Young women poised to storm corporate world

Women aged 20 to 35 are more ambitious and more confident than older women, and they want to scale the career ladder.

This is according to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers of 8756 young career women from 75 countries, including 226 from South Africa.

Women aged 20 to 35, termed female millennials, will form 25% of the workforce by 2020.

"Millennials matter because they are not only different from those who have gone before, they are also more numerous than any since the soon-to-retire baby-boomer generation," the PwC report says.

The report tells corporates how to attract women to their firms.

These women were more interested in career advancement than high salaries, but financial reward was also important, it finds.

And 66% of them earned the same or more than their male spouse or partner.

The report says these women know they outperformed men at school and university and thus entered the workplace "highly confident and career ambitious".

But only 49% of women said they were likely to rise to the top at their current job, compared with 71% of men.

Fears that female millennials will stop work to have children are unfounded, with the report calling it a "myth".

But 97% said work-life balance was important to them. They wanted flexible starting times and companies that "valued performance over presence".

About 32% said they were denied flexible work hours.

Only 4% of women said they left jobs to spend more time with children. Most switched jobs for better pay, greater flexibility, career progression or more interesting work.