I. Introduction
More and more women in the United States have been entering the workforce, which leads to the growth of supply of capable potential women leaders who end up in arenas such as business and economics that were formerly predominantly that of men. Although women have been reaching top positions of business leadership in recent decades, they form a distinct minority in such positions. Despite progress, women still face substantial barriers and hindrances that prevent them from further career development.
The model of the successful manager has traditionally been masculine and while this stereotype remains, it succeeds in maintaining the dominant place for men in management. Countless stories in the popular press also reinforce misperceptions of women leaders by speculating about how they are different from men. These dangerous stories are well accepted as they go hand in hand with popular beliefs about women and men. They reinforce perceptions that are wrong, perceptions that maintain the gender gap in leadership itself. What is more, stereotypes about women managers´ abilities, interests and behaviors may lead women to behave in ways that limit their effectiveness in the workplace. They may show less confidence and lower self-evaluation even when their performance is objectively similar to that of their male colleagues. Apart from gender stereotypes, which have remained deeply rooted in the US society, there are discriminatory practices in hiring, performance appraisals, training, promotion and pay. Gender-based wage inequality is painfully real and leads to substantial differences in opportunity compared to their equally educated male counterparts. Women in managerial career paths have difficulties attaining top executive positions, in part because they are often not given the same developmental opportunities as their male peers. And last but not least, job segregation, which provides the basis and justification for lower wages for women together with the problem of sexual harassment, have been the norm in the US work environment.
This thesis focuses on the area of middle and upper-middle management in the United States and deals with women who already possess these posts and aspire for top management positions. By definition middle managers are those who “implement strategies and policies, whereas upper level managers are those who develop them,” according to Van Fleet (qtd. in Wentling). Issues occurring in the workplace are predominantly discussed from organizational and societal perspectives. The work is mainly theoretical and draws from scholarly journals, periodicals and studies that have been carried out on the issue with some practical, real-life data in case studies, which I collected during my stay in the United States. One section is devoted solely to the situation of women managers in the South of the United States as it was in this region that I got acquainted with its socio-historical circumstances, which are distinct from those of the rest of the nation. The work is divided into four thematic blocks, each of them mentioning historical circumstances and each flowing from a general level concerning the situation of women in the professions in the United States to a more concrete level of women managers in the US South.
The first introductory part consists of a historical background of women and their representation within US society in general complemented with theoretical perspectives on gender, which is helpful when looking for answers in present job settings. The second part is devoted solely to women managers. Before discussing their present situation, historical perspectives on women and the professions and the main developmental stages are provided. I then go on to address some of the main barriers that women have to face in the contemporary workforce: gender discrimination, sexual harassment and gender stereotypes and attitudes, which have remained highly influential in US society. In the part where the main barriers are discussed, I use a distinct format, providing the reader with the outcomes of the obstacles first and then presenting consequent explanations of the phenomena. The third thematic block deals with women in managerial posts in the South in particular, paying attention to the historical circumstances in that region and looking more closely at the work environment with its concrete implications such as wage gap, glass ceiling and job segregation. The concluding part addresses suggestions to help women overcome the obstacles and barriers found in the contemporary US workforce and outlines some of the main recommendations such as mentoring, the issue of affirmative action and comparable worth.
A. A Historical Perspective on Women and Their Representation in US Society
The history of women in the workplace is a complex mix of factors rooted in social, political, historical, economic, and religious conditions and it differs for women in diverse demographic locations; for example, the conditions for upper-class European women in the seventeenth century who wished to pursue education or work were very different from those of African American women who worked as slaves on plantations in the nineteenth century United States. However, there is a common feature, which is visible throughout the centuries and that is the fact that women entering work environments have been dominated and controlled by men. In the history of the United States, there have been very few women in leadership roles in all areas of the workplace from the beginning of the nation until the twentieth century. It was at the end of the nineteenth century that women’s participation in the professions came after the boom of bureaucracies in organizations (Fassinger 1170-71). Therefore, it is useful to discuss the general history of women in US society and the circumstances that led to the acceptance of women in management before considering women’s entry into managerial positions.
Throughout the early history of the United States, that is in the colonial times, a view prevailed that God intended women and men to occupy separate spheres and women had no role in the public domain. Women were denied their property and even their identity as they were assumed to be under the guidance of men (Irby, Brown 86). Women could become managers of shops, businesses, plantations, or farms only through the early deaths of their husbands. Prior to the 1800s, the society was predominantly agrarian, with most work taking place in or around the home and women, although disenfranchised, played a considerable role in the economic system. Many people looked down on the few women who entered the workforce in nontraditional roles. Women workers, however, encountered little resistance, largely due to the shortage of men to perform many jobs – including but not limited to physicians, innkeepers, and shopkeepers. The public was hesitant to condemn women who provided these necessary services, especially since many businesses were family owned (McGlen et al. 179-80).
It was the slow rise of the market economy and later the industrial revolution that changed the relationship between men and women as Powell, the author of key work Women and Men in Management, argues. Better production and distribution methods made it possible to sell the goods of farm produce and the crafted items that were not needed by the family in the marketplace. Because of the types of activities that men and women performed, the products that men made were more likely to enter the marketplace than those produced by women. For example, milk, wheat, and wool, produced by men or both women and men, could be sold to townspeople. Butter, bread, and cloth, produced by women, could then be produced within most of those families. As a result, men, more often than women, received and thereby controlled the money coming into the family (Powell 14).
As industrialization proceeded, the division of gender roles became more definite. Increasingly, work that had been done at home was moved to the factory. Men went out to work, while women stayed at home. The ´wife of leisure´ became to be associated with the new middle class, although there was little real leisure associated with running the home in the mid-1800s. Most poor, African American, or immigrant families could simply not afford the luxury of an unemployed wife, yet the common practice even in these groups was for the wife not to look for paid employment if it was economically possible. While married women were discouraged from working, there is considerable evidence that women participated in family-run businesses, which were located at home. Moreover, among single women of both native-born and immigrant parents, census data suggest that they worked unless the family could afford otherwise. However, negative attitudes toward women’s employment seemed to increase with the economic recession and massive industrial unemployment of the 1870s and the 1890s, as some women appeared to be taking jobs from men (McGlen et al. 200).
Thus, the industrial revolution brought about significant changes concerning work roles of men and women. With surplus production, it became possible for better-off husbands to keep their wives at home rather than allow them outside work. Therefore, the stay-at-home wife became a status symbol for men in American society. This division of labor copied the earlier fashion of life among European nobility, allowed the noticeable demonstration of affluence, and reaffirmed the relationship between the husband and the wife. When general affluence started to spread, the notion became gradually institutionalized as an ideal, an ideal according to which other divisions of roles between men and women were judged. However, this standard was largely based on the experiences of white middle-class families, which differed greatly from the experiences of minority and lower-class families. African American men tended to hold agricultural, mining, or service jobs that were considered too low-paying, insecure, dangerous, or degrading by most white men and so their wives had to work (Powell 15).
While the majority of white working class men were primarily employed as overseers, machinists or in those occupations requiring a definite skill, women were occupied by roving or spinning frames and minded the looms in the mills. Men’s wages were typically set at the prevailing New England wage rate for the appropriate skill or trade. Women’s wages were set at a level high enough to make them leave the farms and stay away from other forms of employment such as domestic service, but low enough to offer an advantage for employing females rather than males in textile factories. Female factory workers, whose ranks gradually came to include widows and wives from poorer families as well as single women, did not conform to the female role that was being developed in rich white middle-class families. They had no choice about whether to work. Instead, their wages were necessary for them to survive and became the primary source of living in their families, especially when New England’s farming economy began to decline in the 1830s. As the life-style of courteous leisure became the ideal for all women, those in the growing female work force were looked down upon for having to work (Powell 16).
The shift from an agricultural to an industrial society in the late nineteenth century changed the ways men made use of their abilities and assessed their self-worth. The new market economy led to men dominating economic life even more. Wives were legally obligated to serve the wishes of their husbands, and husbands were legally raised to the position of almost total dominance and responsibility. Attitudes conformed to this new economic relationship and while wives made themselves more subordinate to their husbands’ desires, men on the other hand acquired a feeling more superior to their wives (McGlen et al. 200-1). Although social doctrine had already been declaring for some time that men were superior to women, it had still remained within the norms of American society rather than economic reality. Now, at least for the more affluent, reality had caught up with the norms.
Thus, the source of traditional gender roles in US society can be traced here, in this period of time. These roles, developed within white middle-class families that could afford to have the woman not earn wages outside the home, provided an ideal that was supposed to apply to all families. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the labor force was clearly differentiated according to gender. Census statistics showed that nineteen percent of all women and eighty percent of all men were in the labor force in 1900. In other words, four out of every five women were not engaged in paid employment, whereas four out of every five men were engaged in paid employment. Only four percent of non-farm executives, administrators, and managers were women. Men were firmly established as dominant in the workplace, both in absolute numbers and in positions of authority (Powell 18).
This was about to change with the arrival of the 1920s, when a particularly favorable time for young, white, working women seemed to be ahead. In this optimistic period of the “new woman”, the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920 gave women the right to vote and influenced economic roles in the States. For instance, better-educated single women could be drawn into the workforce by the higher wages of the new clerical positions. Supporters of the amendment hoped that ending gender discrimination in the right to vote would also lessen discrimination in other areas of life. However, women’s suffrage brought about few changes in women’s economic status. By 1940, the labor force participation rate of women was only four percent higher, at twenty-five percent, than it had been in 1920 (McGlen et al. 180-81).
In the early years of the twentieth century attitudes toward women working were highly negative and a working wife was seen as an indication of the husband’s failure. This helps explain the relatively high participation rates of African American and immigrant women whose husbands faced severe discrimination and very low wages. The attitudes toward the employment of married women are mirrored in first public opinion polls taken in the 1930s. The national market situation had a lot to do with it and this also justifies why only fifteen percent of the public gave a favorable response to a question concerning the consent of married women working in 1936. The reasons given most frequently by those who objected were that women took men’s jobs (thirty-six percent), that a woman’s place was in the home (thirty-five percent), and one was guaranteed a happier home life or healthier children if women did not work (twenty-one percent) (McGlen et al. 180).
World War II, which closely followed the Depression, marked a turning point in the distribution of economic roles between women and men in the twentieth century. Similarly to World War I, World War II created what was expected to be a temporarily high demand for female labor. Women were attracted to war-related industries by an advertising campaign appealing to their patriotism as well as self-interest, and they were given access to the more skilled, higher-paying jobs that were usually held by men. Female labor force increased by more than fifty percent; a large proportion of these women were married, and a majority were mothers witch school-age children (McCorduck, Ramsey 180-81). However, after the war ended in 1945, the labor force did not quickly return to normal as it had after World War I. Instead, it has never been the same.
The changes in the relative economic roles played by men and women after Word War II took several forms. The labor force participation rate of women, already at a high number of thirty-four percent in 1950, rose steadily in the years to come. By 1980, over half of American women were in the labor force. The largest increase in labor force participation was among white, middle-class, well-educated women who formerly would have dropped out of the labor force because of childraising. Between 1950 and 1980, the overall participation rate for white women rose from twenty-nine percent to fifty-one percent, whereas the overall participation rate for nonwhite women rose from thirty-eight percent to fifty-two percent. The war made work possible for all women regardless of their class, as female employment became a sign of patriotism rather than unacceptable and questionable behavior. However, traditional attitudes concerning women’s proper place in society pertained. During the 1950s, the mass media promoted an image of family union that defined the mother’s role as central to all domestic activities. Betty Friedan called this attitude “the feminine mystique” (qtd. in Powell 24). It is briefly described in the following passage:
In the fifteen years after World War II, this mystique of feminine fulfillment became the cherished and self-perpetuating core of contemporary American culture. Millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife…their only ambition was to be perfect wives and mothers; their highest ambition to have five children and a beautiful house; their only fight to get and keep their husbands. They had no thought for the unfeminine problems of the world outside the home; they wanted the men to make the major decisions. They gloried in their role as women, and wrote proudly on the census blank: “Occupation: housewife.” (Powell 24-25)
Women were supposed to enjoy this role and happily surrender the control of economic and public life to men. During this period, women workers were not perceived as battling to achieve economic equality with men. Instead, their increased economic activity could be interpreted as consistent with their primary role as helpmates to their husbands. Most women who worked were citing economic need as the reason for their employment, even when the family income was solidly in the middle-class range (Powell 25). If women had not been portrayed, or portrayed themselves, as working temporarily to help meet immediate needs, they may not have been allowed to enter the workplace as easily.
Employers were also among those who, next to lawmakers and statesmen, played a role in attitudinal change towards women´s participation in the workforce. Their expanding demand for women workers, which was the result of new openings in traditional women’s fields, made it possible to increasingly employ women. Moreover, because demand occurred when there were fewer single women to fill it, employers were willing to give up many of their own prejudices and biases against hiring married women (McGlen et al. 248). Thus, the changing practices of women and employers set the stage for the women’s movement and its message that women’s employment was not only acceptable but also desirable.
It was in the 1960’s that a whole generation of women became aware of the possibilities that could be open to them if their lives were not lived according to traditional norms. Before the message of the so called women’s movement reached many in the States, popular support for married women working outside the home had already climbed from its postwar low of eighteen percent to a record fifty-five percent (McGlen et al. 254). The women’s movement, which was represented by many clubs and organizations, among them NOW (The National Organization of Women), expressed concerns about discrimination in employment, education, and the legal system. NOW also called for a “true partnership between the sexes to be brought about by an equitable sharing of the responsibilities for home, children, and the economic burden of their support” (Powell 26). Such groups were successful in promoting change in some areas, having a great impact on women’s thinking.
In the years between 1970 and 1990, women’s job profiles changed dramatically. In 1970, about thirty-eight percent of adult women were in the labor force in the United States; the proportion of management positions held by women at that time was about sixteen percent. By 1990, the proportion of women employed was about fifty-seven percent; women held thirty-nine percent of management jobs. These percentages represent major changes over twenty years (Gutek 1195-96). And among younger workers, the proportion of women in formerly male-dominated fields was far higher than in the workforce generally, a proportion that kept increasing toward parity in most fields, especially those requiring higher education (Mc Corduck, Ramsey 101). As far as minority women are concerned, in 1958 the labor-force participation rate of African Americans was forty-eight percent, twelve percent higher than the participation rates of white women. African American women increased their labor-force participation rate to sixty-three percent by 1999, only marginally higher than white women (McGlen et al. 211).
B. A Theoretical Perspective on Gender
There are numerous theories explaining how gender-related behaviors emerge. I will outline three major models that prevail in gender-related literature, including biological, socialization, and structural-cultural models. Each perspective makes certain assumptions about the phenomena that cause different behaviors among men and women. I will draw exclusively from an influential sociological work of Jeanette Cleveland, Margaret Stockdale and Kevin R. Murphy Women and Men in Organizations: Sex and Gender Issues at Work, which skillfully presents theoretical concepts from social psychological point of view.
The focus of the biological model is that biological differences between men and women influence behavior at least to some degree. The differences are due to genetic and physical factors. The popular argument was that brain size was a direct indicator of intelligence; therefore, women, who on average have smaller brains, must be less intelligent than men. This hypothesis turned out to be based on unfounded assertions, though. The socialization model suggests that gender identity and the differences between women and men are acquired by how we pass through various developmental stages. It acknowledges observed differences between men and women that emerge as part of the social and cognitive development process and assumes that men and women behave differently as a result of learning. Whereas social learning and socialization theories have been popular among psychologists, the third perspective of the structural-cultural model is followed by sociologists and anthropologists. This approach focuses on the social structure, arrangements and environments that define and support gender differences and on the reasons why the society supports little boys and girls learning these messages. The features of social structure that have been examined often are power and status differences between men and women and the division of labor reflecting men’s work and women’s work. It assumes few innate differences between men and women. Observed differences are the result of social systems and they are changeable. According to this perspective, numerous institutions (educational, political, military, and religious, among others) have traditional ways of performing their functions (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 21-24). And it is the natural and smooth appearance of these institutions on the surface with its subtle and hidden sources of power beneath that helps to keep the powerful in power and the powerless compliant and submissive.
Kanter and others, for example, found in 1977 that the structure of jobs in organizations in general affects one’s ability to exercise power and influence. Women are more likely to occupy jobs that lack power and, therefore, find little opportunity to exercise it. There is evidence that women are also excluded from informal power and opportunity structures within organizations. The ways in which women are treated in organizations only support and strengthen this structural segregation. For example, although there is some little evidence of gender bias in performance appraisal based on past performance, there is prejudice in selection and promotion procedures, which always favor men. Furthermore, women find it difficult to gain power by either personal strategies, that is by being assertive or having valued organizational information. Personal power cannot overcome structural barriers. For example, although a woman personally can be assertive and have control over the distribution of rewards, she will remain less powerful if she occupies a position or occupation that is not vital to organizational survival or is situated within a department which is not central to the organization’s mission (qtd. in Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 25).
Before getting deeper into the issue of gender in the workplace, I will now explain the terms of sex and gender that are sometimes used interchangeably. The term sex is defined by “biological differences in genetic composition and function.” The term gender reflects “individual, interpersonal, and societal notions of masculinity and femininity” (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 28). At the interpersonal level, gender informs us how to behave properly in interactions with others. Often when men and women behave identically, their behaviors are interpreted in very different ways. The same behavior by a woman and a man may evoke very different reactions by others, reactions that may either hinder or enhance later behaviors by the man or woman. Gender also serves as a system of power relations in that it reflects a system of social classification or status. As such, gender influences one’s access to power and resources. Thus, various work tasks have come to be known as “men’s work” or “women’s work” in the United States work setting (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 28). The value, prestige, and economic rewards associated with these gendered tasks vary dramatically with men’s work more often linked with greater power and financial rewards.
It is critical to note the dramatic individual differences that characterize men’s and women’s behaviors. Simply put, men are diverse and differ on a wide variety of physical, mental, and emotional characteristics; women are equally diverse. By using the above terms of sex and gender interchangeably, one can easily slip into believing that differences in traits between men and women are biologically determined while such traits may be due to the influence of society or culture. Biological approaches tend to describe observed differences as “sex differences,” implying genetic differences, whereas socialization and social structural-cultural models refer to such observations as “gender differences,” implying they are changeable and socially determined (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 27-28).
With the flow of women into the workforce in the United States during the last forty years, there has been increased attention paid to comparisons between men and women on a number of work-related behaviors. With this increased attention, there has also been some confusion about whether women and men differ to a significant degree, how much they differ, and whether these differences are really meaningful regarding behavior at work. In this work, I will focus my attention on the structural-cultural model, looking closely into which phenomena influence women’s progress at work or hinder their success.
II. Women in Managerial Positions in the United States
As Sara Alpern notes, management, as thought of today, was established in the late nineteenth century when the development of bureaucracies in organizations required such specialization. Women’s participation in management came even later because of various societal, personal, and structural factors that were in the play (Alpern 20). Management history is relevant because studying an issue in the light of its past can offer valuable insights into the problem in a contemporary setting. Therefore, before discussing women’s situation in managerial positions today, it is helpful to review the general history of women in the professions.
A. A Historical Perspective on Women in the Professions
Documenting women’s involvement in business in general provides some of the historical background that has led to the acceptance of women in management. This background can be divided into three main stages. In the first stage, which goes back to the colonial era and the nineteenth century, a variety of labor systems existed, within which class positions were closely tied to ethnicity (Amott, Matthaei, 350-51). As was discussed earlier, there was a set of beliefs that concerned women, white middle- and upper-class in particular, and their proper manners and roles within society. It was due to women’s club work, educational reforms and socioeconomic circumstances, including the Civil War, that women realized their proper place in the public and could demonstrate organizational and leadership skills that they would later use in managerial activities. Despite societal pressures against them, successful individual female proprietors and entrepreneurs as well as women who managed organizations in the public sector, such as settlement houses or in government, paved the way as role models for future women’s entrance into the corporate world (Alpern 46-47).
In the second stage, which characterizes the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, wage labor in the “capitalist mode of production” gained dominance, and the economic positions of women became more qualitatively similar across racial-ethnic groups (Amott, Matthaei, 350). Slavery and indentured servitude were abolished, contract labor declined as well as self-sufficient production and self-employment. Married women concentrated their efforts on unpaid work in their homes, while husbands, sons, and daughters participated in wage work. Men entered the labor force to a greater degree than women, single women more than married women, and African American women more than white. Men’s wages were higher than women’s. This sexual division of paid labor, along with the assignment of unpaid household work to women, sustained male supremacy and affected the pay scale for future fields of women’s employment, including management positions (Amott, Matthaei, 350-51).
Throughout the nineteenth century there were belief systems of proper upper- and middle-class activities that conflicted with the lives of working-class women and most immigrants and African Americans. The belief systems reinforced the view that white married upper- and middle-class women remain in the home or do work seen as appropriate, such as charity or religious organizational work outside of the home. While ”the cult of true womanhood” beliefs kept many women out of the business world, these beliefs also justified women’s entrance into certain careers, which resulted in a few of them in the medicine field and many in teaching professions, clerical work and retail sales (Alpern 24). Women comprised a critical part of the growing wage-labor force - young girls produced the first factory-made cloth in the early textile mills, domestic servants helped care for and reproduce generations of children, women have taught young pupils in elementary and secondary schools, and clerical workers have continued to be at the core of the communication and accounting network of the modern economy (Amott, Matthaei 349).
In 1930, according to Women’s International Center, about two percent of all American lawyers and judges were women; there was a handful of women engineers (Women's History). In a study of successful women between 1890 and 1940, several common characteristics were identified by Glazer and Slater. For example, all "were persons of extraordinary energy, willing and able to use their gifts, including the virtue of unusual stamina, in the projects they carved out to prove their professional worth". All of the women also used some type of strategy to gain success in their professions. In addition, all went to graduate school, most did not marry, and those who did got married late. It was thought that having children and a husband "automatically lessened women's commitment to professional goals" (qtd. in Miller, Lemons).
In the third stage, beginning after World War II, married women increasingly participated in paid labor, and rigid gender and racial-ethnic differences in the job hierarchy began to break down. Married women, especially white, middle-class, have rapidly entered the paid labor force. Traditionally, management has been a male domain, calling for the typically male characteristics of assertiveness and decisiveness. Women were viewed as too emotional and lacking the necessary managerial characteristics. Rosie the Riveter (1878-1972), is an example of a remarkable woman pioneer in management who achieved recognition in the "man's world". With her focus on valuing the human element and on developing productive and cooperative employer-employee relationships, she provided an important link between the scientific management movement and the social man era. She mobilized a whole generation of women during World War II when US industry needed to be reorganized from peacetime to wartime production. During the years of her management when women performed the jobs, productivity skyrocketed, quality became better and product cycle time fell. However, when the war ended the women were laid off and replaced with men (Nichols). Despite their wartime success, women were not able to retain their jobs in factories.
Feminist and civil rights struggles that followed have challenged the legal and ethical basis for gender and racial-ethnic segregation (Amott, Matthaei 350-52). While some women entered the corporate world as managers at the beginning of the twentieth century, the real change came in the 1970s, following pressures from the women’s movement and the implementation of federal antidiscrimination legislation (Alpern 47). In the year of 1964 the Equal Pay Act went into effect. The dramatic changes in women’s employment have been accompanied by somewhat less impressive gains in their relative earnings. Although the earnings have steadily increased in real dollars since the 1950s, except during recessions, the earnings of women relative to men did not increase until 1980. Part of the gain in women’s relative income was a function of the declining wages of men in the 1980s, when an economic recession diminished the numbers of well-paying jobs in traditionally male fields. Weekly earnings of women compared to men increased from 62.5 percent to 71.9 percent between 1980 and 1990 (McGlen et al. 210). Although women were represented by forty-five percent of employed persons in the United States in 1989, they had only insignificant say in decision-making within jobs. Despite the fact that their numbers as managers, officials, and other administrators was on the rise, in 1989 they were outnumbered about 1.5 to 1 by men. Compared to their male colleagues, managerial women were not given important projects and promotions (Women's History).
Williams notes that US corporations in the 1980s were undergoing something of a “Darwinian struggle” to become more globally competitive. One aspect of this struggle has been increasing acceptance of the human resources approach to management. The human resources approach emphasizes “interpersonal communication, collaboration, and the development of subordinate potential to fully realize a work force’s potential” (qtd. in Northcraft, Gutek, 221). This suggests that those unique competencies available in the female managerial stereotype may fit the current needs of US corporations.
B. Women Managers Today
In 1996, the US Department of Labor reported that women comprised forty four percent of the total persons employed in executive, administrative and managerial occupations. Women held seventy five percent of all managerial positions in medicine and health, over half the managerial jobs in finance, personnel and labor relations, accounting and auditing, and buying, and over sixty percent of jobs in personnel, training, labor relations specialists, and underwriters in 1997 (Jackson). In 2000, this number increased to 47.8 percent of the total number employed in executive, administrative and managerial occupations according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (Wentling).
The increase in female managers has led to several kinds of situations occurring with greater frequency in organizations. More employees than ever before have had a female boss at some time. Many employees have become used to working for a woman, having had two or more female bosses in their careers. Most middle managers now have female as well as male lower-level managers as their subordinates. At the same time, more lower-level managers than ever before have a female middle manager as their boss (Powell 151). Still, as far as the distribution of power within organizations is concerned, men have more power than women. An understanding of this notion is necessary to explain differences in the status of women and men in organizations.
Power is most commonly defined as “the ability to influence others and is obtained by having access to scarce, important resources desired by others” (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 150). Men generally have greater access to these resources, dominating the economic sphere as is reflected in their predominance in authoritative and leadership positions. Because most executives are men, it is easy to assume that such influence is a function of being a man as much as a function of the positions they hold. Thus, women have less power than men. They are less able to control rewards, to be in legitimate positions of power, to be considered “experts” unless they receive formal, external recognition of their expertise (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 143-44). The power and influence they do have is more likely to be resented and undermined.
Women are relatively well represented in lower and midlevel management positions in American organizations but are greatly underrepresented in top-level executive positions. Therefore, male-female differences become more dramatic the higher one goes in the organization. Indeed, it has been proved by studies that no matter how competent they are, women in male-dominated organizations often cannot overcome the stereotype that women are not expected to be leaders unless they are empowered by a support either within or outside of the organization, for instance by mentors, clients or media. Virginia E. Schein conducted influential studies in the early 1970s which found that successful middle managers were perceived to have characteristics, attitudes, and temperaments that are more commonly attributed to males than females in general. Recently, these studies have been done by Ruediger Mueller and Virginia E. Schein in 1992 and confirmed that males presented the male managerial stereotype and indicated that successful managers have the characteristics more commonly ascribed to men (O´Leary, Flanagan 651). These results suggest that the male managerial model is still an important barrier to women’s success as leaders.
Upon entering a particular organization, women may be more likely than men to be placed in peripheral, less critical positions from which they have little hope of acquiring necessary resources for power. Men’s relative ease in comparison to women in gaining access to important informal networks and to mentors both helps create the perception that they are more powerful than women and actually provides men greater access to important resources (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 147). Although men and women have typically different levels of authority in organizations, women do use power, and they influence others. However, women use influence strategies commonly found among those who are less powerful. Friendliness, helplessness and dependency and other indirect strategies are commonly associated with women and those who are in subordinate positions. That is, thanks to seeing the world from the bottom up in terms of power, women are aware of the abuse of power and its effects. Thus, they may be more likely to use softer influence tactics that preserve the dignity and integrity of others. For example, women are more likely than men to share power with others through the use of consultative and participative decision-making processes (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 144-45).
Gary Powell, a professor of management at the University of Connecticut, summarized the major studies that have investigated differences in male and female leadership styles and abilities and found that men tend to have “greater company loyalty, motivation to advance within the company, and attentiveness to power structures” compared to women. Women on the other hand tend to have “greater administrative ability, interpersonal skills and sensitivity, written skills, energy, and work standards compared to men” (qtd. in Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 311). The leadership style generally more associated with women is labeled as “interactive leadership” because leaders who exhibit it actively promote positive interactions with subordinates by encouraging participation, sharing power and information (Powell 160).
This piece of finding has been further investigated when Eagly and her colleagues conducted a research of a series of meta-analyses of gender differences in leadership in the early 1990s. Their review of the literature on leadership effectiveness within work setting showed that leaders are more successful when their leadership style minimizes gender-role violation. Therefore, men are more effective when the leadership task calls for traditionally masculine role behaviors and women are more effective when the leadership task calls for traditionally feminine role behaviors. Women leaders are especially devalued when their leadership style is autocratic (traditionally male) compared to when it is democratic (O´Leary, Flanagan 646-47).
However, studies dealing with men´s and women´s leadership styles have shown that the differences were moderate. Different leadership styles may relate to differences in power rather than in gender as suggested earlier. As there are many more men in power positions, being assertive and autocratic following the traditional mode, their behavior is then labeled as masculine rather than power-based (O´Leary, Flanagan 647). Gender differences in leadership style can also be explained with other situational factors within its context. Such factors might be working conditions, autonomy on the job or gender composition (Padavic, Reskin 54). Thus beliefs about the inferiority of women managers that lead many people to prefer male managers reflect gender stereotyping but not reality. The stereotype that men make better managers is simply not true. The important question is, then, what is behind the fact that women have so little power within organizations, which consequently leads to having greater difficulties rising to the top. Barriers that hinder women´s way up are believed to be at the core of the problem.
C. Barriers that Keep Women from Career Advancement
Despite their increase in the positions of business leadership in recent decades, women still form a distinct minority in top-management positions. For example, in 1998 the research and consulting firm Catalyst reported that women held only 5.3 percent of the line corporate officer positions in US five hundred largest companies, only 10.6 percent of the total board seats, and only two of the Chief Executive positions (Lips 856). Though women’s participation in executive boards of large corporations increased from zero in the nineties, still the sixty percent of corporations with women board members could boast about only one token woman. She could not effect much change, and she was often regarded as exactly that, a token, not a role model or even someone to be taken very seriously (Mc Corduck, Ramsey 182). Also, the glass ceiling in businesses and most professions is the norm.
Of the top 150 Silicon Valley companies, only twenty eight of the 755 senior executives are women (Fassinger 1171) and there are still some important differences between the economic roles played by women and men. Men still hold fifty eight percent of all management positions in organizations. Even when organizations consist of predominantly female employees, the leaders are typically male (Powell 153). According to a recent report from the federal Glass Ceiling Commission (1995), 95% to 97% of senior managers of five hundred largest companies are men, yet white males make up only about 43% of the workforce. The same study reported that only 5% of senior managers in the two thousand biggest industrial and service companies are women (Amott, Matthaei 352). These commission findings are especially striking since women make up nearly half of the workforce.
Though a few women decided for legal remedies, many corporate women took matters into their own hands. Rather than wait for the glass ceiling to crack, they moved out and started their own businesses, often as dealers. Despite a difficult economic climate in the United States during the late-century downsizing, the number of women-owned businesses grew so greatly in the late 1980s and early 1990s that by 1992, women-owned businesses provided the American economy with more total jobs that the five hundred largest companies (McCorduck, Ramsey 251). Women continue facing some serious hurdles in their effort to achieve equality. The barriers are greatest for those positions with the most prestige and power (McGlen et al. 221). Gender segregation and inequality live on in the labor market, which results in lower wages for women. Women watch in despair and rage as less qualified men are still paid better for the same work and are still promoted above them. There are enough data to suggest that gender is very important in predicting a woman’s occupation, pay and progress and that discrimination is at least a partial explanation for this.
1. Gender Discrimination and Sexual Harassment
In general, gender discrimination includes behaviors which occur in the workplace and “limit a person’s ability to enter, remain and progress in a job and that are mainly the result of the person’s gender” (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 157-58). Men and women are treated differently in the workplace, which most of the times results in the discrimination of the latter . Although gender discrimination in employment has been illegal since 1964 when title VII of the Civil Rights Act was issued, it persists in many employment settings (Lee 246). Discrimination against women, such as occupational segregation and lower wages for employees in female-dominated occupations, remains a serious social problem that resists legislative solutions. The work environment highlights gender differences in ways that lead people to think of each other in terms of their gender roles rather than in terms of their roles as workers. In general, the more cues in the environment that point to a worker’s gender, the higher the likelihood that men and women will be treated differently (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 160).
Examples of differential treatment within organizations is one of the most widely cited reasons why women fail to advance to levels of authority and visibility within organizations. For instance, previous work by Ddobbins, Cardy, and Truxillo identified discrimination in job assignments that lead to future promotions as the number one barrier for women (qtd. in Murrell 212). Clearly these differences decrease the earnings potential of women as well as their career mobility and access to leadership and decision-making positions within organizations.
In general, women are perceived as less competent and subsequently less likely to be promoted or are promoted at a slower rate than men with the same qualifications. In fact, even when women receive higher performance ratings than men, men receive more promotions. As was suggested earlier, there is continued evidence that in business and professional occupations, the proportion of women present decreases as the rank or status of the occupation increases (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 57). The exclusion of women from higher status jobs is in part the result of biases in the perception of men and women with objectively similar qualifications.
Poor treatment by male co-workers also often serves as a barrier to some women’s success in a chosen job or career. For instance, a 1994 survey found that women mostly agreed (seventy seven percent) that “women who try to rise to the top of major corporations get held back by the old-boy network” (McGlen et al. 203). By being excluded from informal workers´ networks women are denied the information and peer support which is necessary for success or promotion. Indeed, some researchers argue that differential treatment on the job is not “economically rational” but reflects the desire of male employers together with male employees to retain male power and prestige in the larger society (McGlen et al. 196).
The extent of male efforts to keep women coworkers from succeeding is difficult to measure, but women in the workforce report widespread ill treatment. There is a substantial number of working women who have faced a sexual behavior from men that they did not welcome and did not invite. Examples of sexually harassing behavior range from sexual jokes and teasing, which are aimed at degrading women workers to inappropriate sexual advances, which threaten job security. In a 2000 poll, more than four in ten women reported that they have experienced discrimination, and more than a third have experienced sexual harassment. The percentages of women reporting discrimination and harassment increase with higher levels of education and occupational professionalism. Moreover, the workplace is the primary place where the discrimination and harassment have occurred (McGlen et al. 203).
Sexual harassment can take two forms. The “quid pro quo” harassment occurs when the harasser offers some benefits in exchange for sexual favors. These benefits might include a promotion, a pay raise and a good performance appraisal or avoidance of some less desirable outcomes such as termination or demotion. Most of the time, it is exercised by someone in a position of power over another. The term “hostile environment” harassment stands for situations which occur from unwanted conduct, resulting in an uncomfortable and hostile working environment. Such behavior might be of physical, verbal or nonverbal kind. It might include touching, hugging or sexual remarks about a person´s clothing or body, sexual stories or the display of sexually explicit materials in the workplace (Sexual Harassment).
Cleveland and her colleagues looked into the role of power that is often in play in regards with this touchy issue. Individuals who possess significant sources of power are more likely to use strong, possibly coercive influence tactics. Sexual harassment is an influence tactic. Many victims of harassment report that they had to leave their jobs or transfer to another job site in order to avoid the harasser. Thus, the harasser has succeeded in influencing the target person to leave the field. Furthermore, harassers who offer organizational rewards or threaten by job-related punishments are directly using reward and coercion power to gain what they ask for. The use of strong influence tactics can cause a gradual change in the power holder’s perception of the target. By using sexual harassment, the harasser’s view of the target, which is considered to be a weak, sexual object, may intensify and result in an endless cycle of sexual exploiting (148-49).
On the other hand, sexual harassment can be viewed as a response to men’s loss of power. A. Kahn (1984) theorized that as women gain more power in the society as well as in the workplace, men who feel particularly threatened by this loss may respond with one of the few power tools they think they possess – sexual and physical pressure. Studies of domestic violence show that batterers tend to be men who are economically dependent on women, among other characteristics. Such dependence places men in a position of powerlessness, to which they respond with violence. Although the settings and circumstances of domestic violence and sexual harassment in the workplace are quite different, the processes are quite similar (qtd. in Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 149). Leadership, gender discrimination and sexual harassment are workplace issues, among others, which affect women and men and where power and its related concepts play a role. In the lines to come, gender stereotypes and attitudes, barriers that are difficult to uncover due to their latent nature, will be considered.
2. Gender Stereotypes and Attitudes
Even today, the influence of stereotypes about women’s abilities results in women not being hired in top leadership positions and getting stuck in their careers. Despite progress, gender stereotypes still harm women more than men. Negative attitudes and stereotypes of women as leaders prevail. A common perception is that men are viewed as the leaders in organizations, while women are viewed as the supportive followers. The introductory part is drawn from a scholarly article by Mary E. Kite from Ball State University who presents the phenomenon of stereotypes as “organized, consensual beliefs and opinions about the characteristics of women and men and about the purported qualities of masculinity and femininity” (561), which have been prevalent within US society for a considerable time period and have had a tremendous impact on the way women leaders and executives are viewed. Stereotypes tend to influence people’s perceptions and behavior without their awareness and describe who women and men should be. People automatically tend to rely on gender stereotypes that make it easier to discriminate when perceiving others.
Paul Rosenkrantz and Inge Broverman were the first US sociologists to identify the characteristics typically associated with men and women. These authors determined sets of traits for men that include characteristics such as “confident,” “independent,” and “controlling”, whereas women were typically labeled as “warm,” “kind,” and “concerned for others´ welfare”. These associations have been repeated many times and across many cultures and nationalities. The seminal work of John Williams and Deborah Best, for example, showed that across thirty nations there was considerable consensus in perceived attributes. These beliefs have also been remarkably stable across time (qtd. in Kite 562).
As far as managerial skills are concerned, men are seen as analytic and good at problem solving, whereas women are seen as creative and verbally skilled. Women’s positive attributes are identified as more concerned with “people issues” and more honest. However, for the most important leadership positions of chief executive officers of major corporations, women are characterized as “not tough enough” in the minds of many (McGlen et al. 189). The stereotypes that persist in the corporate sector may help explain why there have been very few women heading five hundred largest companies.
Stereotypes impact the environment in which women work. When women and men occupy demanding roles, which leadership and executive positions are, evaluations are influenced by gender-linked expectations within the context. Women who occupy work roles traditionally reserved for men can thus be placed in a so called double bind that threatens both their performance and how they are viewed. This double bind consists in a conflict between traditionally male occupational roles such as assertive behavior on the one hand and warm, supportive behavior more generally expected of women on the other. When these two roles collide, women can find themselves in a no-win situation. Choosing a style that goes hand in hand with their occupational demands violates one set of expectations, but behaving in a gender-stereotypic manner violates the other. Those women who demonstrate the male-like characteristics of assertiveness and dominance and thus seem suitable for top management are viewed as poor executive candidates and are harshly judged by others. Indeed, if they try to display the expected characteristics of leadership that have always been defined in male terms, they risk being seen as masculine. If they attempt to reflect a different image of leadership than the conventional one, they risk being viewed as soft and not assertive enough (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 147). No matter what they choose, they are frequently criticized by those around them. Whether this conflict arises in a boardroom or a corporate firm, failure to resolve it can severely hinder women’s effectiveness and their opportunities for advancement.
Studies show that the gender composition of the organization also affects the perception of men and women. Specifically, women are evaluated more negatively when there are fewer women in the organization. Sackett, DuBois, and Noe (1991) provided striking confirmation for this phenomenon. They found that when women made up less than twenty percent of a work group, their performance evaluations were substantially lower than those received by men. In groups that were fifty percent or more female, women received slightly higher performance ratings (qtd. in Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 164). Another example comes from Robin J. Ely who found that women in firms with few women were likely to characterize other women as “flirtatious,” while women in firms with more women were likely to characterize other women as “able to promote oneself.” These findings indicate that women’s psychological satisfaction and positive attitudes toward women increase as the number of women in the organization increases (O’Leary, Flanagan 656). Thus, the gender composition of the organization may represent a factor that influences the number of women leaders likely to reach positions of power and authority. In settings where women predominate, females are more likely to be chosen as leaders and are not so likely to face discrimination.
Empirical research has looked specifically at the experiences of women in powerful positions. Robin Ely, who studied female professionals in law firms that were either strongly male dominated or gender integrated, arrived at interesting results. Women in the two types of firms differed in the ways they described themselves, other women, and men, and in the qualities they believed were important for advancement and success in their firms. Women in male-dominated firms tended to believe that traditional masculine qualities were essential for success, and some tried hard to take on stereotypically masculine roles. They were very conscious of gender stereotypes and tended to see conformity to the masculine stereotyped behavior as vital for success. For women in gender-integrated firms, however, the picture Ely found was very different. These women were not so likely to consider feminine behavior in negative terms and tended to see both traditionally feminine and traditionally masculine qualities as important for their success. They did not have such a strong notion that they must change in order to fit in. Rather, they viewed the profession as changing to include women (Lips 855-56).
Therefore, work context plays a significant role and together with stereotypes can contribute to shared misperceptions of coworkers, job candidates, performance, and credentials. Stereotypes not only affect the decisions one makes about other men and women but also one’s own self-perceptions, decisions and choices. Furthermore, gender stereotypes can create a ´self-fulfilling prophecy´, in the sense that women may feel pressure to behave in ways that correspond to gender stereotypes. For example, women consistently speak less than men and offer fewer contributions for the task in mixed-gender group tasks (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 60). Thus, stereotypes can affect both how men and women behave in the workplace and how their behavior is perceived.
According to Fassinger, women’s lack of confidence and the underestimation of their competencies, talents and capabilities is one of the most pervasive attitudinal barriers to women's career success. During the past two decades scholars paid much attention to demonstrating the effects of low self-efficacy on particular career fields. In addition, it has been found that there are relationships between self-efficacy and other career variables such as outcome expectations, job aspirations and occupational fit in terms of individual abilities (1179).
Women perceive greater career barriers and poorer outcome expectations than males, they tend to demonstrate lower career aspirations than comparably-talented males, attribute their successes to external factors rather than personal effort or ability and are less self-promoting and more modest than men about their accomplishments. Furthermore, women do not tend to see themselves as qualified for top positions, even when their credentials are equal or superior to those of men (Fassinger 1179). Also, as noted earlier, women tend to believe that stereotypically masculine qualities are essential for success, some trying hard to fit the masculine image. However, to a large extent, the notions of masculinity versus femininity much depend on the culture of the setting. In gender-integrated companies, women are not so likely to categorize feminine behavior in negative terms and tend to see both traditionally feminine and masculine qualities as important for their success (Lips 856). Therefore, the gender composition and the number of women affect their behavior. As already mentioned, women who reach positions of power are most successful when they adopt feminine approaches to power which stress cooperation and negotiation, notions based on the belief that one person is not more powerful than another.
III. Implications for Women in the US South
This section outlines the situation of women in the South of the United States, discussing concrete workplace issues such as wage gap, glass ceiling and job segregation and provides examples, which are illustrated in case studies. First, a historical perspective on women within professional occupations in the US South is presented. Although the myth of a ´true woman´ with its set of codes was prevalent in the whole country, the situation of southern women, as Sara Alpern notes, was distinct from that of women from other parts of the States due to distinct social and economic circumstances, which had an impact on race and class and defined gender roles (23).
A. A Historical Perspective on Women in the Professions in the US South
The general view that women and men deserved separate spheres and that women had no role in the public arena of life was more strongly enforced in the South. Despite a great variance in geographic, demographic, historical, and ethnic circumstances, a common culture of home and family was created with a general image of woman that stretched across the whole region in the early nineteenth century. Woman was described as a “submissive wife whose reason for being was to love, honor, obey, and occasionally amuse her husband, to bring up his children and manage his household”. Such a woman, mainly white from middle- and upper-class, was to become a “lady of leisure” and “status symbol” (Alpern 23). Ann Scott, Professor at the University of Illinois whose works on the topic of Southern women have contributed immensely to the gender studies of this region remarks that the image of the submissive woman was reinforced by evangelical theology and women made great efforts to live up to what was expected of them. Many assumed that if they were unhappy or discontented it must be their own fault and that by renewed effort they could do better (Scott, Southern Lady 10-12).
In the antebellum South, slavery had a good deal to do with the ideal of the Southern Lady. Because they owned slaves and thus maintained a traditional landowning aristocracy, Southerners held on to the patriarchal family structure. Patriarchy was the norm in seventeenth-century England when it was transported to Virginia and adopted as a social pattern by the planters there. It lived on into the nineteenth century in the South. Women along with children and slaves were expected to recognize their proper and subordinate place and to be obedient to the head of the family (Scott, Southern Lady 16-18). Any tendency on the part of any of the members of the system to assert themselves against the master threatened the whole, and therefore slavery itself. The servitude of the slave was comparable to that of the woman who was obliged to bear the positions of the wife and mother. Personal documents provide detailed evidence of female discontent in the South. Unhappiness centered on women’s lack of control over many aspects of their own sexual lives, over the institution of slavery, which they could not change, and over the inferior status which kept them so powerless (Scott, Invisible Woman 178).
As Basch argues, the ideals of human rights and sexual equality inspired by the French Revolution and Enlightenment rationalism had stimulated the American women who pioneered the movement for emancipation early in the nineteenth century. It reached the US South later due to the rooted values that persisted in southern families. The drive for democratization provided particular encouragement to African Americans and women to express themselves. The latter began to organize themselves in large numbers. The evangelical movement produced plenty of charitable associations that encouraged the participation of women – as wives and mothers, thus giving them legitimacy and providing them with a field of action and an identity (Basch 289-90). The initial impulse was often a hunger for education. One of the most ambitious examples of a club, which tried to provide a substitute for college, was the Atlanta History Club, which offered a graduate course in nineteenth century history (Scott, Southern Lady 152). The first phase in the long march toward liberation featured a struggle for social and then political rights at a time when traditional values were being questioned.
It was social action of this kind, inspired by their sense of moral mission, that incited women’s self-affirmation and their demand for autonomy. On a practical level, it was through their meetings, travel, and propaganda efforts that women learned how to organize and act collectively. Thus, the very forces that tended to tie them to the home sphere such as the institution of slavery, lack of education or no political rights led them to public action out in the world. The culture of this era was marked by a radical social reform movement. There was a sudden need to change life – to abolish slavery, in this case. For white women activists, the fight against slavery highlighted their own oppression: inferior, dispossessed by marriage of all their rights, deprived of education, an identity, and the right to vote. Women felt close to the slave, despite the disparities that separated them (Basch 290). A Louisiana woman wrote:
I was born and raised in the south…as were all my relations before me….Yet…my first recollection is of pity for the Negroes and desire to help them…. Always I felt the moral guilt of it, felt how impossible it must be for an owner of slaves to win his way into Heaven….Southern women are all, I believe, abolitionists. (Scott, Southern Lady 49-50)
Perhaps it was the understanding growing from this identification with slaves which led so many Southern women to be private abolitionists, and even a few to be public ones. Sarah and Angelina Grimke were the most striking examples. As daughters of a prominent South Carolina judge and plantation owner, the Grimke sisters witnessed the suffering of slaves. Determined to speak out, they were eventually forced to move to the North, where they continued to appeal to northerners and southerners to work toward abolition. They also urged white northerners to end racial discrimination. They fought throughout their lives for the emancipation of women and slaves, publicly addressing mixed audiences of women and men in the late 1830s (Scott, Southern Lady 51). Although they met with criticism, from the contemporary clerics in particular, who argued that they were threatening “the female character,” they nevertheless went on with their campaign. Sarah Grimke became one of the first to equal the conditions of women with that of slaves when she wrote that “woman has no political existence….She is only counted like the slaves of the south, to swell the number of lawmakers” (Sarah and Angelina Grimke).
These were the women who began to emerge as leaders in the southern version of what was called the Woman Movement. In appearance, they were generally the very model of Southern Ladies, described by their contemporaries as beautiful, charming, intelligent and brave. They were educated women, and not only because they had attended school. All were zealous readers and writers. Many were married and had children. They were women who had enough energy and wealth to travel outside the South and who very early established contact with women leaders in other parts of the country as well as with each other. They listened to and were influenced by great figures like Frances Willard, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth and later Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt. All of them were deeply religious (Scott, Invisible Woman 214). Perhaps most significantly, all were women of talent who had at some time in their lives felt that their talents might well be wasted because of the lack of opportunity to use them. Mary Blackford from Virginia was one of them. Having grown up in a family that supported Virginia’s slaves, she took political action into her hands by drafting an anti-slavery petition of her own in 1830s. Although her plan fell through, Blackford remained a significant part of the women’s movement (Duggan).
During much of the 1830s and 40s, the Movement attracted large numbers of supporters and encouraged the formation of numerous local and national female clubs (McGlen et al. 4-5). Upper-class educated women could afford to travel and take part in various social meetings around the country, but middle-class women did not lag behind. By the introduction of factory-made products, a lot of white middle-class women became freed from many domestic chores. Many of the traditional economic tasks which nearly all women had performed in the recent past disappeared from home. Smaller families, better health, canned food, ready-made clothes, all combined to reduce the time required for traditional household functions, and to expand leisure time, especially of urban wives. The single invention of the sewing machine was an immense emancipation of mothers (Scott, Southern Lady 135). Therefore they could devote some of their extra time to participation in improvement groups such as reading societies or book clubs, as they are called in some southern communities today. There were several reasons for this rise in social activism. Vast numbers of women from the middle classes were in search of intelligent and useful pursuits and although many had studied in institutions of higher learning, they still had limited access to the professions they wished to pursue (Basch 298). So the movement started in a very inconspicuous way. Because they were doing “church work,” it was all very respectable and the most suspicious husband or father could hardly forbid attendance. An important club movement also began among well-educated and affluent African American women who often joined these clubs for companionship and self-improvement. But, unlike most white women, African American women also saw these groups as a way of lessening racial injustice and stressing their own religiosity and character (McGlen et al. 7).
The second half of the nineteenth century was a crucial time period for southern women. With the arrival of the Civil war, women were called on to undertake many tasks that were normally reserved for men. They collaborated in the war effort by collecting funds, clothing, and food supplies. They went to work in weapon factories and organized sewing circles and soldiers’ aid societies. Southern women were thrust into new public and private responsibilities, ranging from running whole plantations to providing food, clothing, bandages, and nursing care for the Confederate army. Some even disguised themselves as soldiers in order to be able to fight. As she acted against southern armies as an intelligence agent and guide, Harriet Tubman (1820-1913), a former slave and an exceptional recruit, serves as an example of such a daredevil woman. Having herself fled Maryland in 1849, she helped other slaves make it to the North (Basch 294). Clara Barton, Elizabeth Blackwell and Dorothea Dix were among those southern women who worked to train and organize field nurses during the War (Hine, Thompson 131).
With the men away the woman’s sphere instantly became very flexible. Women were able to do business in their own right, becoming planters, millers, merchants, manufacturers and managers. They started to make decisions, write letters to newspaper editors, and in many other ways assert themselves as individual human beings. These activities were partly an indirect protest against the limitations of their roles in the patriarchal society (Scott, Southern Lady 81-82). Many of them obviously enjoyed this new freedom. Reconstruction offered other challenges, including for many the necessity of making one’s way in a world in which women outnumbered men. The whole structure of women’s lives was being changed. Apart from the early mentioned introduction of labor saving devices thanks to the industrialization of the late nineteenth century, for southern women there was an additional emancipation and that was the freeing of the slaves. Nearly all who expressed their opinions rejoiced that slavery was abolished (Scott, Invisible Woman 213). In hard times, women could prove their abilities and conviction that they were working not only for the emancipation of slaves but also for their own freedom.
Defeat and the postwar conditions in the South undermined the patriarchal system. Slavery, which had provided the original need for the idea, was gone and many men came home to face conditions which proved unmanageable for them. The image of the Southern Lady began to change. In the 1920s maintaining the ladylike image was still considered to be good politics, but active women continued to alter behavior remarkably. However, this myth was used as a tool by opponents who attacked women on the ground that they were ´unwomanly´, thus casting doubt on the cause for which they stood. This was done repeatedly, and the cry came often from other women and men who were afraid for their own domestic comforts (Scott, Invisible Woman 225).
By 1920 the list of things that women’s clubs were doing or trying to do in the South was astonishing. Apart from efforts to secure prohibition laws, women worked in various southern states for prison reform, child labor regulation, shorter hours of labor or compulsory education. As Scott remarks, “they organized libraries, expanded schools, tackled adult illiteracy, organized settlement houses, supported sanitary laws, juvenile courts, pure water, modern sewage systems, planted trees and helped girls to go to college” (Scott, Invisible Woman 217). Women gradually came to recognize the strength that was behind these combined forces. Between 1894 (Kentucky) and 1907 (Virginia) federations of clubs were formed in every southern state (Scott, Southern Lady 161). One such club formation could be seen in Tennessee when in 1920, Mrs. Ethel Crabtree came up with the idea of setting up a state federation of all business and professional women’s clubs in Tennessee, which was about twenty at that time. The formation was agreed upon in Chattanooga, July 3, 1920, and since then it has promoted “the interests and opportunities for all women in the workplace through advocacy, education, and information” (History of Tennessee Federation).
Through club work women developed leadership skills that would be useful in managerial pursuits. These women would also become role models for future women who wanted to gain entrance into the field of management. Young women could see businesswomen, political activists, teachers and social workers, librarians, newspaperwomen, lawyers and doctors, which was of great significance. Marry H. Treadwell and her sister Georgia Harry serve as a good example. They founded an insurance agency in Memphis, Tennessee after Mary’s husband died in 1910. It was the first insurance company in the United States owned and run by women who had to cope with obstacles presented by the public during their management. One such incident occurred when J. T. Harshan, president of the company building a second Memphis bridge, turned down to take into consideration Treadwell and Harry for insurance covering the bridge project. In the end Harry managed to convince those involved and came out as a winner (Bucy).
As far as professional fulfillment is concerned, women’s household work was indispensable to the direct securing of their families´ needs in the colonial economies. Women also contributed to production of goods and services to others through their labor in family businesses. The labor of enslaved African American women in the fields and homes of white Southerners was essential to the southern economy and to early US economic growth (Amott, Matthaei 349). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, only a few occupational areas were open for women, such as nursing, teaching and clerical work. Because of the low status of women in this culture at this time, women in these fields, who had no rights to equal education, to owning property or to voting, brought their low legal and societal status into these professions.
Role expectations for white upper- and middle-class women of the early nineteenth century dictated women to stay at home and to serve as decorative status symbols for their husbands. Access to higher education motivated some of these women to aspire to managerial positions outside of home. African American women, whose access to college education came much later than white women’s, had even more difficult time gaining access to managerial career as they also faced racial discrimination in employment. While most white upper- and middle-class women continued to volunteer, there was a steady increase of women entering various occupations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Still, women entering business were reminded that they should pay attention to their domestic lives (Alpern 26-8, 46).
In the postwar readjustment of the economy at the end of the nineteenth century, towns were increasing in number and size. Poverty was everywhere, especially in the rural districts and in the areas that invading armies had entered. The changing pattern of women’s work began as a condition, growing out of hard times, the shortage of men, and the desperate need of women to support themselves and their children. Perhaps the most startling development of all in the realm of woman’s work was the rapid movement of women into manual labor and factory work of various kinds. When the Senate Committee on Education and Labor held hearing in the South in the early eighties, the senators were told repeatedly about the many women workers in the mills (Scott, Southern Lady 121).
By the turn of the century a significant percentage of southern women, especially single ones, drawn from all social classes, were gainfully employed. The increasing interest in education met with the need of large numbers of women to find paid employment. School teaching had always been a respectable thing to do and now it was the first thought of many upper-class women who needed to earn money. School teaching had almost become a woman’s domain as well as the jobs based on the new skills of typing and stenography. In an undated newspaper column which appears to have been published in the eighties of the nineteenth century, Elizabeth Lyle Saxon reported the presence of young women architects and engineers in Memphis (Scott, Southern Lady 124). There were also a handful of doctors and lawyers although women were still prohibited from practicing law in many southern states. In the rural areas, the old patterns persisted, but girls who did not like them could go to work in a town, get a job in a mill, or even attend a normal or industrial school and prepare themselves to teach. It is clear, however, that while many women worked from necessity and would happily have returned to dependency if any opportunity appeared, others found great satisfaction in independence. It was generally taken for granted that they would work for wages before they were married (Scott, Southern Lady 226). Increasingly young women could see older middle-class women working after they were married, which had a positive influence on them in the sense that they had paragons and ideals to follow.
It would be possible to argue that many of the changes traced here were the direct consequences of industrialization. As work moved out of home, women were to become discontented and eventually to work out a new pattern of usefulness for themselves. The growth of towns and cities, which was accelerated by industrial development, also marked consequences for southern women (Scott, Southern Lady 228). The image of the Southern Lady had been created as part of the ideology of the plantation way of life; when plantations broke up and people began to move to town, the image as a real force in women’s lives began to lose its power.
In 1890 the Eleventh Census made some comparisons of the number of women in various occupations over a twenty-year period. The census categories of agricultural and domestic workers must have included large numbers of African American women. The professional, trade and transportation and manufacturing categories, by contrast, probably contained mostly white women. The figures suggest the changes which were taking place. In Virginia, for example, the total of 5,000 women in manufacturing in 1870 doubled by 1890, though the total population had increased by less than a third. In Mississippi 700 professional women were counted in 1870, and over 3,000 in 1890 - a four-times increase in a population which had increased only by twenty five percent. Georgia had 5,000 women in manufacturing and mechanical jobs in 1870, and 12,000 in 1890 (Scott, Southern Lady 123).
Beginning the twentieth century, five million women, or one fifth of the nation, worked for wages; almost half of them were employed as domestic servants, and in the South almost all of these were African Americans. In big cities women represented fifty five percent of workers in the garment industry. While the female labor force was concentrated in the textile, garment, and cotton industries, food production, and laundering, US industry as a whole discriminated against women workers by paying them lower wages. A female cigar maker or garment worker would receive from half to a third of a man’s salary (Basch 299). This is just one aspect among others, the weight of which cannot be omitted and will be discussed in greater detail later on in the work, which affected working environments of women in the years to come.
B. The Work Environment with its Implications
Today, women’s growing participation in managerial and professional jobs is an important component of women’s status, as it reflects their educational preparation and employers’ willingness to promote them to positions of responsibility and authority (Caiazza, Shaw, and Werschkul 16). Despite the tremendous increase in the number of women in the workforce generally, and in management and entrepreneurial fields specifically, women remain evidently absent among the highest ranking, top paying, and most powerful corporate positions.
According to the Report on Women’s Economic Status in the States (2001), women in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states are among the most likely to work in managerial and professional jobs. The District of Columbia has the highest rate (49.3 percent) of women employed in professional and managerial jobs compared to southern states like Alabama (29.4 percent), Georgia (33.7 percent), Kentucky (32.2 percent) and Tennessee (31 percent). Race and ethnicity are also important factors related to women’s occupations. Among women, Asian American women are most likely to work in professional and managerial positions, at 41.4 percent, while Hispanic women are least likely to do so, at 22.9 percent. White women are the second most likely group to work in professional and managerial jobs at 38.7 percent. Native American women (30.0 percent) and African American women (29.7 percent) have lower rates of working in these jobs. Because of the benefits that managerial and professional jobs can extend to women workers, the low proportions of Hispanic, African American, and Native American women in these jobs also affect their ability to achieve economic autonomy and flexibility in their work (Caiazza, Shaw, and Werschkul 16-7). In Tennessee, out of all women in managerial or professional occupations, 33.9 percent are white women, 27. 5 percent African American women and 20.8 percent Hispanic women. A similar situation is in other southern states, except for Virginia, where the percentage of Hispanic women is higher (27.2 percent) (Caiazza, Shaw, Werschkul 38).
Although most employers today employ married women and women with children and there are relatively few formal barriers to women’s entry into a wide range of jobs and professions in the United States, there is a considerable degree of gender discrimination. Employers are still influenced by stereotypes about the work commitment and abilities of women. These kinds of attitudes form the basis for practices that keep women out of decision-making positions. Women in business organizations are employed in people-oriented departments such as personnel or public relations rather than in the more powerful production and marketing departments. What is more, a relatively powerful position might lose power when occupied by a woman - men are more likely than women to be given full prestige associated with a particular position (Lips 854). Women are thus taking this disadvantage with them all their way along the career ladder, which results in having less organizational power. And it is the issues of wage gap, glass ceiling and job segregation that will be the focus of the following lines.
1. The Wage Gap and the Glass Ceiling
One of the most persistent concerns in discussions of gender and work is the long-standing wage gap between men and women. Should women reach positions of structural equality with men, it still does not mean that they enjoy the same extent of financial rewards for these positions. On the contrary, women are significantly underpaid compared to men in the same occupations and with the same level of qualifications. Among fulltime workers, women have continually earned lower wages than men, typically earning 76-79 cents for every dollar earned by men. Even with the same job in the same occupation, women’s average earnings are typically lower than those of men. The highest paid occupations are those with predominantly male workers (Powell 29-30). It is also interesting to note that the more women in a job, the less both its male and female employees earn (Padavic, Reskin 140). Pay is an important indicator of the value attached to work, and the work of women continues to be valued less than the work of men in almost all major sectors of the economy.
In 2002, the median wages of women who worked full-time, year-round were 76.2 percent of men’s. In other words, among workers with the greatest employment effort, women earned about seventy six cents for every dollar earned by men. The wage ratio (see Appendix 1) of women’s to men’s earnings also differs widely among the states. The ratio is generally best in Southwestern and Middle Atlantic states. It is worst in much of the Midwest, the Southeast, and the Northwest (Caiazza, Shaw, Werschkul 9). In several states, including Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, and Virginia, rankings for the wage ratio improved by ten or more places - in every case because women’s earnings rose but men’s fell. In one state, Missouri, the wage ratio improved as women’s earnings rose and men’s did not change at all. Alabama (66.7 percent) and Louisiana (68.5 percent) are worst for the 2002 wage ratio. Several states dropped by ten or more places between the 2002 and 2004 rankings. In Alabama men’s wages increased while women’s decreased. Similar trends exist in Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee (Caiazza, Shaw, Werschkul 10, 38).
A study performed by Stroh et al. (1992) found that even when women and men managers had the same level of education, worked in the same industries, showed the same willingness to relocate, and took very few, if any, career breaks, women received significantly less pay than men (qtd. in Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 314). The fact that women are not fairly rewarded for their efforts to be good leaders must affect their motivation to aspire to top executive levels of management.
The differences in the average pay of men and women that have been in the labor market for a considerable time are the result of many forces, including differences in the characteristics (such as average labor market experience) that men and women bring to their jobs, differences in the characteristics of the jobs in which men and women work, and differential and discriminatory treatment of women by employers and co-workers. The evidence is that labor market discrimination against women persists, although it is difficult to determine precisely how much of the difference in pay is due to discrimination (McGlen et al. 211-12).
The glass ceiling, “the concept of an invisible barrier that prevents women and minorities from advancing into top positions within organizations,” operates in almost the same fashion (Murrel 211). Women are hired into the lower ranks of a profession but find their paths to the upper levels of the field blocked. This practice seems most notable in the business sector, although it exists in all fields. A closer look at the largest US corporations indicates that there are only a few women that have made it to the top. In 2002, only 12.5 percent of the five hundred corporate officers of the largest companies in the United States were women. Moreover, women held only 6.2 percent of the highest titles and formed only 4.1 percent of the top earners. Only six women were Chief Executive Officers of US five hundred companies.
Case Study One
Kelley Davis, Electric Power Board
Ms Davis works as a Human Resource Manager in Electric Power Board, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Having been with this company for six years now, she maintains a middle management position. Davis, who is 46, is of Caucasian origin, is married and has got two children. Thanks to her experience she decided to lead by her own style and to use that style to push forward new visions. That has worked to her advantage in creating a new business model. What distinguishes her is her comfort level with herself as a woman. Her style can be characterized as being very approachable, very open to the opinions of others, willing to take significant risks and let the team run most of the business while she focuses on the things that only she can do, in combination with making efforts to develop the team to the point where they can largely run the business collectively.
To the question whether she has faced any hindrances in her career development Davis answered that when she came to work with the company she was a bit skeptical about her management. Although she was respected by her peers as a talented leader, in private more senior level members of the organization had doubts about her skills. “No one was talking with me about my concerns, thus I had no opportunity to develop capability or to show I actually had the right capabilities. In effect I was being judged against a set of criteria for which I had no clue I needed to prove myself. Although I had a tremendous responsibility to deliver critical assets for the organization and my knowledge was respected, I was not engaged in strategic business discussions around issues such as re-organization”.
By the time of her stay with the firm, the senior level underwent some changes and things started to improve as Davis delivered very good evident results. “I have to say my position became an advantage because once I had proved my competence, they tended to remember me. That was another important lesson: You prove your worth through hard work and competence.” She believes that it is very realistic that she will attain the upper-management position she aspires for. However, she does not think she is progressing as rapidly as she should. While she expressed feeling comfortable with adapting her management style according to the situation, she perceives she is expected to conform to the norms and rules of the majority males.
When asked what kind of advice she would provide for other women, Davis commented: "Hard work is the key attribute, along with a very serious commitment to the value of this industry. It also helps to have good communication skills and a sense of humor. Finally, remember that being manager is not the only job…Clearly, we want and need more women leaders because women are having a very high impact in our industry." She strongly believes that having a diverse environment around the boardroom table makes a big difference. When looking ahead, she believes that women will continue to advance the well-established way: “by following their passion, by working hard and by going after key opportunities” (Davis).
The legal cost of discrimination is well known. For instance, in January 1997, Publix Supermarkets Inc., a chain with 150,000 workers in Florida, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, agreed to pay $81.5 million to settle a discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of its current and former female employees. This made it the fourth largest settlement in a gender discrimination case in US history. Among the main accusations were that female employees were supposedly placed in “dead-end” jobs and were held back in promotions and pay increase on the basis of their gender. The women also claimed that they were given poor reviews, were treated harshly when pregnant and were given more severe treatment when punished than men. The settlement brought about significant changes in the way Publix promotes and prepares all of its store employees for their career. Employees have been given a chance every six months to choose their career path and Publix has had to publish minimum qualifications for jobs. The company also agreed to include the equivalent proportion of women and minorities in a pool of qualified applicants when it came to promotions (EEOC).
The defense tools that women have and can use exist, but when women managers consider their options in fighting discrimination, they may find that although such a complaint would be supported by law, it can be difficult to obtain compensation. The mere fact of belonging to or aspiring to belong to the management team complicates the decision to bring a suit. Filing a claim of gender discrimination can result in discharge, a frozen career, or, at best, negatively influenced relationships between the woman manager and her colleagues (Lee 247).
2. Job Segregation
The glass ceiling and the consequent wage gap might be the result of job segregation, another phenomenon occurring in US society. American women and men are still often concentrated in different kinds of work. Job segregation by gender in the workplace refers to “the different distributions of men and women across different occupations, jobs, and places of work” (Padavic, Reskin 57).
Although more than half of all professionals are women, they are found in a few fields such as nursing, teaching and social work. Men professionals are similarly concentrated in “their” professions of engineering, dentistry, medicine, and architecture, with the result of being paid much better. While a privileged minority of women now has access to top positions, they tend to end up in departments such as human resources and corporate communications, which typically pay less than sales, marketing, operations, or finance. Not surprisingly, women executives are best represented in soaps and cosmetics industry, where they form nineteen percent of the directors (Amott, Matthaei 352). Appendix 2 provides a few examples of jobs within the category of managerial and professional occupations, including those held predominantly by men (such as top executives, computer and math jobs, engineers, lawyers, physicians, and surgeons) and those held predominantly by women (such as counselors, legal support workers, teachers, nurses, and health technicians) (Caiazza, Shaw, and Werschkul 14-16). A 2003 study reported that females working in predominantly female occupations earned nearly thirty percent less than females working in male-dominated occupations (McGlen et al. 213). Therefore, separating women into different places and different roles leads to unequal treatment, lower pay and authority – at work, in their families, and in the larger society. In addition, it implies that treating groups differently is appropriate.
Often, there is also segregation in jobs and duties within the same occupation. It applies to situations in which men and women share the same place of work but do different jobs (Padavic, Reskin 57). Female managers often lead less prestigious or less powerful departments, female bank managers tend to work in smaller, more remote branches, and female clerks have less prestige and less discretion than male clerks. Bielby and Baron’s (1986) survey suggested that men and women performing similar duties in the same organization sometimes have different job titles and different career tracks with female-dominated jobs having fewer promotion prospects (qtd. in Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 171). It puts women into a narrow group of less desirable positions and assignments with decreased opportunities to demonstrate abilities and receive recognition for achievements. Women constantly report having to surpass men in achievements in order to obtain even minimal recognition for their work (Fassinger 1175).
Case Study Two
Roberta Rodriguez, McKee Foods
Ms Rodriguez works as a Safety Assistant Manager in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She is married, without children, working on her Masters degree at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She is of Hispanic origin, 34. She has been working for this company for four years. Originally from Venezuela, Roberta grew up in a lower middle-class family. When she was a high school student, her family moved to the United States where she attended college in Alabama. Her days are very busy, divided between her work, school and home responsibilities. Although she is contented with her position at McKee Foods now, her career attainment has not always been a bed of roses.
On interviewing her, I found that before coming to McKee Foods, she worked in a local retail company. Rodriguez remembers sometimes being not assigned to significant engagements because “executives were just not sure how the men on that account were going to react.” This reflects men’s desire to protect their positions. The task segregation within her job consisted in men being assigned to jobs that required decision and responsibility, whereas “we [women] were engaged in routine work such as processing documents to assist male coworkers under their direction.” Together with the lack of support and acceptance perceived by her, there was a certain corporate culture that isolated her and controlled her autonomy. These practices limited her full participation and contribution. She described how the peers worked to exclude her from important client meetings, as follows: “As soon as I was given some additional responsibilities and it became clear that I was viewed as very, very senior talent potential ... all of a sudden the key client meetings, I wasn't invited to and things started to occur that it was looking obvious that they were trying to take their competitor, me, out of position.”
Rodriguez also remembers when she got promoted although she did not really have quite enough experience to do the job in which she was suddenly placed. “Corporations do this to men all the time and they expect male bosses, peers, and some subordinates to provide support while the person learns.” However, in this case, Rodriguez’s peers resented the fact that she was suddenly above them when they had worked hard to get to their current positions. In that climate, they were more willing to sit back and watch her handle the job because “if she is so good then she should be able to work it out”. Perhaps they also felt she had a lot to prove and was not so willing to look for help. “Either way, I was on my own in a job that I was not so prepared for. Then, not only was this a huge job but as I was now the only woman at that level, I was expected to be on every committee, to chair the women’s network, to attend four times as many client events, and be a mentor to more women than a human being could possibly manage. It was a no-win situation with a less than a positive outcome for everyone and I failed at the job.”
This changed when she came to work for McKee Foods Corporation. She was given a mentor, a key person in her managerial career. He coached her on how to manage the balance of being feminine and trust her own style while also being powerful and effective as a leader. She described her most significant mentor this way: “I guess he saw me sort of like a daughter. He would advise me on how to present an argument. He made sure I had certain experiences. More importantly, he needed someone to talk with. So when he was struggling with a strategic issue he would bring me into his office and quiz me about what he should do in a particular case. I’d give an answer and he’d say ‘no that won’t work because…’ Over the years with debates like that I learned a lot more than I thought.”
She admits that not everyone is fortunate enough to be given the opportunities she enjoyed. "The world is still not perfect," she says, "and there are biases and barriers against all kinds of people." But she is hopeful. "More and more," she notes, "diversity is valued in the workplace, and there's no going back." While there are times when being the only woman may have opened doors, she observes that there is still an automatic presumption based on gender or ethnicity that you're there only because you've been favored. "That can color the way people treat you," she admits, "but it's always been my approach not be offended, but simply to prove them wrong."
When asked to sum up her advice to young women aspiring for management positions, Rodriguez remarked: "Be true to yourself. Be honest and trust your instincts. That's something one of my male mentors told me: 'Trust your instincts. They're usually right.' I think women too often try to go against their instincts and to analyze, trying to think about what a man would be doing. So they hold back on what their instincts tell them. Also, it's important to be open to learning and doing new things" (Rodriguez).
Women still encounter some serious hurdles in their effort to achieve equality at the workplace. Even today, the influence of stereotypes about women’s abilities results in women not being hired in leadership positions. Discrimination by employers and male employees continues to restrict hiring and promotion opportunities for women. In a recent survey by Catalyst, women listed different barriers to their advancement than their superiors. When asked what holds them back from top management, fifty two percent of female executives reported “male stereotyping and preconceptions of women,” forty nine percent said “exclusion from informal networks of communication,” and forty seven percent said “lack of significant general management/line experience.” In contrast, eighty two percent of Chief Executive Officers (CEO) blamed the lack of experience, while sixty two percent said that women “had not been in the pipeline long enough.” Those women who have been successful credit their success to “consistently exceeding expectations” (seventy seven percent), “developing style with which male mangers are comfortable” (sixty one percent), “seeking out difficult assignments” (fifty percent), and “having an influential mentor” (thirty seven percent) (McGlen et al. 217). The part that follows provides the reader with suggestions on how the hindrances and obstacles in women’s career might be diminished, containing some of the above mentioned pieces of advice.
IV. Conclusion: Recommendations to Help Women Advance
To break the glass ceiling, efforts are needed at both the personal level and the organizational level to eliminate stereotypes about women’s leadership abilities and the structural barriers that keep women from advancing to top levels of management. This section discusses some of the programs such as mentoring, affirmative action and comparable worth, which have recently received a considerable attention.
A. Mentoring
While much of the difficulty for women in negotiating male-dominated work environments stems from the lack of male support, the absence of other women also constitutes a barrier to their participation in nontraditional fields. Professional isolation virtually guarantees that women will not gain access to knowledge, which is critical to their success. In fact, research demonstrates that more women than men lack information about what is required for career advancement. Since women also tend to be excluded from informal networks, they receive little feedback regarding their performance and are less able than men to take corrective action and position themselves for desirable outcomes (Fassinger 1176-77). The presence of women in positions of power in organizations and institutions helps to legitimize other women and provides models of status achievement with which women can identify. In addition, many women seek role models and mentors who can help them manage the homework interface.
One area that shows a great deal of promise for advancing the careers of women in various organizations is the impact of mentoring, “relationships at work that involve activities such as sponsorship, coaching, counseling, and role modeling” (Murrel 211). Career advantages for a protégé are achieved because a more senior person undertakes key mentoring functions. Recent evidence provides support for the positive impact of these developmental relationships. Research indicates that individuals who receive mentoring report more positional power and receive more promotions and compensation than individuals without either formal or informal mentoring relationships. A recent study showed that women and minority MBAs (Masters of Business Administration) who had a mentor earned significantly more money than those who did not have a mentor (Murrell 214). Protégés affect the mentor's status and credibility in the organization and can provide a good base of future support and expertise. In addition, an individual's experience as a protégé has been found to be a significant predictor in the decision to become a mentor (Fassinger 1177). Clearly, when individuals see the value in these types of developmental relationships, they are likely to enter the relationship again as a mentor.
These mentoring relationships have implications for women who are faced with the glass ceiling and barriers to advancement in organizations. Although research indicates that having mentors has positive effects on women’s career advancement, it is exceedingly difficult to obtain mentors due to the lack of women in the upper ranks of most workplaces. Studies show that individuals receive more support for advancement from same-sex workers and also that men tend to support other men while women support both women and men (Fassinger 1177). Consequently, given the small number of women in top levels of organizations and according to these findings, men are more likely to be in mentoring relationships than women.
B. Affirmative Action
The unfavorable situation for women within workforce made the US Department of Labor set up a Glass Ceiling Commission, which issued a report in 1995, where the barriers to women’s and minorities´ advancement were indicated. Among its twelve recommendations were calls for more CEO commitment to eliminating the barriers, the establishment of family-friendly programs, more diversity programs and the implementation of affirmative action plans (McGlen et al. 216-17).
In principle, affirmative action involves taking positive steps to provide equal opportunities for women and others from underrepresented groups. It is a variety of “policies, programs, and procedures put in place to monitor and correct discrimination based on dimensions such as race, gender, and age” (Murrel 211). These strategies are used to remove institutional barriers created by past discrimination and prejudice. For example, if a company noticed underrepresentation of women at a particular job title, the company would conduct an analysis to investigate if one of their practices was causing unintended discriminatory effects. The organization might also examine whether a certain type of subtle favoritism existed (Sincharoen, Crosby 69-70). Thus, affirmative action aims to ensure that people will be treated fairly, even in conditions where those who are disadvantaged do not recognize it themselves.
Although affirmative action was implemented in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Order 11246 that included the term, it concerned only federal contractors, that is organizations that do business with the federal government. These were to take proactive steps to ensure that discriminatory practices were not being carried out in employment. Affirmative action was part of the civil rights movement and part of President Johnson's vision of a ´Great Society´, in which individuals would have equal opportunities to reach the goals they wished to pursue and the disparities between rich and poor would be diminished (Sincharoen, Crosby 70).
It is important to differentiate between affirmative action and equal opportunity programs. The difference between equal opportunity employers and those who introduce affirmative action programs lies in how they approach the problems of discrimination. Equal opportunity employers take action only if complaints of gender or racial discrimination are presented by employees. Affirmative action employers, on the other hand, do not wait for complaints to arise. Instead, they have in place operating plans to monitor their own behavior. Unlike equal opportunity employers, affirmative action employers invest considerable effort and commitment into looking for discrepancies between equality and opportunity within an organization (Sincharoen, Crosby 70).
There is criticism along with the praise of affirmative action that has been coming up, though. Some affirmative action strategies have shifted from the "classical" definitions. Such activities include practices of organizations in which allotted spaces for minority workers are ensured. These programs are then criticized for establishing "preferential treatment" for women and ethnic minorities. These types of affirmative action practices are not often employed and are not supported by federal government standards for implementing affirmative action plans. In recent years, scholars have labeled Johnson's affirmative action plans as “classical affirmative action” to distinguish them from unjustified preferential treatment (Murrel 211-12).
Affirmative action can be perceived as self-threatening if the implementation strategy of the program conveys negative messages to women. For example, some affirmative action plans may be structured in a way that they unintentionally imply that the recipient lacks basic qualifications required for the job, is inferior to other applicants and current employees, or could not have obtained the job without help. These implications create what is called an “affirmative action stigma” (Sincharoen, Crosby 77). It is therefore important for such programs to clearly confirm the possibility of the recipient's future success, ensure that the help does not imply a continuing dependence or need for future assistance, and work toward removing discriminatory barriers. When affirmative action is misapplied, it can harm women; when it is properly applied, it has been proved to help women in terms of both employment and education. By helping organizations preserve fairness, affirmative action can contribute to social balance. Properly created programs assure all people, no matter what their gender or ethnicity, the opportunities they deserve.
C. Comparable Worth
Although women’s pay relative to men’s has increased over time, still the wage gap that exists has incited concern about the equity or fairness of the wage-setting process. One of the solutions proposed to eliminate or reduce pay differences between jobs within a company that are related to an occupation´s gender composition is known as comparable worth or pay equity, which is defined as “having comparable salaries for jobs requiring comparable effort, skill, responsibility, and working conditions” (McGlen et al. 220). The notion of comparable worth has received a great deal of attention during the past two decades. Supporters of this approach believe that women are given different kinds of jobs than men, which leads to wage discrimination and results in women’s work being “devalued”, that is, being rewarded lower wages than jobs predominantly held by men. A comparable worth policy serves as an extension of the current issue of equal pay for equal work, which was set by the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to “equal pay for equivalent work within a firm” (Levine 1). The terms “pay equity” and “comparable worth” are used interchangeably.
Typically, equivalent jobs consist in performances that involve similar skills with parallel education and training requirements. The idea behind comparable worth is that a person’s salary should mirror job content rather than the predominant gender of the employees in an occupation (Levine 15). With regard to evaluation, employers would then be made to increase the salaries of employees in all jobs or in usually underpaid female-dominated jobs (O'Neill). The comparable worth approach to wage determination has been mostly implemented in state and local governments. Public sector unions often have played a large role in organizations making comparable worth pay adjustments. Private sector unions, on the other hand, have shown much less interest in the issue than public sector unions have. And, only about fifteen percent of all workers are represented by labor unions (Levine 15-16).
The combination of social policy like affirmative action and comparable worth and organizational policy such as mentoring appears to provide a crucial alliance of forces that help to remove historical barriers for women in organizations and reduce some of the well-documented wage gap based on gender. It may be the case that while affirmative action and similar policies and programs cause some resistance, significant changes in the nature of the employment relationships stress their importance and necessity in the present work settings.
D. Other Recommendations
Women still face some important hindrances on their way to achieve equality in the workplace in the United States. Even today, whether on a conscious or unconscious level, people often take their own and other people´s gender into account in their work environment in some way. Stereotypes about gender that portray women as having attributes and abilities that differ from men’s affect the earnings gap provided that employers rely on them in hiring, placement, or promotion decisions. Stereotypes that women are better at some tasks and men at others lead employers to hire women into customarily female jobs and men into customarily male ones. As traditionally male jobs pay more, this lowers women’s pay compared to men’s. The influence of stereotypes about women’s abilities results in women getting stuck in their careers, not reaching top leadership positions. Gender stereotyping also hinders the working relationships between men and women. What kind of effect it has depends on factors such as the personal characteristics of individuals as well as the proportions of men and women in occupations, assignments and work groups. It may be tempting for management to claim that gender stereotyping is beyond its control and therefore do nothing about it. Although organizations cannot forbid gender stereotyping from the workplace, they have too much to lose from its negative effects to ignore the issue altogether. Managers can take action to prevent the negative effects of stereotyping and the consequent glass ceiling and lessen such effects when they occur.
Organizations can proactively try to reduce the effects of gender stereotyping by improving the flow of information within their boundaries. Information about the qualifications and achievements of all group members should be made known, not just those with token or minority status. When these are identified in a formal written communication, which is made public, misinterpretation of the capabilities of token members and exaggeration of the differences between dominating and minority groups are reduced (Powell 116-17). The effects of stereotypes can also be significantly reduced if people are willing to view an individual as an exception to the stereotype through a so called “individuating information.” It has been proved in studies that by relying on individual experience when it comes to performance appraisals, workers´ evaluations tend to be more objective. Men and women appear to adopt stereotypical roles when they are in unfamiliar situations, but drop such roles when the situation is more familiar and they have worked together longer (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 324). One of the outcomes of following traditional gender roles was that men and women knew how to act with each other and what to expect. That does not work in contemporary settings anymore. One of the promising ways to maintain a healthy working environment for women and men is to try to understand each other better in their present work roles. They will gain from taking steps to reduce the likelihood that gender stereotyping will occur.
. . .
Although women have been entering managerial positions in great numbers recently, they still tend to end up in lower management jobs, being excluded from decision-making and leadership posts within these professions. In most cases, being a man remains an advantage in acquiring organizational power. Gender inequality in the workplace is manifested in several ways: men and women are concentrated in different jobs, women are often confined to lower-ranking positions than men and are less likely to exercise authority, women earn less than men and women tend to face gender discrimination more often than their male counterparts within work settings. In this work I showed that behind these disparities, there are societal and organizational factors such as stereotypes and attitudes resulting in job segregation, gender discrimination, glass ceiling and the consequent wage gap, as well as personal factors.
Although policies such as comparable worth, affirmative action and mentoring have received a great deal of attention during the past two decades, one should not solely rely on these formal measures. To lessen the gender gap in leadership, corporations must take on an uneasy challenge. They should change how women leaders in their organizations are perceived. Just hiring more women into management positions will not reduce stereotypes. Exposure to women leaders is not enough. Organizations might take proactive steps to eliminate stereotypic bias by objective performance evaluation and succession planning processes, by educating managers about stereotyping and recognizing the successes of women leaders, especially in stereotypically masculine fields. The best way for business to counter the stereotype is to include respect within the organization's philosophy for all employees. Not all women make good managers. That holds equally true for men (Cleveland, Stockdale, and Murphy 324-25). With an open-minded perspective, a nonjudgemental view of others is created, which results in a healthy working environment with a positive work culture.
Involvement of women professionals in top-management leadership positions is progressing in the right direction, I believe. The contribution of women managers is needed in today’s work world and human resources approach only proves it. Women who rely on their distinct ways of leadership, tend to be more comfortable with sharing power and inviting participation, and recognize and raise the self-worth of others are perfect for today's flat, knowledge-based organization. Organizations need to realize that involving women more fully is related to their survival. The full utilization of women in the workplace should not be only for moral or social reasons, but rather should be a strategy for competing economically and gaining a competitive advantage in the future.
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