In the business sector, women leaders are still a minority. Despite efforts to promote fairness in the workplace, professional women confront challenges to becoming recognized leaders. A lot of what we covered in this week’s session is relevant to my life yet, at the same time, incredibly frustrating. Obviously, the gender gap is something I struggle to comprehend as a hardworking female in today’s society.
I could relate to the Personal Barriers topic discussed in this week’s lesson commentary. Personal barriers are those characteristics of women’s personal life that are hurdles (PSU WC, 2022, L.13, p.4). A lot of times, moms are the ones that must take care of the kids or do the housework since dad has to work (PSU WC, 2022, L.13, p.4). This usually necessitates unpaid leave from work for the women involved (PSU WC, 2022, L.13, p.4). There is evidence to suggest that a lapse in employment can be detrimental to a manager’s career (PSU WC, 2022, L.13, p.4). Thus, women’s professions suffer when they take time off to raise children (PSU WC, 2022, L.13, p.4).
One solution is to consider applying for jobs with companies that emphasize having a healthy work-life balance. If you have exhausted all of your available options, suggest that your organization develop new procedures.
Our text also elaborated on another personal barrier which is that women lack political savvy. I beg to disagree. I observed that in today’s modern world, women are very much outspoken on traditional media and especially social media. According to Statista (2022), there are 168 million females and 165 million males in the United States. Hence, women and minorities make up a large portion of the voting population and are therefore crucial to winning elections. It is a huge mistake to discount women’s leadership potential, political aspirations, or current political roles. One of my inspirations in today’s generation is Philippines’ Vice President, Sara Duterte, and United States’ Vice President, Kamala Harris.
To breach the glass ceiling, women need political talent to acquire access to internal information and build social capital. To me, political savvy means making honest use of one’s knowledge, habits, and personality to achieve one’s goals.
To my mind, the most infuriating interpersonal obstacle was the claim that women face difficulties in the workplace because of a “lack of white male mentors” (PSU WC, 2022, L.13, p.4). You’ll notice that the phrase “white male mentor” has replaced the more general “women need a mentor” and “ideally a male” versions of these phrases. Such ways of thinking are distressing on so many levels, and they’re to blame for the stagnation of modern civilization. It then emphasizes that women who have male mentors tend to be more successful than those who have female mentors, as if to imply that women mentors have nothing to contribute and, as a result, their mentees will be less successful.
One effective tactic for women is to find male sponsors in positions of power and influence who can vouch for them. The vice president of human resources, for instance, would seem like a good choice as a sponsor, but suppose you don’t know him personally. One option is to make contact with him and request a preliminary meeting. Find someone who already knows him and ask to be introduced or referred if you feel awkward making the first move.
As the world continues to shrink in size, more and more individuals from all walks of life will have to work together. Today’s consumers and workers are no longer isolated in a national economy, but rather participate in a global economy with rivals from around the world. Globalization necessitates diversity for innovation and adaptability in both for-profit and non-profit businesses, claim Green et al. (2002). Management today faces the pressing challenge of how best to capitalize on the diversity present in the workplace (Green, et al., 2002).
References:
Green, K. A., López, M., Wysocki, A., & Kepner, K. (2002). Diversity in the Workplace: Benefits, Challenges, and the Required Managerial Tools: HR022/HR022, 7/2002. EDIS, 2002(2). https://doi.org/10.32473/edis-hr022-2002
Statista (2022, February). Total Population in the United States by gender from 2010 to 2027. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/737923/us-population-by-gender/
World Campus, PSU (2022). PSYCH 484: Work Attitudes and Motivation (Lesson Commentary), Lesson 13: Leadership and Diversity. P. 1-8
You make excellent points about the frustratingly fixable barriers that women have to overcome in the workplace. Your example of women tending to be the ones needing to take time off work for family needs is a prime example. I’ve been part of an organization that fully admitted they don’t promote younger women because they expect them to need maternity leave and need more personal time off for parental duties. I found it incredibly sexist and offensive to assume that all young women are going to bear children and take need more time off, especially since all of the men in leadership positions had families and would regularly request off extra time to spend with their families. I feel that a very important reason for this, as well as other instances of women losing out on the opportunities their male peers receive, stems from prejudice. Even if women are given the opportunity to gain a leadership position, it appears that women in leadership have less favorable feelings towards them than male leaders (Northouse, 2021). Our text states that part of the reason why women are favored less is due to the perception that women are less effective as leaders (Northouse, 2021). The prejudice against women not being effective leaders is exactly what contributed to the outright refusal to promote young women in the organization I mentioned above. They believed young women will have children and need time off for their families, reducing how efficiently they can do their job. Due to personal experience, I strongly believe that these prejudices aren’t just towards young women with the assumption of them having families, but towards women in general. Our textbook describes an example of symphony orchestras having candidates audition behind a screen to eliminate gender bias when making selections. Simply doing this increased the ratio of women to men in symphony orchestras and displayed the gender bias that affects the selection of candidates (Northouse, 2021).
Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Practice and Theory (9th ed.). SAGE Publications.