the women in those [roles], how on earth are we going to feed these women into board positions?”

According to Christina Ioannidis and Nicola Walther,  co-authors of Your Loss: How to Win Back Your Female Talent, top performing business women are turning on their well-heeled shoes and walking out the door of some of the world’s best known companies. This in turn causes not only a shortage of women at senior level positions in organizations but a shortage of women who can be fed into the pipeline for board positions.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010 women comprised 46.7% of the labor force. Further, 58.6% of all women 16 years and over were in the labor force, compared to 71.2% of all men. And finally, women comprised 51.5% of management, professional and related positions.

So that brings me back to my original question. Which comes first: the leaky pipeline or the glass ceiling?
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