????牛頓投資管理公司（Newton Investment Management）總部位于倫敦，共管理著880億美元的資產。海倫娜?莫里西是這家公司的CEO——同時，她還是9個孩子的母親。

????沒錯，是9個孩子。

????人們可能覺得，一邊養育一堆子女，一邊晉升到一家主要金融公司的最高管理層，這簡直是不可能的事。然而莫里西認為，人們對女性領導者的認識和她們的實際狀況之間存在脫節。莫里西請了一位保姆，她的丈夫也在家全職照料家庭，但已是商業巨擘的她確信：養育子女并不是職業晉升的障礙。而現在就有一個研究結果支持她的觀點。

????莫里西創辦了30%俱樂部（30% Club），致力于提高英國女性管理者的人數。6月一個周三的晚上，彭博社紐約辦公室舉辦了一場活動。其間，這家俱樂部在美國首次發布了有關人們對職場女性誤解的研究結果。30%俱樂部與咨詢公司畢馬威（KPMG）和商業心理學公司YSC合作，共調查了全球100多家公司的數據，評估了近10,000人給出的反饋，同時還和大約100名來自組織層面的女性（及數名男性高管）進行了面談。調查結果表明，在藐視限制職場女性發展的性別障礙上，莫里西不是唯一的一個人。

????下面是這項研究針對的7個主要誤解：

????誤解1：養育子女妨礙女性升遷

????真相：生育子女對女性職業發展的總體影響可能比人們認為的要小。統計數據上，有子女和沒有子女的女性所得到的晉升次數沒有明顯的差異。然而，男性得到升職的機率還是比女性高得多：在整個職業道路上，男性得到5次以上晉升的比例是38%，而女性只有29%。

????誤解2：女性無法升至高層是因為缺乏信心

????真相：女性的風險意識極高，這使得他們比男同事更為腳踏實地。這一點卻通常被誤解為：女性沒有男性自信。然而，研究人員發現，在上級的鼓勵下，男性和女性爭取升職的機率沒有任何差異。

????誤解3：女性對高級領導角色沒有渴望

????真相：在英國商界開始職業生涯的人中，男性晉升到執行委員會的機率比女性大4.5倍。但是，女性的職業抱負一點不亞于男性。事實上，在判斷成功的因素時，男性和女性給出的兩項最重要標準是相同的：做真正有意思的事，建立積極的工作關系。

????誤解4：女性不會為達到最高管理層而堅持不懈

????真相：研究人員發現，沒有任何證據表明，放棄事業的女性比男性人數多。然而，對于在執行委員會以下一級或兩級的女性來說，她們得到內部升職的機率要比男同事低2倍。

????Helena Morrissey is the CEO of Newton Investment Management, a London-based firm with $88 billion under management. Morrissey is also the mother of nine children.

????Yes, nine.

????The masses might think that getting to the top of a major finance company while raising a full gaggle of kids is impossible. Yet Morrissey believes a disconnect exists between perceptions of women leaders and what women are experiencing on the ground. Yes, Morrissey has a nanny and her husband is a stay-at-home father, but the business tycoon is convinced that childrearing is not a barrier to getting to the very top of the corporate ladder. Now she has the research to back up her hunch.

????During an event Wednesday night at Bloomberg’s New York offices, Morrissey’s 30% Club, an organization committed to advancing female managers in the U.K., debuted a study for the first time in the U.S. on myths that pervade the career choices of women in business. The 30% Club partnered with advisory firm KPMG and business psychology company YSC to survey data from more than 100 global companies, evaluate feedback on nearly 10,000 individuals, and interview roughly 100 women (plus several senior men) from all organizational level. The results support the idea that Morrissey is not the only one defying the gender barriers often prescribed to working women.

????Here are 7 major myths called into question by the study:

????Myth 1: Raising children stops women from getting to the top

????Reality: The total impact of having children on women’s career choices is less than people may believe. There is no statistically significant difference in the number of promotions between women with children and women without children. Still, men are promoted significantly more than women with 38% of men receiving more than five promotions throughout their careers as opposed to 29% of women.

????Myth 2: Women don’t get to the top because they lack confidence

????Reality: Women are keenly aware of risk, which keeps them more grounded in reality than their male colleagues. This often gets interpreted as women lacking confidence compared to their male peers, yet the research found no difference in the number of times that men and women make a career move only after being nudged by a superior to do so.

????Myth 3: Women don’t aspire to senior leadership roles

????Reality: Although men starting their careers in U.K. corporations are 4.5 times more likely to reach an executive committee than their female peers, women’s career aspirations do not differ from men’s. In fact, men and women define what matters most to success with the same top two criteria: Doing something intrinsically interesting and having positive working relationships.

????Myth 4: Women don’t stick it out to make it to the very top

????Reality: The researchers came away with no evidence that women are giving up on their careers in any greater numbers than their male colleagues. However, women at one or two levels below executive committee are two times less likely to be internally promoted then men.