MANAGEMENT: General Electric, which this year topped the Fortune magazine list of most-admired companies for the fifth time in a row, may be the most-watched company in the world for management lessons. Jack Welch, the charismatic chairman and chief executive who led the US conglomerate for 20 years, was perhaps proudest of having created a people-centred culture.

Yet towards the end of his reign, Mr Welch realised there was one issue on which GE was not a leader: representation of women in senior management. In 1997, he sat down to dinner with a group of women managers and asked them: "Why don't you guys do something like a network?"

Recalling the meeting, Susan Peters, now number two GE executive in charge of human resources, says: "We asked ourselves why we hadn't done that, and then we got on it right away."

Today, the GE Women's Network (GEWN) is a 10,000-strong group of employees around the world, whose goal is to foster professional development and facilitate women's advancement.

The GEWN ensures that those with potential get the training they need to move up and the chance to meet the people within the firm who can make their ascent possible. The group uses mentoring, coaching, classes and informal networking at dinners and office lunches to bring women together with company leaders, especially females, who are role models for more junior professionals.

The network's executive board includes at least two senior women from each of GE's 25 businesses. Ten women from the board, known as the "kitchen cabinet", are the main leaders and decision-makers for the network. While strongest in the US, the GEWN is established in Europe, Mexico and Japan and will be introduced in China and India this year. It is also integrated into GE human resources reviews for promotions, where activity in the network is regarded as a plus.

Though it is only five years since Mr Welch's suggestion, women now make up 10 per cent of GE's 170 global corporate officers and 12 per cent of its 400 most senior executives. Those figures are up from 4 per cent and 9 per cent, respectively, in 1997.

While that may not seem like staggering success, the road for women into top management everywhere is uphill. Despite making up nearly half the US labour force, only 12.5 per cent of corporate officers are female, according to Catalyst, the US organisation that works to advance women. Far fewer of those have line management responsibilities, the traditional route to the top. Among Fortune 500 companies, women hold only 6.2 per cent of the highest positions and account for just 4.1 per cent of all top earners, says Catalyst. It is still rare to find women at executive committee level - and many are usually in areas such as public relations, human resources and communications, says Herminia Ibarra, a professor at Harvard Business School and Insead.

Nonetheless, the 500 women attending a two-day GEWN meeting in Atlanta last month were left in no doubt about the company's support. Jeffrey Immelt, who succeeded Mr Welch as GE's chairman and chief executive last September, was on hand to address the crowd and meet the top female talent.

"Visibility" was the word most often repeated by GEWN members. Indeed, visibility at GE is particularly difficult because of the sheer size of the company: it has 25 separate operating units and 80,000 professionals scattered around the world.

Catalyst says visibility is the second-biggest barrier to women's progress after men's negative preconceptions and stereotypes about females. Exclusion from male-dominated "old boy" networks, where personal and professional connections are made and relationships are established, has kept them back. "That's as true in GE as it is in other companies," says Johanna Ramos Boyer at Catalyst. Women's networks "level the playing field".

As well as visibility, the GEWN works on the image of women in the workplace - a far greater derailment factor for women than it is for men. The image problem, says Harvard's Prof Ibarra, comes down to style of working, which is learnt only by watching others.

Jill Wine-Banks, now chief executive of a Chicago-based NGO called Winning Workplaces, was a trail-blazer. She was the only female prosecutor in the Watergate case and became the first female general counsel of the US Army. Later, she was chief operating officer of the American Bar Association and held senior management positions in Maytag and Motorola.

Ms Wine-Banks says women are judged by a harsher standard than men and must prove themselves over and over again. If they fail, they fail not only as individuals but also for all women. She sees style as critical and believes senior women executives are crucial role models.

"If you talk like a man, you are perceived like, well, rhymes with witch. But if you talk like a woman, you are ignored," she says.

At GE, women face special challenges because of the firm's high proportion of technical businesses, such as aircraft engines, plastics and giant turbines, none of which is a traditional female preserve.

GE is making a special effort to recruit young women, who now constitute 45 per cent of its financial management programme, its premier incubator. It has made benefits more female-friendly, including on-site childcare and special tax-free day-care accounts.

Male executives also attend GEWN meetings to discover the top female prospects. Indeed, support from the top executive is a strong factor in the success of any network such as the GEWN, experts say. David Thomas, a professor of organisational behaviour at Harvard Business School, says support signals acceptance, which is important because networks in the 1970s were considered hostile to management.

At GE, some women still perceive joining the women's network as a sign of weakness and prefer to go it alone. But Ms Peters says attitudes are changing as women see their colleagues' progress. Declining to be a member will not hurt a woman's prospects but being one is "a little bit like taking extra credits", she says.