Women and Management

Citation

Avdelidou‐Fischer, N. (2011), "Women and Management", Gender in Management, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 188-191. https://doi.org/10.1108/17542411111116572

Despite the fact that legislation protecting women's rights to equal pay and fair treatment within the labour market has been a political concern in the UK, Europe and the USA since the mid‐1970s, serious inequalities remain between genders. Although today there are more women in the labour market, in particular more women managers and professionals than there were before the Equal Opportunities agenda, a chasm between policies and workplace practices continues to exist. Fewer women than men are employed at board level, most women are paid less in equivalent roles and many experience overt discrimination. In addition, women are still expected to carry out the majority of the household chores and take care of children. Within this paradoxical context Gatrell, Cooper and Kossek raise the evident question: why has women's career progress been so limited within the spheres of management, business and the professions?

Thinking about the wealth of the literature on the barriers women face inside the world's labour markets, I cannot say that this question bursts with originality. However, I am sure, we all agree that it has not yet been comprehensively answered. Plus, when one talks to gender studies or management students, it is this wealth of existing literature that sometimes makes it difficult to easily track and retrieve seminal works on the subject. This problem is exactly the one this book solves.

Gatrell, Cooper and Kossek sought to bring together a mix of research that counts as classic in its field and has been cited literally hundreds of times, but also new work, which the authors believe to be leading edge. And they succeed on both scores. The amount and quality of work presented in this book can be summarized in one word: overwhelming. However, Gatrell, Cooper and Kossek did not simply assemble a collection of knowledge but have done a great job in structuring the book around themes, a task which requires critical review of the material beforehand. Accordingly, the collection consists of two volumes, each further divided into four parts covering the following themes:

Volume I

i. Women's commitment and management

In a promising opening, the first part sets off with the legendary dispute around five “myths” about women's employment:

1. 1.

   that women's employment has been rising;

2. 2.

   that women's work commitment and job orientation is equal to men's;

3. 3.

   that childcare is the main barrier to women's employment;

4. 4.

   that part‐timers are exploited in poor quality jobs; and

5. 5.

   that women's employment stability is equal to men's.

Does feminist sociology on work and employment try to create new feminist myths to replace the old patriarchal myths about women's attitudes and behaviors? Are they “myths” in the first place? The readers can decide for themselves which perspectives reflect their own views, but these are debates no one should leave unread.

ii. Career breaks and the gender pay gap

Despite the positive trends in wages and in attitudes documented in these chapters, female managers and professionals have a long way to go before they reach parity with their male counterparts. A chief cause is child‐rearing, the costs of which are borne disproportionally by mothers. Motherhood leads to employment breaks, part‐time jobs and the accumulation of fewer years of experience and seniority. Furthermore, discontinuous employment is negatively associated with satisfaction and future income (beyond that which could be explained by lesser work experience).

iii. Women and work‐life balance

After the influx of women into the workforce, dual earner couples and non‐traditional family arrangements, work‐life balance remains a concern as relevant today as in the past. But is it an individual rather than an organisational problem? Is it a women's issue? The third part offers evidence that for both men and women a strong engagement in work and family roles in terms of time demands, responsibilities and the like, leads to identification with those roles. As a result, men are more likely to identify with their work roles and women with their family roles. Married men who take on the family responsibilities of the typical working wife form family identities similar to those of their female counterparts. A successful mechanism for firms to reduce work‐family conflict and so increase productivity would be to develop extensive work‐life programs.

iv Women's career progression and management development

The world's labour markets are becoming increasingly diverse but the predominant management development strategies remain rooted in an Anglo‐American masculine approach. Organisations need to acknowledge that race and gender are major bases of discrimination in society and directly influence the status of women in employment. Next to simply being fair, the promotion of women into managerial ranks is also found to be associated with higher organisational effectiveness.

Volume II

i. International perspectives on women's careers

Do women want international careers? Can they “handle” host country nationals who refuse to transact business with women? The second volume begins by dispelling familiar myths about female expatriates. First of all, there is no difference between the interest and the willingness of male and female MBAs to pursue international careers. The real impediment is to avoid sending women overseas based on the view of foreigners as prejudiced against women.

Accordingly, there are no significant differences between men and women in either supervisors' ratings of expatriate performance or early termination of the assignment, irrespective of a host country's work and cultural values. However, regardless of context, there appears to be a devaluation of women's qualifications among male management students worldwide.

ii. The glass ceiling

The invisible barrier that prevents women from rising to positions of power or responsibility is, according to evidence presented in this part, a form of gender disadvantage that is distinct from other forms of discrimination (e.g. racial) in the workplace. Women face disadvantages in the promotion process, which arise from a combination of firm based and societally based factors. No matter how ambitious women are, the model against which success is measured is predominantly male – and women “have to learn how to fit it” if they want to advance within firms.

iii. The body and management

Having long held but mistaken assumptions that organisations are gender neutral and asexual, has prevented us from seeing how deeply entrenched gender is within structures, contracts and processes that marginalize women and contribute to the maintenance of gender segregation in organisations.

In organisational logic, the disembodied ideal worker is free to give most of his commitment to his job. Positions within the hierarchy are constructed on how much commitment and responsibility one is able to give. Since the male gives most of his commitment to his job while leaving domestic and reproductive responsibilities to females, the disembodied worker is in reality male. Accordingly, pregnancy can represent a further intrusion of the female body into the context of the masculine professional world. Pregnant applicants may be seen as qualified and still not be recommended for hire despite of qualifications consistent with the relevant job description. As well as affecting the perception of others to their commitment, belonging and professional identity, pregnancy affects women's own sense of their relationship with their body and their professional self.

iv. Gender and diversity

How does workgroup sex composition influence men and women? Women working in homogenous groups report the highest level of organisational commitment, overall positive affect and cooperation within groups. Women reveal a general decline in these attitudes as the proportion of men in their groups increases. However, women express the lowest likelihood of leaving groups that are male dominated. Men are most eager to remain members of homogenous or male‐dominated groups and also most eager to leave their work groups as the proportions of women increase. Men rate themselves highly on instrumental traits and feel they have more autonomy and skill variety in their jobs. Women scored higher on being motivated by high financial rewards and career advancement.

My critique at this point is that I would have wished for more continuity so that these themes flowed smoothly into a story. Also within the parts in the two volumes, it is not always clear why the papers are organised the way they are. Initially, I had expected a chronological order that would help the reader to detect how thinking in each area has developed through time; but this is not the case. It looks more as if the editors attempted an alphabetical order and failed – is this at all possible? The structure is particularly awkward right in the beginning, where the first part of the first volume starts with Ginn et al.'s (1996) reply to Hakim's (1995) much debated “five feminist myths” whereas Hakim's original paper is presented second. I believe that readers, particularly those engaging with the subject for the first time, would have appreciated the order being the other way round.

One last quibble, and it is one of taste, is the book's page layout. The papers appear in the format of the original publications. That means, the book has not been typeset anew and for that price I would have wished font style and size unity, particularly when struggling to read contributions such as the one from Eagly, Johannesen‐Schmidt and Engen, which seems to be set in times with a minute font size of eight points or perhaps even less.

The authors like to think of this collection as a key resource for scholars researching women and management, or gender in management, and I agree that this book would be indispensable to them. Because of its abundant relevant references this book should be the first stop for any advanced undergraduate and postgraduate student planning research in related areas, but due to its price, it is not meant to feature on students' own must have lists. Nevertheless, I hope it will find a place in numerous university libraries and become as widely used as it deserves to be.