Womens Failure to Take Up Senior Roles in Employment Essay

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The Failure of Women to Advance into Senior Management Roles

Sadly, it is true that women have failed to advance into a senior management position because of the compromises that a majority of them make in their choice of career and career preferences. This could be intentional or it could be based on how women and men are brought up in the society. The traditional setting of a woman's role has continued to be engrained in the minds of women and this has had a huge impact on the careers that most women would prefer (Melkas and Anker, 1997). The bringing up of children is never the same especially in regards to gender, and this causes of children to identify with their specific gender. It is no lie that the career path chosen by an individual will determine how far they will reach in terms of the progression within an organization. The career choices mostly made by women have been in the humanitarian and arts while those chosen by men have been in the sciences. These early decisions result in gender segregation because the career paths are different and the education level is also different. Another contributing factor to gender segregation within the labor market is that women enter the market with less human capital and this is mainly due to the subjects they study (Charles and Grusky, 2005). Many employers consider the humanitarian and arts subjects to be less valuable. Women have also been accused of not advancing their careers once they join the labor market, which in turn results in them remaining stagnant and they cannot aspire to higher levels. The failure to invest in training is attributed to the notion that a majority of women anticipate family responsibilities, and they will opt for careers that give them the flexibility to work and leave the workforce without suffering too much in terms of the career.

Statistics have shown that currently in the US about 15 percent of top the five leadership positions amongst the fortune 500 companies are held by women. The numbers are even worse when you only consider the top five companies. Of the 500 companies, there are only 24 female CEOs. This is quite shocking considering the attention that this issue raises and one would be mistaken to think that companies would do much better. It has been noted that there has been a tremendous improvement in the recent past, but this number is not likely to change especially considering that there is no strong pipeline of women talent raring to take up the leadership positions.

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There are many stereotypes that persist and the image that most people have of a CEO is gender biased (Hakim, 2006). This has made it hard for women to aspire to be in leadership and senior positions. In other countries like Australia, there have been compulsory measures in terms of quotas that require public companies to disclose the proportion of women who are in senior management. While this is tremendous step it has been argued that it might make women in senior management look like tokens and they only got the job in order for the company to meet its quotas. This would undermine the woman from the start and more people would not consider her to be authoritative or qualified to handle the position given.

Diversity Management Policies

There is a strong vertical and horizontal gender segregation within the labor workforce in the US and this has made jobs to become sex-typed. Sex-typing is something that occurs in everyday assumptions and ideas that regard femininity and masculinity especially regarding the type of job that is suitable for a particular sex. There is a glass ceiling that has been setup for women and this clearly explains the under-representation of women in senior and company board positions (Epstein, 2007). In most cases, companies do not have a set of policies that discriminate against women, but there is a range of sustained subtle organization processes and practices that when combined make it normal for women to be absent from organization leadership. When one looks at the setup of company meetings, it is clear that the meeting arrangements are geared towards a male dominated setting and when women are included in the meetings they have roles such as secretary or catering staff. This is subtle discrimination and most companies do not realize the impact that such settings have on women in leadership (England, 2005).

Working time is another organizational practice that is seen to be gender biased because it places emphasis on long hours and this might be discouraging to women (Kirton and Greene, 2015). Long hours are considered to be a key manner for an employee to demonstrate their commitment to the organization and most women find it hard to maintain these long working hours. It is not by choice or preference, but rather it is due to their family obligations. Research has demonstrated that working long hours is not consummate to increased productivity, but rather it demonstrates a commitment of the employee to the organization. The long hour's culture is engrained in many organization and this.....

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"Womens Failure To Take Up Senior Roles In Employment" (2017, August 26) Retrieved May 20, 2025, from
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"Womens Failure To Take Up Senior Roles In Employment", 26 August 2017, Accessed.20 May. 2025,
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