    |
||
     |
 |
The following article was published in the Charleston Post & Courier's Business Major, a featured monthly column in the Business Review Section on December 17, 2001. Women Get Short End of Corporate StickBy DOROTHY P. MOORE Special to The Post and Courier Business Major In today's business climate, marked by uncertain economic times, a world changing rapidly by technology, and rising costs of employee turnover, it seems the smartest firms would be finding ways to bring all of their best minds to the table. But the conclusions from a number of studies edited by Ronald J. Burke and Debra L. Nelson in their forthcoming book, "Advancing Women's Careers," are unmistakable. After doing a good job of recruiting and hiring women, most organizations have self-imposed difficulties in developing and retaining their female middle managers. And when those women exit, they take their skills and potential with them. Women are making gains in corporate America, but largely at the bottom of the pyramid. The number of women pursuing managerial and professional careers continues to increase. As well trained and educated as men, women now make up approximately 50 percent of the corporate hires. But almost as soon as they enter the organization, their career paths diverge from men. They do not enter into senior management jobs at an equal rate. Although women hold half of all managerial and professional positions at the lower levels in the Fortune 500 companies, only two women are the CEOs. Three main reasons are examined by the authors to explain why women do not advance as rapidly up the corporate ladder. The first is that women bring different attitudes and behaviors to the job, partly as a product of prior socialization that teaches them to be "girls" and makes them appear less capable. Research has shown little support for this hypothesis. The second reason is that males, the majority in most organizations, define good managers and management practices in terms of masculine characteristics, with the result they either intentionally or unintentionally practice bias and discrimination. Among the research support for this hypothesis is evidence that about half of all working women in the United States will experience sexual harassment at some time during their careers, and higher percentages in organizations that are traditionally male. The third hypothesis emphasizes the long-standing structures and dynamics of organizations with their imbedded policies and practices that work to hinder women's progress. These organizational impediments run the gamut but include items such as the lack of core opportunities for female employees with management potential, assumptions that women will not relocate to advance their careers, moving women into staff areas instead of line responsibilities, the "glass walls" effect, and unfriendly work environments.Work environments don't have to include harassment to be unfriendly to women. In one of the studies featured in this volume, Phyllis Tharenou examined a substantial database to find the reasons why women exit organizations at high rates. Do women have different attitudes, characteristics and cultural backgrounds that cause them to leave? Do they, as men overwhelmingly believe, leave for family reasons? Or do they exit because of barriers to advancement embedded in organizational policies, practices and culture and seek career opportunities in organizations friendlier to women? Overwhelmingly, Tharenou found women moved out of environments they viewed as unfriendly. Any number of elements could contribute to an unfriendly environment. Sexual harassment is way down on the list. More important by far is the way women were treated. In some organizations the performance measurement standards were illogical, as in rewarding employees who worked long hours over others who actually produced more, for example. There were organizations where EEO policies had not been in place long or were not followed. Informal ways of measuring performance meant a predominately male bias. Women learned that making the effort to accurately assess productivity was less important to these managers than keeping the other (mostly male) employees comfortable with the work culture. Organizations that want women to succeed, Viki Holton points out in another study in the volume, must work at it. This requires training and development but also breaking down the barriers that often isolate women. The cure is "sign posting," meaning opportunities for women to gain the same access to opportunities that men do through their "old boy" or "men's club" networks and mentors. In organizations where men are the majority and women lack mentors, women need help from above just to be able to compete on a level playing field. Organizations that want to retain women, say Terri A. Scandura and S. Gayle Baugh, would do well to understand that gender role stereotypes and work role expectations are congruent for male and conflicting for women executives: Men are expected to be decisive, rational, unemotional, blunt, direct and even argumentative. These are stereotypically "boss" behaviors. Women are stereotypically seen as indecisive, emotional and conventional, just the opposite. It's a no-win situation in an organization whose culture is ruled by stereotypes; a woman who manages in-role is seen as ineffective, a woman managing in the male model is out of place. As Mary Mattis points out in her contribution to the book, with women making up roughly half the middle managers in organizations and the costs of replacing senior managers and high-tech professionals substantial, the retention of women professionals and managers is emerging as a key concern of firms. Quoting J. Michael Cook, the former CEO of Deloitte and Touche LLP, the practice of hiring increasing numbers of women and then watching them leave at an equally high rate can be called the "stupid curve." The solution to the problem is for an organization to identify, understand and adopt outstanding practices, both internal and external. This benchmarking begins with understanding and developing the business case for gender diversity and tying the diversity strategies to the firm's strategic plans. The actions to be taken range from identifying and recruiting the best and brightest talent to eliminating barriers to success to enhancing opportunities for all. Once the higher-ups are for it, a company "best practices" plan to retain and encourage the development of talented women can be written. This is the easy part. A harder part is to put in place the necessary programs and systems to measure the plan's effectiveness. The really hard part is for the CEO to reach down and change the organizational culture, to shift the outlook of the (mostly male) middle managers who with their autonomy are capable of ignoring the plan or rendering it ineffective by giving only lukewarm support. All it takes to create an environment unfriendly to women is an immediate superior who, for example, neglects to follow the organization's published policies, even EEO requirements, because he sees them as getting in the way of his job or who views himself superior. For Questions/Comments about this site, contact dot.moore@comcast.net. Site designed by Jackye Cocoros. |