Career consultant Antoinette Gyan has called on stakeholders to create a support system to enable women to effectively work in leadership.

She says this can be achieved in many ways, including words of encouragement from family and work colleagues, providing equal opportunities and salary payment as their male counterparts, as well as a balanced work life.

These systems, she said, will help improve their leadership skills and encourage females to take up such roles.

According to the career consultant, the majority of females are scared to be leaders due to the wrong perception people hold of women. 

As a result, much is expected of women to put in effort in the performance of their duties, hence the need to create a support system that will help interested female leaders function well within their working environments.

"We can’t act in a vacuum as if males have the same responsibilities as females. We have to look at it, not because we say, "Go and be a female leader," so just go and do it. We have to create the support system for women to be able to function," she urged on Prime Morning on Monday.

Males are considered to be suited for leadership positions than females, especially in Africa.

This, according to her, has weakened females’ interest in taking up such responsibilities; they feel they are being discriminated against.

"Sometimes, females are not attracted to leadership. They don’t have an appetite for it. The reason is the stereotyping and also where there’s this norm that leadership is a male thing and not a female thing because there are various types of leaders and tasks.

The career consultant further pointed out that women are afraid to assume leadership positions because of motherhood responsibilities.

Another reason she mentioned is that some women feel it is too burdensome to combine both parental responsibilities and corporate duties.

She has entreated young females to get mentors and role models who are corporate leaders to help shape their careers.

Lawyer and human relations practitioner at Acreaty Ghana, Elsie Appau, who also spoke on the show, indicated that the negative effects of stereotyping against a gender are felt not only by the individual but by society as a whole.

She said such attitudes limit the career growth of the victims involved.

However, consistent learning and career development are key ways of changing the narrative and proving that females are just as capable as males.