To talk about success, you first have to define it. Everyone of us will do this differently, in our own time, in our own way. For me it has been a moving target all my life to what success is, and I don’t doubt that this is the way for most, as our goals change with our life, almost like seasons, perhaps just in longer intervals not month, but more like years or decades. My professional journey started in late 1998 as I changed my career path from health care to business. It was more of a necessity than a want as the client I was caring for was put into a care facility and I needed employment. I signed up with a temp agency and landed my first job in a small office for a crane rental company, and here is where I found my future profession. I have worked for five medium to large corporations since that time and can clearly identify the barriers I had to fight thru to where I am today. All of the industries I have worked in and currently, are male dominated at all levels of the organization, clearly challenging my future goals of attaining management. In all but one of the five organization I worked in, there was a higher standard of performance for women than my male counterparts. If it be putting in more hours to show that I was putting in more effort, or the expectation of completing more in the same number of hours to show my worth. I worked along some male counterparts that seemed to know that they could do the bare minimum, while I would stay late to complete the project that we all got credit for. With this being more of the organizational environment it was tough to change the stereotype that all employees were doing their share of the work, it was more that the project got done on time and correctly.
Working relationships is definitely one of my strengths, unfortunately not having control over gender prejudices has always been the challenge. Until I have worked with a company and a team long enough to prove the misconceptions about how women act and work. I have been blessed to have my male managers provide vital feedback and support in my development, but again most of gender prejudices come from those that are higher in the organization and are at other facilities or locations. Finally, one of the biggest barriers for women can be the personal barriers, where their home life can interrupt their ability to focus and perform their job assignments, where most men do not carry the same responsibilities. As I never had children, I have been able to have a balanced work-life and have very little impact on my job duties. It has taken almost ten years of exposure to work politics to be able to “play” in the game as my male counterparts. Understanding what politics are going on and who is involved can and will impact a person’s career path. I feel that most women don’t want to play this game and suffer the consequences for it. I have not been one to create the politics but have developed the skills to work within such a structure when needed. This is where as a woman I feel that I take on more of the masculine features to deal with such schemes.
With all that said, I understand that women have come a long way in making their mark in the world in all faucets. Changes have not happened overnight, but progressed has been made in trying to understand why we are at, where we at, and what needs to be done to make changes for all. So, I continue on my path as a women in leadership to strive for the things that anyone else would want, regardless of my gender or culture, mostly a stable position doing what I enjoy leading a team to success for the organization I work for.
References
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice (7th ed.).Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
Penn State University World Campus (2018, November 18). PSYCH 484 “Leadership and Diversity”. Retrieved from: https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1942231/modules/items/25010917
kfs5265 says
Dpm,
It was good to read your post about your successes in the workplace as you strive to achieve the best career that you can. I must note that one of the qualities of leadership we have learned is about accepting responsibility and exhibiting an internal locus of control. Essentially, leaders typically do not externalize their success and failures such as blaming the system or culture in which they work. While definite prejudices do exists, true leaders never view them as “barriers to my success”. I found it rather hypocritical that your article is centered on the prejudicial impediments you’ve experienced from male counterparts, but yet in your blog you write the following; ” Finally, one of the biggest barriers for women can be the personal barriers, where their home life can interrupt their ability to focus and perform their job assignments, where most men do not carry the same responsibilities”. In your words you make a generalization about the familial responsibiliies that men carry, which is quite prejudicial in my opinion.
kirk
Rebecca Ann Ison says
Sadly, I couldn’t add my photo of Beyonce and Ed Sheeran as I wanted to the last comment, so here’s a link to a screenshot that I wanted to share: http://prntscr.com/lsg8fi
Thanks!
Rebecca Ann Ison says
It still is quite hard being a woman in the workplace, isn’t it? Growing up, I never thought that I would face a lot of the professional barriers that you and I share. The phrase “It’s the nineties!” was a tribal call of women flooding the workplace with families, rushing to Wall Street in their sneakers with their dress suits and Aqua Net hair signaled that we can have it all as working women. This is what I saw growing up, thinking that I wouldn’t face the challenges of the working women earlier in the past century. Boy, was I wrong!
Not only are we expected to work harder, but we’re going to get paid less doing it, and if we work and lead like a man, we’re not doing it the “right way” for a woman. Oh, come on! Our lesson comments that we basically have to take risks, but nothing too crazy, be tough but not a b***, know that we aren’t going to get the same treatment as men, but be ambitious anyway, and be responsible for our actions but consult others too (PSU, Lesson 13, 2018). Uhm, no thanks! We’re facing barriers such as higher performance expectations (PSU, Lesson 13, 2018), which is perfectly summed up with this meme of Beyonce and Ed Sheeran. Notice how many likes and retweets this has, because it’s true. I also do not have children, which I believe has helped my success in business, but we all know a ton of very impressive women who has had their careers subdued by an inhospitable corporate culture where women are not seen as appropriate for the top executive positions (PSU, Lesson 13, 2018). Some people have interpersonal barriers such as gender prejudice, where the top managers are assumed to be men, the lack of support for working women, and the lack of white male mentors for women (PSU, Lesson 13, 2018). Honestly, I don’t take the white male mentor thing lightly. Some of my best mentors were white males who helped me launch into the business world with gusto, but my most inspiring mentors were non-white women who have excelled in their careers. Magda, my Egyptian microbiologist mentor basically waved off the struggles that women face because she encouraged me that I was smarter than any man that would try to compete with me or love me.
A study that I found especially infuriating is a case study of Swedish medical doctors and the gender wage gap by Magnusson. Sweden is known for being exceptionally progressive when it comes to sexist. The study looked at women and men, some with children and some without along with their marital status and analyzed their incomes in this highly prestigious, highly skilled, and highly paid profession. She found that the wage gap between males and females started the first year after graduation and then declined over time, as a whole. She found that women in the same specialty as men earned about 12% less than men. As the study dove deeper, Magnusson found that men were rewarded with higher wages when they got married and became a father, while women received lower wages if they had children. The study collaborated with our text and lesson that marriage and children reduced women’s number of work hours (PSU, Lesson 13, 2018). When looking at specialties of medicine, the smallest wage gap was in general medicine and the largest wage gap was in pediatricians, geriatrics and other specializations. The biggest takeaway is that the largest wage gap between the sexes is between married parents at 8.3% compared to single men and women at 5.2%. Magnusson also did a retrospect on wages and found that in 1975, the wage gap was only 5%. It increased in the 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s to 9%, with a slight decrease in 2007. When looking at this data, we can understand that as more women are entering the medical field, the wage disparity is getting larger with an average of 7% gender wage gap for the field and there is little evidence that this is changing (Magnusson, 2016)
So, stay strong my friend. We’re just going to have to keep chugging right along!
Resources:
Magnusson, C. (2016). The gender wage gap in highly prestigious occupations: a case study of
Swedish medical doctors. Work, employment and society. Vol 30(I) 40-58.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus. (2018). PSYCH 485 Lesson 13: Leadership and
Diversity. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1942231/modules
/items/25010913