Literature review
Inequality and discrimination of gender still exist in professions and managerial occupations. Susan Halford and Pauline Leonard (2001:2) stated, “Overall, a third of all managers in Britain are women: not a discouraging figure, perhaps. However, they only comprise 13 per cent of middle and senior managers, and the broad-room remains an essentially male preserve: in 1996, woman made up only 3.3 per cent of directors”. These statistics inform us women obtain fewer opportunities of promotions. Another statistics from other research are even less optimistic, which show the fact that men dominate the business world: these suggest that in many top organizations there is still no female representation on the broad, and even where women are directors, they tend to be non-executive rather than executive ones (Susan Halford & Pauline Leonard, 2001:12).
They believed that the main reason of such situation was that “for most women, at some time in their lives, the truth is that the combining of child-care, husband-care and housework with a demanding paid job is very indeed.” (Susan Halford & Pauline Leonard, 2001: 77). Their energies are distracted from families, which lead to their consequent working performance. As a result, the burdens of families make the disadvantages for women’s promotions.
Some negative stereotypes of women were presented: disinclination to supervise others, lesser physical strength; lesser ability in science and mathematics; lesser willingness to travel; and lesser willingness to face physical danger and to use physical force (Martha F. Loutfi, 2001:139). Such standpoints give another chance of discrimination in promotion issue.
A rather gloomy picture pointed by Susan Halford and Pauline Leonard is the economic rewards. They articulated that in Britain, women generally earned less than men did throughout their working lives and a fact that was as true for women managers in other jobs. For example, women who work full-time currently earn 80 per cent of men’s hourly pay on average (Susan Halford & Pauline Leonard, 2001:3). These negative messages tell us there are inequality and discrimination remain not only in the promotion fields but also in economic rewards.
Methods
A questionnaire was designed for the issue of gender and position and twenty-one emails, which attached with questionnaires, were sent to different people in different organizations. Several questions were asked, such as the gender of the board chairman, the proportion of male to female in directorate, the proportion of male to female in high-level management, the proportion of male to female in middle-level management and the proportion of male to female of employees. Some related subjects were mentioned, including which gender obtained higher salary in the same position level and which gender interviewees would like to be managed by and so on. According to the result of these questions, the conclusion will be obtained via discussion.
Results
Figure 1: the chart of proportions of male and female in different level positions.
This chart shows the proportions of males and females in different levels of organizations. In the leader level, which means the presidents and directorates, women are rare while men are subtotal in these areas. In the high-level management, women’s numbers increase, however, men are still the majority. The amount of females in the following levels (middle-level management and employees) continues ascending and approaches the numbers of males in employee level.
Figure 2: the pie chart of proportion of male to female in rate of support by underling.
This pie chart clarifies which gender gets more underlings’ supplies in higher positions. It is easy to figure out that men are more powerful in this section than women and their proportion is 67%.
Figure 3: the pie chart of salaries comparison
Although there are different treatment of salaries in some companies, equality is showed from this pie chart. In general, the situation of salaries is equitable.
Discussion
From figure 1， it is obvious that the majority of high-level management is males, while females are quite rare. The amount of females in the following levels (middle-level management and employee) ascends gradually and approaches the quantity of males in employee level. The reasons why these phenomena appear are the following:
Home and work
The basic reason is that women obtain most responsibilities of families. Women need to have more flexible work time because they have to do more housework. As Martha Fetherolf Loutfi said in her book, which is named women, gender, and work (2001:2), “women’s disadvantaged position in the labor market is caused by, and is a reflection of, patriarchy and women’s subordinate position in society and the family.” The main responsibility of females is to take care of the family. For example, normally women will give up their jobs when their families need them to look after their infants, which are disadvantages to their promotions. Martha said, “It has an important negative effect on how men view women and how women view themselves.” For some women themselves, they are easy to satisfy with the current positions because they distract their attentions from careers to families. Female employees sometimes are unwilling to take business travels. As a high-level or middle-level management, they have to work overtime or go business travels, unlike normal officer workers. Therefore, to most female, the parts of families make them in the level of employees.
Education and work
The following factor is that women maintain less education and labor market experience than men do generally. In some developing countries, many females lose opportunities to work without education, so that labor market experiences are lacked，which restricts their choices of work. Also, the low level of women’s education determines their low layer positions in workplace. For example, while women constitute 40 per cent of the workplace, they hold less than 2 per cent of top management positions, according to Gary Dessler (2001:364).
Power and work
Men have more power of management, which build up the final element of this issue. In my results of questionnaires, 67% people hold the opinion that they would like to be a man’s underling (figure 2). The following table proved this point:
(Martha Fetherolf Loutfi, 2001, Women, Gender and Work: 141)
This table shows that the common stereotyped characteristics of women affects people’s thought about women’s abilities to managing. The prejudice makes man has more power to has more opportunities to be a manager.
Salaries
However, salaries are similar to both genders in the same work level nowadays (figure 3), which has changed and improved compared with the situation (mentioned in literature review) several years ago. There are two reasons: one is the improvement of women’s status, the other is the protection of the law. The basic cause of the improvement of women’s status is contributed by the Woman’s Rights Movement, which culminated in 1970s. Woman’s Rights Movement is a movement to achieve equality of work and education, to eliminate gender discrimination, to obtain the equal rights as men. The movement has obtained many benefits for women. So that, quite a few countries stipulated for a series of law to protect women’s rights, including equal salaries. In this section, the equal salaries show the equality in employments.
Conclusion
In this project, we have explored the relationship between gender and work, especially in promotion part. First, discrimination is still existed in workplace, which is proved by my research. Few females in high management mean it from my result and the discussion. On the other hand, the changes we have seen in the past thirty-seven years have been breathtaking, which own to women’s rights movement and law.
Appendix
Questionnaire
Gender: Male/Female Age: 20-24/25-30/31-40/›40 Date:
Nationality: The name of your company:
Please circle the correct answer.
1. Which gender is your president in your company?
A. male B. female
2. The proportion of male to female in your company's directorate probably is
A. ›60% B.60%-40% C. 40%-20% D.‹20%
3. The proportion of male to female in your company's middle-level manager probably is
A. ›60% B.60%-40% C. 40%-20% D.‹20%
4. The proportion of male to female in your company's employee probably is
A. ›60% B.60%-40% C. 40%-20% D.‹20%
5. Which gender obtains higher salary in your company?
A. male B. female
6. Which gender interviewees would like to be leaded by
A. male B. female
Thank you for your cooperation.
References
1. Halford Susan & Leonard Pauline (2001) Gender, Power and Organizations, New York, St Martin’s Press LLC scholary and Reference Divission and Palgrave Publishers Ltd.
2. Adkins Lisa (1995) Gendered Work (Sexuality, Family and the Labor Market), Buckingham, Open University Press
3. Loutfi M.F. (2001) Women, Gender and Work (What is equality and how do we get there?), Geneva, International Labor Office
4. Ely Robin J., Foldy E. G., Scully Maureen A. & the Center for Gender in Organizations, Simmons School of Management (2003) Reader in Gender, Work, and Organization, Blackwell Publishing Ltd
5. Ledwith Sue & Colgan Fiona (1996) Women in Organizations (Challenging Gender Politics), London, Macmillan Press Ltd
6. Dessler Gary (2000) Human Resource Management, New Jersey, Prentice-hall, Inc.
