National Sports Associations, National and International Sports Federations and even International Olympic Committee continue to struggle meeting the 20% representation quota of women in executive boards. Although women’s representation as athletes, coaches and officials increased in national and international sports competitions but not in leadership particularly in top positions. In sports leadership, empirical research showed statistical figures that women have gained access in leadership pipeline however, they still lack in representing the executive boards. This study is a part of a larger phenomenological investigation which purpose was to identify factors that may influence the persistent underrepresentation of women in top leadership position. From a purposive maximum variation sampling of seven participants, top women leaders in Malaysia national sports organisations were interviewed about their career path and experiences on how and why women top leaders continue to lag behind with their male counterparts. Results suggest self-limiting behaviors, work-life conflict and interpersonal relationships among other women contributed to the underrepresentation of women in top positions. Factors attributed to social perception of gender and leadership roles incongruence also limited women leaders’ access in organisations which subsequently contributed to pipeline problem. Moreover, participants offered suggestions in overcoming the challenges and personal strategies in advancing opportunities and career development.

Leadership is the process of influencing an organized group toward accomplishing common set goals, and it can also be defined as the ability of an individual to establish direction for a working group of individuals who gain commitment from this group of members to this direction and who then motivate these members to achieve the direction's outcomes. Leadership, however, requires neither gender qualifications nor someone with communal or agentic characteristics but one with instinct potential to fulfil responsibilities. The purpose of the current study was to investigate how women leaders perceive the underrepresentation of women in top sport leadership positions in Malaysia. Guided by an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach, data were collected through in-depth, face to face semi structured interviews, observations and document analysis involving seven women leaders in national sport organizations. The findings showed that women were underrepresented in top leadership positions and the subjects revealed perceived barriers which they believe impede women's ascend in top leadership positions. These barriers include personal limitations which include self-limiting behaviors and work-life conflict among women; sociocultural factors consisting of traditional practices and society's perceptions; and organizational factors consisting of all-men's network, gender discrimination and conflict among women. It was concluded that the underrepresentation of women sport leaders is a vicious cycle where there is a chain of events in which the response to one difficulty creates a new problem that intensify and aggravate the original situation.

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