According to Northouse (2016), while women appear to be just as qualified as men and make up almost half the U.S. labor force, they are underrepresented upper management positions. While the excuse used to be that women were undereducated, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (2011) as cited in Northouse (2016) “women earn 57% of bachelor’s degrees, 60% of the master’s degrees, and more than half of the doctoral degrees” (p. 398). While some of this inability to advance may be due to gender stereotypes and prejudice, I feel that women may be the ones to blame (Northouse, 2016). While I cited this within my discussion post I feel it is pertinent to my argument, according to Bowles and McGinn (2005) as cited in Northouse (2016) “research does indicate that women are less likely than men are to promote themselves for leadership positions” (p. 403). My argument is this, because women don’t advocate for themselves they may move up the ladder but they will move slower than men leaving women with less chances to make it all the way to the top. With in this discussion I will be reviewing several examples that indicate how women don’t promote themselves to support of this claim.
Because I have already talked about these next key points within my discussion post I will briefly describe them. According to Bowles and McGinn (2005) and Eagly and Carli (2007) as citied in Northouse (2016), women have “disproportionate responsibility” for “child rearing and domestic duties” (p. 400). In fact, some women give up entirely and rather than trying to advance within their career they choose the “mommy track” (Northouse, 2016, p. 401). I know many women at my job with the potential to lead who decide to focus on their family instead and treat their job as merely a means to provide for their family. While family is important, if they did value their careers and did choose to try and move up rather than focus on their family they would have a shot at moving up within the company. In this way these women have shortchanged themselves by choosing their family over success. Now I am saying this not because I don’t value family, but because for me a successful career is more important than a lineage which is not true for every person. My point is, if these women valued success they could focus on their career even with offspring they just have to advocate for themselves.
As many of my past professors and employers have stated in some capacity, you cannot have a successful career, social life, and home life while also getting enough food or sleep. I typically choose a successful semester over social and home life however recently family obligations have hindered my academic performance. I have also found this to be true for many of the females I have met who are successful in their careers as top surgeons, the head of operations at a bank, the softlines team lead/manager at a department store, the head of residence life at a college campus, etc. There are many commonalities between these women: they don’t have kids or have kids who they raised to be self-sufficient, they are either divorced or have had marital problems with the exception of those that are lesbian, they work long hours, and most importantly they have a spine. One last commonality which is rather unfortunate and true for everyone except the surgeon, they are nowhere near the top of their potential domain for management. So even after being able to advance they haven’t reached the top of their domain. Within Northouse (2016) the idea of structural role definition is brought up which is essentially balancing your home life and work life through negotiations with family/friends and your employer. For most companies this is not a possibility which is why women may have an easier time advancing in companies that do promote that (Northouse, 2016). In other words, these women who have had family problems had to juggle their home life and work life and had difficulty finding a balance. Their advancements within the job were their reward for dealing with these hardships. While it cannot be proven that their attempt to advance accounted for these issues at home, they do correlate which leads me to believe that they are somehow linked. It seems that if women want to advocate for themselves they must sacrifice some part of their typical lives.
From my own experiences I have found that I naturally don’t advocate for myself. For example, when individuals suggested I apply for a management position I was shocked and in awe of such an idea. Yet I think it is completely normal that my boyfriend who is only a few months older than myself is set to have a management position as soon as he graduates. I didn’t even think about it until now but it seems so normal for a male to have those roles of authority unlike females. When I finally did decide to go for my current position as an Assistant Director the rest of my life began to spiral. While my relationship is still in tact it is strained slightly due to the long distance, my family verbally insults my choices to do this job, and the sleep deprivation and inability to get all my homework done is extreme. Never in my life have a been so overwhelmed, and I have to wonder if I would be overwhelmed if I had just taken a regular internship for the summer. So even my own personal experience shows that some women just do not consider or advocate for themselves to move up within the workforce, and that when we do we have difficulty juggling work with our domestic responsibilities.
While this does help support my argument it doesn’t support the idea that if females advocate for themselves they could move into higher management. At my current job the Regional Manager who is in charge of the entire Northeast Coast of camps does not have any kids or significant other. So her success correlates with putting the opportunity for relationships and family on the back burner. She advocated for herself and put herself first before anything else (family, kids, marriage, etc.) in order to achieve success. Perhaps this is the key to success for women, put anything domestic on the back burner in order to advance. While this doesn’t prove that women created that glass ceiling, it shows that there are steps that women may have to take if they truly wish to navigate past the ceiling. Even so, she isn’t yet CEO, so perhaps there are other secrets to moving up even further.
References
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership (7th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Christian Daly says
References
Northouse, P. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles. Sage Publications.
Christian Daly says
First off I would like to say great post. You did a great job making your argument. Although I am a male I completely agree with you. I think women sometimes create their own barriers. I was raised by a single mother who was a police officer. She then retired and begin working for a company where she consistently advocated for herself and worked her tail off. I think your own experiences are show some of what Northouse mentioned in regards to “backlash women experience when they promote themselves” (Northouse, 2016, p. 403). Your parents giving you some negative words about your career decisions is a good exmample of that. I can also relate your experiences with my girlfriend. She has been focused primary on work and often has 13 to 14 hour work days. She decides to do that because she wants to advance and she has advanced. Getting promoted to in just under a year. At her company there are few women and a lot of men and the negotiations to get to the top are definitely “rife with gender triggers” (Northouse, 2016, p, 403). Adding on the fact that women are less likely to self promote it does make it harder for women to climb the ladder (Northouse, 2016, p. 403). With that said i still agree with your argument that if women want it they can have, they just need to be willing to self promote and put their career first. You did a good job, great post!