Female Business Leadership: Why Are Woman Still Missing? Discerningly stated by Rosalyn S. Yalow, a Nobel Prize winner for Physiology, “The failure of women to have reached positions of leadership has been due in large part to social and professional discrimination” (Quotes Gram). Although woman make up a majority of the American population at fifty point eight percent, only twenty-five percent of women have reached executive status in business positions (Warner). An even more ground breaking statistic states that only four point six percent of CEO’s are women (Warner). When it comes to education, females make up about half of the obtainers of master’s degrees in law and business management (Segal). When asked if woman would be as effective …show more content…
Out of over one-thousand men surveyed, ten percent of them agree that woman are not tough enough and are too naïve to lead (Wang and Brown). Also, women are expected to be more diplomatic when speaking, so assertiveness is seen as a negative trait (Crawford). Twenty- one percent of men believe that women lack aggressiveness and that they do not pursue raises or promotions (Wang and Brown). When women do display aggression or confidence in their power, these traits are negatively interpreted. Females are still seen as weak, passive individuals who are expected to hold démodé values. Over a quarter of men and women believe that family life is an obstacle for female leadership (Wang and Brown). Even if women do create balance between their career and their families, employers see mothers and married females as preoccupied workers who are not fully available to lead. On the other hand, single women are perceived as lonely and not a trusting, team player. Women are stuck in an unfair and inconsistent slew of expectations that are based on bias rather than …show more content…
When younger girls are displaying the same leadership skills as boys, they are called bossy by their peers, and as a result, they are influenced into thinking that taking charge is negatively viewed. Schools often lack curriculum that highlights past and present female leaders, and if lessons about these pioneers are taught, they are often brief derivatives of a main focus (Norris). Also, Parents play a role in what careers their children pursue. Males are expected to be more successful and achieve more by their parents (Eagly). Subsequently, parents show more support to young men pursuing a leadership position and show more concern with the riskiness of young females striving for executive roles. Furthermore, media has a vast impact on how females view women in leadership positions. They often see images of sexualized or power-hungry, women on screen and on the news (Simon and Hoyt). Early influences on woman’s desire to lead creates an already sparse collection of female leaders to further
In the American society, we constantly hear people make sure they say that a chief executive officer, a racecar driver, or an astronaut is female when they are so because that is not deemed as stereotypically standard. Sheryl Sandberg is the, dare I say it, female chief operating officer of Facebook while Mark Zuckerberg is the chief executive officer. Notice that the word “female” sounds much more natural in front of an executive position, but you would typically not add male in front of an executive position because it is just implied. The fact that most of America and the world makes this distinction shows that there are too few women leaders. In Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In,” she explains why that is and what can be done to change that by discussing women, work, and the will to lead.
While this book by the COO of Facebook is ostensibly about women in the workplace, it's really about subconscious cognitive biases. A majority of Americans may consider women and men to be equal on the surface, but the fact that women still lag significantly behind men in both pay and leadership positions points to the fact that there is something else going on.
In relation to leadership and women, historically women who wanted to seek leadership roles were often seen projecting the traditional masculine model of leadership. This model means to be rational, unemotional and analytic. It also, means in order to succeed traditionally women needed to look and act like a man to be taken seriously in leadership positions. Women in the past often dressed up in suits and ties and anything feminine was seen as an internal “weakness”. To be a leader in power meant to exude confidence in masculinity and shy away from anything remotely girly. As opposed, to the feminine model which casts power as focused on connection and harmony instead of power over something, someone. This power can be skilled through collective gain or physical attractiveness (Kruse 22).
Women belong in the kitchen, and men only care about sex. These are examples of stereotypes of men and women that people continue to joke around about. According to the 5th Edition of Child Development by Berk, L., some personality traits regarded as stereotypical for men are active, aggressive, competitive, dominant, superior, self-confident and independent. Women are stereotypically considerate, emotional, gentle, kind, passive, and home-oriented. They also like children and always devote themselves to others. When people first read the list, some are probably thinking, “This is so accurate, what’s wrong with it?” However, these people don’t realize that yes, a man can be dominant and a woman can be passive, but it is also possible for it to be the other way around. A man can be as home-oriented as any woman, and a woman can be as independent as any man.
The gap between men and women produce three important concepts that reason the difference. First is the discussion of the better leader- men or women? It has been studied that women approach their followers with an interactive style with the encouragement of sharing power and information with others, participation, and self-worthiness to others. On the other hand, men have a consistency to be more task-oriented in their leadership styles and emerge in short-term conditions. The simple claim that women are just different than men, can be argued with the idea that men have effective traits for leadership. Women are less likely to negotiate and as a leader, this leads to lack of communication. And as discussed, leadership’s main ingredient is communication. Without it, nothing gets across to followers, and nothing is reciprocated to leaders. As a leadership position becomes larger and larger, (such as a CEO’s leadership position) there are fewer and fewer women holding these positions. The biggest question is why? Generally, females and males share the leadership values, work equally as hard to accomplish their goals, and react accordingly. Society plays a huge role in the gender gap. Some jobs aren’t even offered to women because of their gender and women
Fisher, H. The Natural Leadership Talents of Women. In Enlightened Power: How Women are Transforming the Practice of Leadership.
402). Our gender differences and leadership styles can work in our favor and against us; I think it is contradicting, in the way we send mixed messages, while a lot of people, especially in the modernized Western world do accept a female to control the household and does it well, yet; at the workplace females are perceived as being too emotionally consumed to get a task completed. By nature, and nurture, each gender in most cases acts differently; this could be because of our biological hormones and way each gender is raised, apparently, it is not so nowadays. The problem is should we keep letting it slide by being bias or is there something that can be done to encourage and promote gender equality and respect for one another that goes beyond the responsibilities society requires of each
Wilson, Marie C. Closing the Leadership Gap Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World. New York: Viking Adult, 2004. Print
Women have been treated unfairly and discriminated in the workforce for too long. The discrimination that these women face is unjust and unwarranted. It is sad that as a society in the twenty-first century we are still trying to combat these issues. In Developing Women Leaders was published in The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist July 1, 2012 it discusses possible solutions and how stigmas and stereotypes are starting to change. Women should not have to face discrimination in the workplace as a society there should be an equal standard for all individuals no matter the race or gender.
Women seem to have more of a family-work conflict than men, so bosses don’t seem to have as much desire, to promote females compared to men (Hoobler, Wayne, & Lemmon 939-940). Men still view women as having a social role, examples are cooking, childcare, and household chores. Men feel threatened, and scared when females are able to handle both work and their personal lives. Excuses are created by men, where they believe females should focus on one role, because they won’t be able to accomplish family roles and work roles efficiently. Women can help themselves with this issue of family-work conflict, by, improving communication with their employers.
The book addressed a central issue of male dominated leadership in the business field and suggested solutions written based on her own personal stories using research, and offering advice to help women achieve their goal. Therefore, Sandberg suggested that the most effective way is for women to find careers they love and have ambition to reach the top of a leadership structures. In addition, she mentioned the importance of marrying someone who will be supportive of a woman’s ambition, both at home and at work, and an equal partner in actualizing that vision. Therefore, she solved the issue of male dominated leadership through defining the problem, suggest strategies for improvement, and guide working women to help change the professional climate.
Women who are running for a political position are set to a higher standard than men are. Women must strike a balance between campaigning on issues in line with public expectations and appearing tough on issues that are considered male areas of expertise (Turcotte and Paul, 2015, Page 773). It is known that people feel that women are not qualified for leadership positions. According to Marian Sawer, in general, qualities associated with leadership such as strength, authority and decisiveness are regarded as male traits, while double standards are often applied to women displaying such traits (Sawer, 2012, Page
Women managers’ perceptions of the successful manager are only slightly less conclusive. Unlike the women managers in the 1970s and 1980s not all female managers today sextype the successful manager as male; however, no one, male or female, ever identifies the successful manager as feminine. Male, and only to a slightly lesser extent, female, managers continue to describe successful managers as possessing masculine traits, such as self-confidence, competitiveness, decisiveness, aggressiveness and independence.
“Statistical research by Catalyst demonstrate that women account for 46.7 percent of the U.S. labor force” (Evans, 2011, p.62), but gender bias continues to distort employers hiring decisions intensifying the challenges women endure in the workforce. Controlling bias has been a goal of American society resulting in federal, state, and local laws preventing hiring discrimination in the workplace. There is a natural tendency for superiors to prefer to work together with members of the same sex or hire applicants close to their age. Male leaders are likely to hold stereotypes about women that influence employment decisions not based on an applicant’s ability, but rather categorization. Management often perceives male applicants as the only candidate or the best fit for the job, even though the position does not require masculine characteristics. Koch et al. (2015) highlighted that highly qualified women are seen “just as competent as men” however; these women are still unlikely to be hired over their less qualified male counterparts. Laws prohibit prospective employers from asking women about family responsibilities outright, nevertheless this subject often surfaces during the interview process. As a result, hiring personnel pass over experienced female candidates when they suspect women struggle between the conflicting demands of family and career responsibilities. Men have quite different roles and responsibilities regarding family giving the...
Women leaders have the crucial soft skills of empathy, innovation, facilitation, and active listening (Masaoka, 2006). They also have first-hand life experiences that bring technical skills and experiences from the street level to the workplace (Masoka, 2006). Women often build stronger relationships with clients and outside contacts than their male counterparts. This relationship building skill, provides a key aspect which helps to move businesses forward (Giber et al., 2009). Fortune 500 companies with a high percentage of women significantly outperformed those with fewer women. Companies with the highest representation of women showed higher returns on equity than those with fewer women employees (Giber et al., 2009). Thus, future organizations may have a higher percentage of female leaders than we have experienced in the past. Future leaders must ensure that there is equality among the workforce and that women are accurately represented among the