Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership, Research Paper Example

Fewer women hold corporate and leadership jobs than men across the world. Women account for about 50 percent of the world’s population, but only hold about 20 percent of corporate and leadership positions (Eagly & Carli, 62-71). There are fewer women in political positions than men, the medical field, sports, and the list goes on and on. Honestly, women are concentrated or confined to areas of support staff, unless they enter a traditional field for women-teaching is an example. Women still earn less of a salary than men while completing the same tasks. Women also have fewer opportunities for advancement in their fields because promotions are usually granted due to experience. However, women usually have less on the job experience due to their obligations of being a woman-having a baby, picking up children from school, attending PTA, etc. Women often miss the most days from work during and right after a pregnancy. Some women even decide to stay home with their children until they have reached school age. As a result, companies prefer to hire men than women. In essence, women are punished by society for becoming mothers. Companies don’t want to go through the stress of hiring and training someone else if and when a woman decides to become a mother.  The article, Are Women in Management Victims of the Phantom of the Male Norm, by Yvonne Due Billing, addresses many of the issues that women face when working in corporate America.

Billing conducted a qualitative study on 20 Swedish women who were in management positions on their jobs. Nevertheless, she contends that the way in which women manage is totally different from men, but just as effective. Nevertheless, women are held to male standards to determine if they are doing an effective job. Billing quotes West & Zimmerman, 1987 and Deutsch, 2007 saying “In all organizations there are norms and rules for behavior, some of which may be gendered in the sense that gendered differences are created.  Doing gender cannot be completely avoided: we do gender and sometimes we undo gender (that is, conform to or break away from sex stereotypes). This article focuses mostly on why fewer women are promoted to managerial positions than men. The women who participated in this study were between the ages of 35-60. Each worked in IT, finance, or the medical industry.  Nineteen of them were married or living with a partner. Only one was single. Seventeen of them had teenaged or older children. A very small number of the women had small children to care for.  The interviewing was conducted by Billing in the form of verbal interviews. Each interview lasted between 1 and 3 hours. Each interviewee was allowed to talk about her experiences without being guided to any specific questions. In other words, the person being interviewed was allowed to tell their story from their point of view.

This was a great strategy to use because it gave insight from various perspectives. The researcher had the opportunity to analyze what the interviewee said, or more importantly what they choose to discuss. Their discussions varied from their up-bringing to their daily family lives. Many discussed how they were stereotyped when they were hired. Many of the workers had various expectations for them because they were female. For example:

“Even though some of the interviewees thought that they were well suited for the job before getting it some found that their colleagues attempted to ‘read’ them as more traditional women. Stereotypical societal and cultural gender norms created expectations for some of the women in managerial positions to behave in accordance with gender-stereotypical ideas of women. One of the main problems was the classic one: they were expected to create more congruency (in the eyes of their co-workers) by taking on a softer style” (Eagly et al., 62-71)

Obviously, they were victims of stereotypes because women were assumed to have more lenient management skills. These stereotypes have been referred to as norms. In the article, Billing says, “Norms are context dependent and they change and develop. At the same time the male norm is a phenomenon developed through history and a reality that is experienced daily for some and therefore is almost impossible to capture theoretically”. In other words, these norms can change or dissipate over time.

Billing examined the various problems that women had in the three fields she identified earlier. First, the medical field, women said they dealt with loyalty issues.  These women felt a conflict of interest between their former co-workers and their new management positions.  Many women expressed finding it difficult to manage people who were once their co-workers.  For example, Billings noted,” For some of them it was necessary to be able to detach-h themselves from their manager role and they talked about situations where they did not have to be the boss” (Flax, 621-43). Next, the women in IT expressed fewer problems. They had been a part of their organizations from the beginning and were allowed to move up into management. These women did not express any uncertainty when working with the other sex. They had been interacting with them for years and in the college setting. The women felt that most people working in IT needed little management. They were self-directed and valued their jobs and the work they did. As a result, the women managers just viewed themselves as part of the team, instead of the boss. These women were the youngest of the group. Finally, it was evident that the management skills of older women were different from that of younger women. For example:

“There are generational differences. The habitus of the older women is different from that of younger women and thus they are provided with different dispositions and capabilities to act upon and against gendering. Although they all regarded their job as a sort of lifestyle not much constrained by family life, the experiences of these managers differed. The older women were in token positions and it is perhaps fair to say that they were reproducing norms set by men” ((Bourdieu, 1977)

Older women are more likely to do the job as directed with little dispute, while younger women are more apt to “rocking the boat”. Younger women will speak up and out about unfair situations and work to change them.

Working in management has been a traditional job setting for men, but more and more women are breaking the glass ceiling. Nevertheless, the male norms are making it difficult for women to complete the jobs that they are highly qualified to do. Through her research, Billing has found that many factors affect the way that women manage. Age, family status, education, economic status, and race may greatly affect the style of management a woman displays.  Nevertheless, the male norm that society has inflicted is the main barrier that women face in a male dominated workforce.  Finally Billing noted that “There are great variations in gender equality and in gender constructions and there are workplaces where women and men are not perceived in accordance with a gender norm. Notably, younger women as well as those with the highest education levels did not face any expectations of conforming to gendered norms” (Froumier & Smith, 141-142). Women in management, over time, will be able to change the norms and help future women finally break the glass ceiling that has been put in place by men in leadership positions.

Works Cited

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Butler, J (1990). Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory, and Psychoanalytic Discourse. In Nicholson, L (ed.) Feminism/Postmodernism, pp. 324-40.

Eagly, A & Carli, L. (2007).  Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership. Harvard Business Review, 65. Pp. 62-71.

Flax, I. (1987) Postmodernism and gender relations in feminist theory. Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 12, 4,621-43.

Foumier, V. and Smith, W. (2006) Scripting masculinity. Ephnnera, 6,2,14142.