Women have faced a struggle to gain acceptance as professionals in many sectors of the economy. For instance, in 1980 there were no female senior executives among Fortune 500 companies. And even today, only about 4 percent of the 200 top U.S. law firms have female, firm-wide managing partners.

But the outlook is changing. Claudia Zeisberger, academic director of Insead's Global Private Equity Initiative, predicts in a recent article that there will be a major shift with women increasingly being among the candidates who fulfill requirements for job vacancies. She calls it an “explosion” of talent.

Already, women made up about 18 percent of the senior Fortune 500 executives in 2011 “and, given enough time, this progress will catch up with contemporary, gender-egalitarian attitudes,” she said in the article. “It's time for companies and their shareholders to recognize this demographic change and turn it into an opportunity.”