Do sexist organizational cultures create the Queen Bee? (original) (raw)
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Gender Stereotypes and Their Impact on Women’s Career Progressions from a Managerial Perspective
IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, 2021
Many gender-related barriers and biases have declined over the years but gender stereotypes continue to create problems in the progress of women's careers. The availability of opportunities for the career progressions of women continues to be negatively affected by gender stereotypes, which shape managerial behaviour and occupational outlooks in the workplace with patriarchal expectations. There are only 29 per cent women in senior management positions worldwide (IBR, 2020). The World Economic Forum (2017) suggested that an average gender gap of 32.0 per cent existed in four areas, namely, 'Economic Participation and Opportunity', 'Educational Attainment', 'Health and Survival' and 'Political Empowerment'. This shows an increase from an average gender gap of 31.7 per cent since previous years. Despite many policies to increase gender equality in recent decades, gender discrimination based on gender stereotypes continues to exist. This paper argues
Disabling the Able: Stereotype Threat and Women's Work Performance
Human Performance, 2006
Stereotype threat is the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one's group as being true of oneself. This laboratory simulation investigated the effect of stereotype threat on women's performance of a managerial task and explored gender role identification as a moderator of the stereotype threat effect. Specifically, the effect of the stereotype that women are less competent than men in managerial and executive positions was examined. Male and female participants performed a managerial in-basket task in a stereotypically masculine or feminine sex role-typed condition. As hypothesized, women underperformed men in the masculine sex role-typed condition, but not in the feminine sex role-typed condition. These effects were moderated by masculine gender role identification, thus establishing a boundary condition for the stereotype threat effect.
Nothing Changes, Really: Why Women Who Break Through the Glass Ceiling End Up Reinforcing It
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Two correlational studies conducted in Switzerland ( N = 222) and Albania ( N = 156) explained the opposition of female managers to gender quotas by examining the origins and consequences of the “Queen Bee (QB)-phenomenon,” whereby women who have been successful in male-dominated organizations do not support the advancement of junior women. Results disconfirm previous accounts of the QB-phenomenon as indicating competitiveness among women. Instead, the tendency of women managers to consider themselves as different from other women, and their opposition to gender quotas, emerged when junior women were addressed but not when they considered their direct competitors, other women managers. Personal sacrifices women managers reported having made for career success predicted self-distancing from junior women and opposition to gender quotas targeting these women. We provide a more nuanced picture of what the QB-response is really about, explaining why women managers oppose quotas for junio...
Women Workforce Looking Through the Glass Ceiling
IJASOS- International E-journal of Advances in Social Sciences, 2017
Women have begun to take part in business life intensively in the past century. However, despite the rapid rise in the number of women in business world, the proportion of women among senior managers and leaders has been very low. Research on the subject demonstrates that women face difficulties called 'Glass Ceiling', which cannot be seen apparently and at the same time which is hard to overcome in order to reach the senior executive positions. Glass ceiling refers to the difficulties that take place between women and the top management which do not allow them to move along their career regardless of their success and skills. There have been many theories about why women are underrepresented in senior management positions. If gathered under three headings, these are: Bias-centred, person-centred, and structural-centred theories. Bias-centred theories consider that the fundamental causes of inequities are discrimination, stereotyping and prejudice by the greater part of the society or dominant group. Person-centred theories accept that differences in men's and women's personal characteristics and behaviour cause women to be unsuccessful at management positions. Structural-centred theories suppose that the main causes of inequity are the structural policies and customs of a social system, thus social structure dominated by men raise the discrimination against women. In this paper 'Glass Ceiling Syndrome' has been researched, the related literature on the subject has been investigated and the results were tried to be tested by a field survey. Within the scope of the study, a questionnaire was developed to determine the perception and attitudes of women on "Glass Ceiling Syndrome" who are working in a research hospital in Izmir. The glass ceiling was analysed at nine dimensions in the questionnaire; these are: barriers stemming from top management, negative prejudices against women, family life, sex discrimination, women's rise in their career, organizational culture and politics, informal communication networks, mentoring and occupational discrimination. Research has shown that women are uncomfortable with prejudices about themselves and now they are ready for senior management positions. Women have been also more conscious day by day and they have been trying to break the glass ceiling which is like a barrier on their career. Eventually it can be said that the increase in educational and cultural level of the society will be the main factor on breaking the glass ceiling.
Compared to men, women view professional advancement as equally attainable, but less desirable
Women are underrepresented in most high-level positions in organizations. Though a great deal of research has provided evidence that bias and discrimination give rise to and perpetuate this gender disparity, in the current research we explore another explanation: men and women view professional advancement differently, and their views affect their decisions to climb the corporate ladder (or not). In studies 1 and 2, when asked to list their core goals in life, women listed more life goals overall than men, and a smaller proportion of their goals related to achieving power at work. In studies 3 and 4, compared to men, women viewed highlevel positions as less desirable yet equally attainable. In studies 5-7, when faced with the possibility of receiving a promotion at their current place of employment or obtaining a high-power position after graduating from college, women and men anticipated similar levels of positive outcomes (e.g., prestige and money), but women anticipated more negative outcomes (e.g., conflict and tradeoffs). In these studies, women associated high-level positions with conflict, which explained the relationship between gender and the desirability of professional advancement. Finally, in studies 8 and 9, men and women alike rated power as one of the main consequences of professional advancement. Our findings reveal that men and women have different perceptions of what the experience of holding a high-level position will be like, with meaningful implications for the perpetuation of the gender disparity that exists at the top of organizational hierarchies. gender | professional advancement | goals | power | achievement E ven in societies that stress the importance of gender equality, women are underrepresented in most senior-level positions (1). For instance, recent estimates indicate that women comprise less than 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs, less than 15% of executive officers, less than 20% of full professors in the natural sciences, and only 6% of partners in venture capital firms (2-4). Moreover, it seems that the small percentage of women who do attain executive positions are relegated to spheres within the organization that have less influence and fewer opportunities for professional advancement (5). These differences may not exist at the start of the employment relationship. In fact, recent evidence has found that female applicants were favored over male ones for positions as assistant professors in science .
Revija za socijalnu politiku
The starting point of the paper is that highly educated women suffer less inequality in the workplace. To test it, both secondary and primary researches were conducted. Secondary data refer to the field of education, participation in knowledge-intensive activities, hierarchical status, and pay gap of highly educated women compared to men in selected European countries, while primary data reveal perceptions of highly educated women on women's contextual career factors and personal critical incidents' experiences concerning equality. The primary research was conducted on a sample of 675 highly educated women in Croatia. Results are tested for statistical differences according to respondents' demographics and compared with highly educated men's perceptions (n = 177).
Glass ceiling of women in top management in organization: critical overview
With more and more women are being educated, confident, self-reliant, skilled, competentenough to give tough competition to their male counterparts in management sectors. But sadly despite all the existing legal provision women are still struggling more than ever to reach the top positions and this has been labelled glass ceiling.A research by International Labour Organization (Breaking through the Glass Ceiling 2004) being one of the most comprehensive international studies reveals that the attainment of top executive positions for females in the world in general and India in particular is complex. Over a period of time number of highly educated women in the workforce has increased and in some way has achieved commendable success in male domain of the corporate world. However gender discrimination in working world has adversely affected the advancement of women. Women today comprise only 2 percent of the total managerial strength in the Indian Management sector.Although there is an increase in the female workforce but professional development opportunities for them remain negligible or not up to the mark. Thus we can say it is easier for females to enter the managerial jobs but it is all the more difficult to make progress regardless of her credentials. This paper focuses on the reality of the glass ceiling, the invisible barrier that women experience in their upward career mobility which prevents them from reaching the top of the organization. Specific personal comprehensives, characteristics and activities are regulated to the background. The presupposed female stereotype dominates the relationship, since it's difficult to describe the career growth possibilities and upward mobility. Here we review some of the gender inequalities that lie behind the phenomenon of the glass ceiling. A major source of discrimination stems from strongly held attitudes towards women's and men's social roles and behaviour. If one compares the effective roles played by women and men rather than looking at women as an isolated group it becomes apparent that each has different access to resources, work opportunities and status. The consequences of gender inequalities include women being " crowded " into a narrow range of occupations where there is less responsibility and/or lower pay, or having to work part time where are fewer opportunities for advancement. While this situation can be explained to some extent by men's and women's perceptions of their respective social roles, these roles have in fact been undergoing substantial changes in recent decades. Labour force participation patterns of men and women, and social attitudes, have been gradually evolving to reflect these.
The impact of gendered organizational systems on women’s career advancement
Frontiers in Psychology, 2015
In this Perspective article we propose that in order to pave the way for women's career advancement into the senior ranks of organizations, attention must be directed at the systemic norms and structures that drive the gendered nature of the workplace. A focus on individual level issues, i.e., women lacking confidence and women opting out, detracts from the work that must be done at the organizational level in order to dismantle the system of pervasive, structural disadvantage facing women seeking to advance to senior leadership positions.