“You can grow up to be anything you want to be, do anything you want to do, and I know you’re do great things because you’re you.” – My mom.
I’m very fortunate. I never knew that it was a disadvantage to be female growing up. I was never taught that certain toys were for girls, certain toys were for boys, to let the boys win, or that I had to be a housewife and raise a brood of children. I come from a long lineage of strong working women. They didn’t go to college, they did not receive managerial statuses, but they worked. Hard. They worked with people that were different than them, different races, religions, and cultures. My mother was a high level administrator for Proctor and Gamble, and she was exposed to unnumbered cultures during her nearly four decades at the corporation. I loved meeting the people she worked with like Ranjit, the Indian chemist and Magda, the Egyptian microbiologist who became my mentor. There were very intelligent and powerful women of all cultures creating some of P&G’s most revolutionary and profitable products, so why was I to think that I, as a female, couldn’t do that?
I watched an amazing documentary called “Feminists: What were they thinking” on Netflix a few weeks ago, and it rattled me in a great way. I was listening to all of these powerful feminist activists talk about their mothers, almost every single one was raised to think that women are no different than men in our abilities, we are not inferior, we are not subservient to men. After I watched the documentary, I called my mother to tell her that she raised the way that the women I admired were raised. She chuckled and said, “Well honey, it’s all so true.”
“We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” – Gloria Steinem (Northouse, pg 412, 2019).
Our lesson talks about glass ceilings, which are beliefs that women do not have the training, skill, experience, or personal capacity for executive positions (PSU, 2018), which is ridiculous. We hold 57% of bachelor’s degrees, 60% of master’s degrees, and over 50% of doctoral degrees (Northouse, 2019), so to say that we don’t have the training is a moot point. While there are some women that want to take the “mommy-track” of a delayed or stunted career to care for their family, there are also some men out there that do the same but they don’t get a demeaning title like “daddy-track” following them around. If a woman wants to have a family and take time off to rear their young, that’s great, but there are a lot of professional women who want a family but don’t want to jeopardize the career they have worked so hard for.
I never thought that the difficulties that women faced in the past would still be prevalent today. Sometimes, men just don’t think that women are as good at their jobs as men. In an article from Sydney, Australia, a 33-year old flight instructor gets a lot of doubts from the men that fly with her, “Sometimes we get older guys coming through, who might say ‘I’m not flying with a girl!’ but then they go flying and say ‘Oh actually, she was really safe and a really good pilot’” (The sky not quite the limit for women in workforce, 2017). This is a blatant example of gender prejudice, where many people think that an effective leader has to be a man (PSU, 2018).
So what can be done about it? Well, we can try to redefine what makes good women leaders, but that’s a very slow process. In a paper by Lynn D. Leiber, she suggested a few tactics in hiring for a diverse workforce that could not only increase the number of women hired in upper management and executive positions, but also creating a culturally diverse workforce. She suggested that employers search outside of their normal searches for new employees, masking personal information on resumes so the recruiter doesn’t know if the applicant is female, male, African-American, or any other culture that can be assessed by their name, posting jobs on websites that women and people of color search, recruit at campuses with more minorities and speak to potential female recruits, and utilize recruiting firms that have a strong diversity protocol (Leiber, 2012).
Resources:
Demetrakas, J. (Director). (2014). Feminists: What were they thinking [Motion picture on
Netflix]. United States: Crazy Wisdom Films.
Lieber, L. D. (2012), Considerations for attracting and retaining a qualified, diverse workforce. Empl. Rel. Today, 38: 85-92. doi:10.1002/ert.20369
Northouse, P.G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice (Eighth Edition). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus. (2018). PSYCH 485 Lesson 13: Leadership and
Diversity. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1942231/modules
/items/25010913
The sky not quite the limit for women in workforce. (2017, March 6). Sydney Morning Herald
[Sydney, Australia], p. 8. Retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com.ezaccess.libraries.
psu.edu/apps/doc/A484031426/GIC?u=psucic&sid=GIC&xid=2e7ce281
Rebecca,
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this post and I have watched the Netflix show-it’s great! I believe that women are working to become leaders just as hard, if not harder, than men. Many women today appear to be the driving force behind corporate upkeep. Gender differences in the workplace have long been a topic of intense critique, but the data you have provided is very clear.
Research shows female employees are willing to go above and beyond at work compared to their male counterparts. For example, data from the Gartner Global Talent Monitor reveals that effort among Australian female employees is about 7% higher than their male colleagues (HRD, 2018).
While I think you made a good amount of great points regarding working women, I think it would have been helpful to touch on one or two specific leadership theories. For me, my favorite leadership theory thus far is authentic leadership. I would take this topic and be sure to directly correlate working women and their success in the workplace against men to authentic leadership. Authentic leadership focuses on the trust and willingness to help others. As an example, women will almost always trust other women. In this sense, it’s important to touch on the fact that women have the passion, life experiences, and strength to push forward as a leader and in the workplace. It would have been important to touch on the specific viewpoints within the authentic leadership approach. For example, a woman could obtain a great amount of self-knowledge and self-regulation to succeed-also known as the interpersonal viewpoint in authentic leadership (Northouse, 2016).
While I believe you made a great argument in your blog post and also very inspiring as I am a woman also who values her career, I think it would have been beneficial to touch more on the leadership aspects of men and women in the workplace and why career-driven women are just as important as men.
Northouse, P.G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice (Eighth Edition). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
HRD. (2018). Women Are Working Harder Than Men. Retrieved from https://www.hcamag.com/hr-news/women-are-working-harder-than-men-248200.aspx
Hi Rebecca.
I am a man and I understand what you talking about and where you might be coming from. I really can’t tell if you are solely talking about high positions of leadership for woman or if you think that if a woman makes the decision or has to make that decision of postponing the career that she has fought so hard for because of a pregnancy or to raise a child to be what she is meant to be as diminishing. I would say that is just natural. A mother’s instinct kicks in and she has to do what she has to do just like the father’s instinct would kick in and he would know that now he has to provide and protect even more than before. That’s just the natural way, not because we are brain washed that way but because females are mothers and males are fathers. A mother has a special connection with the child just because it came out of her even though it takes too to make a baby. Because of that she decides for herself if that is the best move and is the father’s rule to support that decision which is the best decision if you think about it in a familiar point of view. The preference of the children to be raised by a parent than a babysitter.
I am married, a father of three lovely, smart, the world is not enough for what they will achieve, beautiful girls. I know that because they are being raised by a strong woman, my wife , that she never though or doubted that she made, let me rephrase that, we made the wrong decision of her taking the necessary time to raise our children as long as I can provide the financial and emotional support that they needed, that is a priority to us as parents to give them the best future possible by preparing them to what is coming, and what better way to do that then by their mother being the one in the forefront.
With that said in regard to women having executive positions, I do agree that women are not less than man, or deserve less, or belong in a subservient position. My brother in law was really sick and stayed out of work for years and when he wanted to come back to work he just couldn’t find anything, the answer was always the same, insufficient experience, no work historical record, over qualified, that one is funny. It was sad but he had to be paciente and hope for an opportunity to come his way. It did. When a women takes years of work because of taking on the mother role that could happen to her too, only because we live in a very competitive world now a days. We have to be paciente and hope.
If there’s no Ethics in the leadership than is just wrong and I am in total agreement with you. “Ethical leaders treat all of their followers in an equal manner. They do not give special treatment to any followers.”(PSYCH 485, Lesson 14, Ethics and Leadership, Principles of Ethical Leadership)
“Leaders who respect others allow them to be themselves, with creative wants and desires. They listen to the ideas of others and confirm them as human beings. Treating others with respect means that leaders may sometimes have to defer to others.”(PSYCH 485, Lesson 14, Ethics and Leadership, Principles of Ethical Leadership)
“To be a good leader, one has to be honest. Being honest is about being open with others and representing reality as fully and completely as possible. Leaders must strike a balance between being open and monitoring what is appropriate to disclose in a particular situation.”(PSYCH 485, Lesson 14, Ethics and Leadership, Principles of Ethical Leadership)
If a women as the qualifications, expertise and ability to do a men’s job then she should do it, just as we are seeing now a days lots of men taking on household positions because the wife is able to bring more money home.
Times are changing faster then we think. we just need to be patient.
References:
Pennsylvania State University. (2018). Lesson 14: Ethics and Leadership, Principles of Ethical Leadership, Psych 485.