Abstract
This paper analyses the leadership profile of women at the head of companies, focusing attention on enterprises located in North-Western Italy. The research investigates the correlations between the company’s structural features and the female leader’s profile and the issue of time allocation in women’s managerial work. The methodology applied to analyze the sample is the grounded-theory building research. All the leaders answered a two-hour semi-structured interview while a selected group was asked to keep a diary and observed. The research highlights that advanced services represent the natural employment sector for the skills that women have developed in order to fulfil their social role, but that are not an exclusively female prerogative. Those are the skills generally required of managers and leaders operating in companies with knowledge-intensive production processes and where human resources are the most important input.