Australia's top 100 companies employ about half the number of female chief financial officers their international peers do, according to new research.
The research highlights a significant gender disparity despite women holding just as many jobs in the accounting and finance industry workforces as men.
Research compiled by workplace diversity researcher and adviser Conrad Liveris showed there were six female chief financial officers at Australia's 100 biggest listed companies in   February compared with 11 in the 100 largest companies globally by market capitalisation. 
Those CFOs are Rosaline Ng at Boral, Alison Harrop at Dexus Property Group, Anastasia Clarke at GPT Group, Kirsten Morton at Magellan Financial Group, Gillian Larkins at Perpetual and Karen Moses at Origin Energy.
There were 13 female CFOs employed by the top 200 companies, a slight improvement on 2012 when there were 10 women in ASX 200 CFO roles, according to the government's 2012 Australian Census of Women in Leadership.
The census concluded "an international comparison suggests Australia lags behind countries with a similar corporate governance structure, including New Zealand, the United States, Canada and South Africa, in relation to the number of female executives".
Perpetual's Ms Larkins, who also held CFO roles at Citigroup and Westpac Institutional Bank, says the gender imbalance in senior financial roles needs to be remedied.
"There does seem to be more differentiation [based on gender] here in Australia," Ms Larkins said.
"I have friends who have struggled here and gone to Switzerland or the UK and have flourished because I don't think sex comes into play."
Hard work, resilience and strong male mentors are three things Ms Larkins said helped her climb the ladder, but she is also an advocate for giving applicants with aptitude experience. She was 32 when she first took on a CFO role for Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking.
"With my background, it was a huge role to be offered. I took this risk and it turned out to be the best thing I ever did so I am so thankful that [they] took a punt on me.
"I am a big fan of aptitude, not necessarily experience. As a strong people leader you have to see the aptitude in people, not necessarily whether they have done something before."
Katie Spearritt, chief executive and founder of specialist diversity consulting firm Diversity Partners, said the two biggest factors preventing women securing more senior leadership positions were unconscious gender biases and inflexible organisational structures. "Implicit association tests show women and men typically have a stronger bias towards seeing men as leaders," Ms Spearritt said.
"So there is a really strong cultural association that we still hold biases as to who best fits that leadership model and in Australia that is still strong.
"In terms of CFOs, we know the gender of the people currently in the role influences who is seen as most suitable.
"While men continue to make up around 90 per cent of CFOs, it is inevitable we will still draw an association between the role and men."
Disrupting unconscious biases simply starts by acknowledging them, Ms Spearritt said.
The managing partner of executive search firm Arete Executive, Richard Triggs, argues that women with aptitude for an executive role need to be better encouraged to consider applying for it. After considering gender disparity among executives last year, Mr Triggs looked more closely at applications he had received for four senior executive roles and found just 7 per cent of the 800 applications had come from women.
Mr Liveris found there were 12 women in CEO roles in the ASX 200 and 11 chairwomen. According to Mr Liveris, Australia's top chief executives are more likely to be named Peter or Andrew than to be female.
Key pointsThere are only six female CFOs at Australia's 100 largest listed companies.
This compares with 11 in the top 100 companies globally.