diversity

Work-Home conflict

December 2, 2012 by drh188

There is one particular personal barrier for women that affect both life at work and life at home. The work-home conflict barrier means that women often need to take time away from work because they are often left to care for children and other non-work responsibilities (PSU world Campus, 2012). This problem does not just have negative implications on women advancing their careers, but can also create added struggles at home. It leaves many women being forced to choose between career, family, or trying to do everything all at once.

The biggest problem is the current American workplace is much better suited for the 1960’s than it is for the demands of today. In 1960, only 20% of mothers worked, and only 18.5% were unmarried (Williams, 2010). These families were able to get by with one breadwinner (usually the male) while the other parent was able to take care of household duties. Today’s economy demands that most families have two working parents and a great deal of this burden falls on the shoulders of women trying to fill two roles. Today, 70% of children live in households where all adults are employed (Williams, 2010). The American workplace needs to adapt to better suit its workers.

Antiquated workplace norms make it difficult for women to rise in the leadership ranks (Northouse, 2013). Women often end up having to take leaves of absence and use sick days to try and meet the demands of home life. Even organizations that offer workplace leave and flexibility programs often marginalize women when they return to work (Northouse, 2013). This forces many women to abandon the leadership track they may have been on because the organization may view them as the ideal manager or executive because of needs at home.

Workplaces should be designed and set up to meet the needs of today’s American worker, both men and women. Short term and extended leave from work, workplace flexibility, high quality and affordable child care, and freedom from discrimination based on family responsibilities (Williams, 2010) are all policies that could help out. Many organizations are missing out on highly capable female leaders because of views better suited for the past. Men also need play a larger role when it comes to domestic responsibilities. The idea of a woman having to choose between a “mommy track” and a “career track” in this day and age is ridiculous in my opinion. Maybe its time the workplace adjusts to fit in better with its most important asset; it’s employees.

References:

Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications

Penn State World Campus. (2012). Lesson 13:Leadership and Diversity. https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa12/psych485/001/content/13_lesson/05_page.html

Williams, J.C. (2010). The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict. retrieved from: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/report/2010/01/25/7194/the-three-faces-of-work-family-conflict/

The Velvet Ghetto

December 1, 2012 by nvc5026

While reading Northouse (2013) last night I was introduced to the concept of the Velvet Ghetto which he describes as the clustering of women in to specific fields such as public relations, education, accounting and human resources. Having never heard of a velvet ghetto I did some research online and it appears the term is primarily attributed to a 1985 study by the International Association of Business Communicators, however, the IABC cites a 1978 Business Week article as the original source (IABC, 1986). Coined in response to the dramatic gender switch occurring in the field of public relations taking place in America during the 1970s through the mid-1980s the term now appears to reflect the disproportionate number of women in certain fields (Northouse, 2013). Why I found the term so interesting is that it so very clearly is applicable to the industry I currently work in.

For nearly a decade I have provided training and software support services to automobile and motorcycle dealerships. The software I support is used at the point of sale but also in the back office after the sale has been completed. This means I work with two user types, sales people who are out front and administrative staff in the back and there is a striking difference between the two audiences – gender. It would take a while to come up with an accurate percentage of male to female members of each group but I can say with a high degree of confidence that greater than 95% of the back office staff in these dealerships are female, and an equal percentage of the sales staff are male. The root of this disparity is most certainly deep rooted gender biases which assume women are more suited to clerical tasks such as typing, filing, answering phones, and managing paperwork; whereas men are considered better suited to sell, especially given the mechanical nature of the products these dealers sell.

As would be expected the women who work in the back office are given few opportunities to rise to managerial positions within these dealership and often reach their peak as office managers or as comptrollers. The men, on the other hand, who are successful often rise to be department managers or general managers with some eventually being given ownership opportunities within the organization. Given that their opportunities are so fundamentally different it is worth asking are “are these men and women fundamentally different?” The answer of course is generally no. Many of the entry level positions, on both sides of the house require at least some college and in my experience those who started out without a degree seem to make the decision to return at some point. So it is the position within the organization which has the most influence, and the back office staff rarely receives the recognition necessary to advance beyond their own domain. I will say though that being a good salesperson is a unique skill that not everyone possesses.

It would be unfair to omit the fact that to succeed in sales requires a unique skill set and these skills remain valuable and relevant at higher levels of sales oriented organizations such as auto dealerships. It is therefore understandable that sales positions provide more management opportunities, however it would be foolish to assume that only men can sell. One of the prescriptions for women who desired to ascend to management offered by the IABC study was to not limit themselves to femal friendly fields such as public relations (IABC, 1986). The same would appear to hold true today for women in the automotive retail industry. Growth opportunities exist but only for those who choose not to remain in the back office.

Link to the IABC article:

http://www.iabc.com/researchfoundation/pdf/VelvetGhetto.pdf

References

IABC, (1986). The Velvet Ghetto Summary Report. Retrieved 12/1/2012 from http://www.iabc.com/researchfoundation/pdf/VelvetGhetto.pdf

Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications

Manufacturing: Leadership and Diversity

November 30, 2012 by cxl248

Reminiscing over my career journey, I first began as a retail cashier which several years later led to an assistant manager position within the retail field. Then I shifted gears to manufacturing where I started as a molding press operator, progressed to supervisor in the quality department, then the quality manager and eventually to a design drafter position within the engineering department. My present career field started as a part-time imaging assistant clerk, three months later I transferred to a full time position as a front office staff member in a family medicine practice, two years afterwards I accepted the front office supervisor position, three years following I was promoted to senior practice manager position which I currently hold four years succeeding my promotion. Through this self reflecting I have thought about this lesson and how each company or organization applied leadership and diversity. Acknowledging they are distinct fields, each having their own type of potential barriers preventing diversity in their leadership. Recognizing some of my career journey spans back many, many years, I wanted to focus on my term in manufacturing as there is great opportunity to apply lessons learned in this recent study.

Seventeen years in manufacturing lends great opportunity to apply the lessons in regards to leadership and diversity. The company I was employed started as a locally family run business in York, PA. The reason for noting the community is this area has struggled with cultural diversity, although it is located in a northern state and played a role in the civil war and underground slavery movement it still has learning opportunities when it comes to diversity. So the culture of the community itself places a cultural diversity barrier on employers in the region.

Manufacturing is known as a male dominant industry there are organizational barriers found placing women at a disadvantage in being advanced to high level leadership positions. (Note: during my term at this company we only had two females in leadership positions.) At this particular company it was very visible within the high technical labor level positions such as design engineers and tool and die makers were controlled by male employees. By placing the male in these positions it created the organizational barrier for “preference for gender similarity in promotion decisions” as it strategically placed the male employee in line for higher level promotions over females. (Pennsylvania State University, World Campus, 2012) Because of this organizational barrier the environment created the interpersonal barriers where women felt because they were not of the male gender they were not masculine enough to be good manager or leaders, as known as “gender prejudice.” (Pennsylvania State University, World Campus, 2012) Having obvious gender prejudice this produced personal barriers for women such as the inability to play the political game as her male counterpart which is significant in this field to be successful in being promoted to a leadership role, also known as, “lack of political savvy.” (Pennsylvania State University, World Campus, 2012)

The lesson has allowed me to reflect back on my career journey and observe the various applications of leadership and diversity with a company or organization. A key take away for me, is no matter how much we want to be believe as a society and country we have created an accepting culture of total equality for all no matter gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, we have not, there is still a lot to be done. Unfortunately, we continue to wear our rose colored glasses when it comes to true equality for all.

Reference

Pennsylvania State University, World Campus (2012). PSYCH 485 Lesson 13: Leadership and Diversity. Retrieved on November 30, 2012, from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa12/psych485/002/content/13_lesson.html.

A Good Message from the Land Down Under

November 30, 2012 by cms5820

Diversity in the workplace has always been something that means a lot to me. I have seen many brilliant women that were unable to advance in a company simply because of the dominant men controlling it. For this week’s writing, I want to share with you all an interesting article I found published by the Australian Human Rights Commission. This article looks at the effects of the gender bias in the Australian workplace. The section I want to focus on is “Why is women in

leadership a priority?” It coincides perfectly with what we know about gender bias in the workplace. Here are the four points provided in that section (Australian):

Women are in fact more likely than their male counterparts to have relevant post-graduate qualifications. This is despite their tendency to undervalue their own skills and to be less forthcoming in pursuing leadership positions
Economically, it is a worthwhile investment. According to Goldman Sachs, narrowing the gap between male and female employment rates would have huge implications for the global economy – in Australia it would boost our GDP by 11%
Further, the current gender bias means that women are employed in roles where their productivity is not maximised. If the gender productivity gap was minimised, for example, by increasing the number of women in leadership positions, the level of economic activity in Australia could be boosted by 20%
Economic incentives such as these would have flow-on effects for wider society as well. It would assist in addressing the problem of pension sustainability, thereby reducing the dependency ratio, lifting household savings rates and increasing tax received by the government

Now I want to show you how each one of those directly relates to what we know about gender bias barriers in the workplace for women. When I’m talking about gender bias, I’m specifically referencing the idea that there are a lot of struggles for women when it comes to having the opportunity to advance in the workplace (PSU, 2012). Men are predominantly in control management, across the board, but there is a lot of evidence to show that it is important to push for equality in management. I wanted to use an example from outside the United States mainly because it is likely something that we are all relatively unfamiliar with.

An interpersonal barrier when it comes to women in management is gender prejudice, which looks at the idea that management positions are viewed as masculine (PSU, 2012). Couple that with the general belief by women that they are less political savvy than men and we get to the first point brought up in the article (PSU, 2012). Even though women tend to feel that way, and experience prejudice, they actually found that women are more likely to have relevant post-graduate qualifications as compared to men (Australian). I found this interesting because even with that prejudice in place and the undervaluing of their own skills (by women), they discovered that women are more qualified for the advanced managerial roles.

The inhospitable corporate culture that we know of requires women to accomplish tasks without resources (PSU, 2012). Add the desire to boost global economy, and it makes sense that there is a worldwide need to decrease the gender gap between male and female employment rates. In Australia, their GDP would increased by 11% (Australian). This is significant because it contradicts the inhospitable corporate culture. If the global economy can see significant improvement by having more women in management roles, it’s safe to assume that the individual companies would also experience an economic boost. So why are women expected to accomplish tasks without resources? They can actively contribute to more profits for individual businesses, which means that there would be an increase in the availability of resources (generally speaking). I think we should all keep this in mind, because we need to move away from that inhospitable corporate culture, especially knowing that women can directly impact the notion to do so.

The third point the article makes is regarding productivity with women. It tells us that productivity if not maximized when it comes to women, which relates directly to an organizational we know of (Australian). That barrier is the lack of developmental opportunities, which states that companies often give less challenging assignments to women in order to help them advance in the organization (PSU, 2012). That seems like a good thing at first glance, but it actually results in women achieving less (PSU, 2012). We can take from this the idea that it is crucial to first give women equally challenging tasks as men, which would then help maximize their productivity. For Australia, this could mean a 20% economic boost (Australian). Imagine what other countries, such as the United States, could experience from that. Bring on the challenges!

Lastly, the article brings up all of economic incentives for Australia. These include flow-on effects such as pension sustainability, lifting household savings rates and increasing tax received by the government (Australian). The overall message I want to get out there with all of this information I provided revolves around the statement, “It just makes sense.” It makes sense to implement all of suggestions that the Australian Human Rights Commission brought up. As a man, I will say that men need to loosen up and accept the fact that women are just as capable, if not more capable, to successfully run companies and assume managerial roles. With the economy the way it is today, now would be the perfect time to address the gender gap furiously. Australia shows up what improvements can be done there, so just think what this can do for other countries and the overall global economy.

Reference

Australian Human Rights Commission. (n.d.). Women in leadership. Retrieved from http://humanrights.gov.au/sex_discrimination/programs/women_leadership.html

Penn State World Campus. (2012). Lesson 13:Leadership and Diversity.https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa12/psych485/001/content/13_lesson/05_page.html