By JOYCE HOOI

It is turning out to be easier for local women to scale Mount Everest than the corporate ladder, even as they put in more hours, according to a survey of over 700 female finance and accounting professionals by Robert Half Singapore and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.

A startling 45 per cent of respondents do not expect to reach a senior management position within finance and accounting, while 39 per cent work for firms that do not have any women on their board of directors.

Data compiled by BT in January found that just 6.5 per cent of the 5,209 director positions in listed companies here were held by women.

'The empirical data would suggest there is a glass ceiling in Singapore. SMEs in particular tend to rely on their network to appoint directors, and their network is predominantly male,' said Tim Hird, managing director of Robert Half Singapore.

Respondents cited the male-oriented nature of management and a shift in priorities towards attaining a better work-life balance as reasons for their pessimism about advancement opportunities.

While women hold out faint hope for higher-level advancement, they are by no means doing less work.

In what the report called an 'alarming trend', 74 per cent of the survey's respondents reported working longer hours than a year ago, the two primary reasons being greater responsibility and bigger workload.

On average, women in finance and accounting work 46.1 hours per week, or 48.9 hours if they are in large organisations, according to the survey. In Europe, average weekly hours range from 35 to 40, according to Mr Hird.

Single women without children have borne the brunt of the longer hours, making up 47 per cent of the women who have been spending more time in the office.

While 56 per cent of female employees picked out flexible hours as one of the most desired benefits, only 36 per cent of them are offered this benefit, which applies only to working mothers.

'There is clearly an imbalance between the needs of female employees and what companies are offering,' said Mr Hird.

It is telling but not surprising then that, in this economy, 53 per cent of women are willing to take a pay cut for a job with a better work-life balance.

'The best employee in a company could be a 35-year-old mother of two, but if she does not get the support she needs, she's going to leave for another company that meets her needs,' Mr Hird said.

Singapore slipped from 65th place in 2006 on the Gender Gap Index to 77th place in 2007. In 2008, it was ranked 84th out of 130 countries.

This article was first published in The Business Times.