women

There Will Be No Glass Ceilings In My House

December 15, 2012 by tlc192

The proverbial glass ceiling (a term introduced by two Wall Street Reporters) exists for many reasons within our corporations. However, the self-made path has created an environment where there are no ceilings at all.

Many women have experienced pitfalls when it comes to growing within their company. Women only occupy less than 3% of CEO roles, but occupy over 51% of management roles (Northouse 2013). That statistic shows what has been known as a leadership labyrinth for many women. The labyrinth not only represents the glass ceiling, but many obstacles that women face when trying to move up the ranks. Some of the items brought up in the leadership labyrinth were:

� Human Capital – Women don’t always have the same education or work experience that would warrant putting them in a role about their male counterpart

� Gender Differences – Women who have Transformational Leadership styles tend to not be viewed as effective as men because they will succumb to pressures outside of work.

� Prejudice = Gender Stereotypes that women should be masculine to be leaders, but not too manly.

Image courtesy of Arialhome.org

To overcome these issues to move within and out of the labyrinth, women have created their own paths. Trailblazing self-made paths that have the recognition from Forbes magazine, these women are ultimate leaders. Billionaires such as Oprah Winfrey created a television empire that included T.V. and organic brands, as well as an academy for girls (Forbes.com) That all-girl academy will help spawn future self-made women to continue to move past that glass ceiling.

Although there is an obvious gap between women and men when it comes to positions of leadership, the gap is starting to close (Northouse 2013). Women will continue to work hard to obtain the positions they deserve.

2010 Forbes.com LLC: Forbes 400 Richest Americans: Retrieved on December 14, 12 from http://www.forbes.com/profile/oprah-winfrey/

Northouse, Peter G. – Leadership: Theory and Practice Sixth Edition (2013) Sage Publications

Not Just A Flight Attendant…

December 2, 2012 by clw5019

I worked in a male-dominated industry for a few years of my life, and looking back on it, there were no women in management positions at the airline. According to ALPA (Air Line Pilots Association), only 5% of their 53,000 members are women (CNN, 2011). Think about it – how many times have you been headed on a trip, seated in your cramped airline seat and heard a female voice come over the PA. Your first thought is that it’s a flight attendant, right? It’s not necessarily a bad thing, because we do think most pilots are male and most flight attendants are female. Is this because women are typically drawn to positions in areas like public relations and HR, or service jobs such as being a teacher, nurse or flight attendant? Perhaps, but I believe some of the issues regarding women reaching management positions in the airline industry are due to the barriers discussed in Lesson 13.

Some of the typical barriers to women reaching top positions, such as interpersonal barriers, including access to informal networks are part of the reason there are fewer women pilots in management positions. Many airline talks happen far away from the plane at a restaurant or in the hotel lobby. In an industry that is male dominated, it’s more difficult for the lady pilots to get included in the “old boys” club. And along the lines of the “old boys” club, there definitely still exists the organizational barrier that shows men typically promote other men because they prefer to work with those similar to them. The biggest barrier to female pilots in management, in my opinion, is the personal barrier of work-home conflict. Being a pilot requires multiple days and nights away from home, and with many women still taking charge of most household duties and childrearing, it’s difficult for them to be flying and staying in hotels for 18 days each month.

Overall, women are just as capable as men of flying an aircraft, becoming an instructor and being in aviation management. However, due to some of the barriers that still exist, women are still in the minority by quite a bit. That’s not to mean this will never change, as the airline industry moves into a new era there is much more opportunity for women to move up, should they choose.

Reference:

Pawlowski, A. (2011, March 18). Why aren’t more women airline pilots?. Retrieved from http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-18/travel/female.airline.pilots_1_women-airline-pilots-american-airlines-captain-helen-richey?_s=PM:TRAVEL

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