Are women better leaders than men?

Study shows that a majority of people visualize a man as a leader. Why is that? That is because we are used to see men in leadership roles. If you are a woman who leads a team or a man who reports to a female boss ask yourself. Who really occupies the top job, the corner suite in your organisation?

CNBC-TV18's special show What woman really wants explores why there are very few female leaders. Among the Fortune 500 companies only about 15% of senior managers and only about 3% of the CEOs are women.

This is what it looks like if we look at the situation in India. We moved from 12% in 2004 to 14% in 2012 and that is not bad if you actually consider that the global average has moved only from 19% in 2004 to 21% in 2012 over the last 8 years.

That's the kind of increase that we are seeing and are not doing too badly if you compare us with the US which comes in at 17% we are at about 14%. Whereas China comes in at about 25% and Russia comes in at a whopping 46%. Russia actually tops the chart and this might have something to do with the fact that promotional women was used to demonstrate equal opportunity in the former Soviet Union.

Equal opportunity and that is really the crux of the matter. But how does one define it? What should corporations be doing? What do men want? What do women want?

The numbers are indicative of the fact that this journey is not productive, easy or optimal for a lot of women in the workforce. Here are five quick reasons why women tend to opt out, take a look.