Women in management still fighting for equality

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Overview

Having collated studies in over 20 countries in our new book Women in Management Worldwide (with Ronald Burke), our results are quite startling. Despite women making up half the workforce in most developed countries, occupational segregation still exists. Childcare is still an important concern for women in nearly every country and women had increased their participation rates in university education over the past decade, equalling or exceeding that of men (in all but one country women now outnumber men taking business degrees). However, women managers still have less job tenure, earn less money and remain at lower organisational levels.

Across all 20 countries the pace of change and improvement is still slow; women still face discrimination and gender, ethnic, cultural and religious stereotyping; male domination at senior-management and corporate board levels continues; and there is some plateauing in societal and legislative support for women’s advancement. The pace of achievement for women managers and professionals continues to be slow and uneven and the pattern is global. In Japan for example, only 0.8% of CEOs are women versus 10% in the UK and less than 10% of Japanese managers are women versus 43% in the US. China reported the lowest percentage of female managers and professionals (16%) with Australia, Canada and the UK, at over 30%.

However, it’s not all bad news. Over the past decade, women have increased their participation rates in managerial and professional jobs in most countries, particularly at lower management levels. Nevertheless, there is still gender segregation with more of these women working in human resources, marketing and public relations and more men managers working in engineering, construction, mining and manufacturing. While some of the researchers attempted to project when true equality would be achieved in their respective countries (half female board members and senior executives ) – estimated at 100 -200 years down the road – many thought this was unlikely ever to be realised!

Due to ingrained prejudice or more active discrimination, large companies around the world are holding back their own growth and development. Certainly, the ‘old boy’ network continues to dominate the appointment process – particularly at senior levels. In times of financial global downturn; not utilising the talents of all one’s workforce to the full just doesn’t make economic sense. Indeed, this view was recently endorsed by Prime Minister David Cameron in reference to the new progress report on Women on UK Boards: ‘Now more than ever, as we look to grow our economy and maintain a competitive edge over our international counterparts, it’s important we make the most of the talents and skills out there”.

Clearly there is an urgent need to tackle the pervasive negative attitudes, behaviours and experiences that face women in the workforce worldwide. The evidence presented from the 20 countries indicates that while a country’s political, economic and legislative context does appear to have some impact on women’s participation in managerial/leadership roles (particularly at senior levels), the greatest influences are more often driven by deeply rooted socio-cultural traditions and values.