Abstract
This paper explores the challenges faced by women in management positions in international organizations. In order to appropriately discuss the issue, background information on current related problems in the workplace environment is initially discussed. This establishes the context upon which women find themselves in a corporate world ‘built by men, for men’. Women are in a disadvantaged position since they need to maintain a balance between managing the business and taking care of the family; this is in contrast to their male counterparts who can allocate more time for their career. Within such a scenario, organizational as well as personal issues that impact the career of women in management roles are then explored. Finally, challenges for career women are discussed through case studies wherein the advancement of women empowerment is highlighted. For this purpose, real-world experiences of career women in different international organizations are cited and analyzed. The organizations include AccorHotels, H&M, Sandvik, and T-Systems. Finally, recommendations which aim to mitigate the impact of gender inequality as evidenced by numerous challenges of career women are presented at the end of the paper. Overall, it is important for women to develop an attitude that is highly-adaptable to the male-dominant corporate world. Women must adopt a more favorable behavior and attitude in the workplace in order to prove that they have as much right as their male counterparts to be in the executive board rooms of international companies today.
Introduction
Women in management positions in international companies are faced with many challenges today. Very few women are top-level managers and it can be difficult because there are no role models and no sufficient networks for career advancement; career women learn as they go. It would be easier if there were many more women whom an aspiring career woman could follow or learn from through guidance or mentorship. To reach the pinnacle of a career and to be considered a strong leader, a continual learning process is thus required. Women, unfortunately, are faced with the age demographic (Connerley & Wu, 2015). If a woman is not married or does not yet have children by the age of thirty-five, anxiety can start to impact her career and compel her to focus on family because it would be difficult to conceive children at the age of forty. Women at this stage can be obliged to stay home, look after their children, find a husband, or manage a family. It should be understood, however, that this stage can be the most demanding time for a career woman. Once a woman steps out of the career race, it would understandably be almost impossible to come back as effectively because all of her peers would be ahead, her professional skills would be outdated, and she would lose some credibility in the workplace. These are factors that hurt the career of women in companies, especially at times when they are near the top. Women must adopt a more favorable behavior and attitude in the workplace in order to prove that they have as much right as their male counterparts to be in the executive board rooms of international companies today.
Problems in the Workplace Environment
For women, there can be two career paths. One is the hierarchical line where men thrive; this is a career path where participants use force in making sure that their voice is heard over the others (Oerton, 1996). The other career path for women can be called the female line where women have more winding careers; they sometimes take time out for a number of years in order to focus on child rearing or family (Hedge & Borman, 2012). There is more discontinuous flow in the way that women structure their careers, in contrast to the rigid and continuous career paths of men. Within the context of how international organizations are represented by gender today, the challenges faced by women can be likened to a pyramid where a huge female workforce exists at the lowest level. In middle management, the number of women becomes smaller and as one goes up the pyramid, the decreasing trend continues (Anderson, 2014). At the executive board level, women are almost non-existent.
Organizational Issues
In view of the foregoing issues, it is argued that managers do not necessarily give women the encouragement they need to really take risks and be able to progress in their careers (Shafritz, Ott, & Jang, 2015). This means that work-related conversations between male managers and women executives should not only focus on the accomplishment of tasks but also on helping women seek opportunities which can help them develop skills and confidence that they need to keep moving forward. One probable reason why there are very few women who succeed in the workplace and assume the image of role models is because from a very young age, females are often stereotyped by men as weak and submissive to male authority (Stromquist, 2013). It is from this context that women may lack the confidence to compete with men for power in the organizational setting.
Personal Issues
It can be stated that women are excellent in executing tasks and in their overall performance; however, they do not spend a lot of time on career promotion and power (Giddens & Griffiths, 2006). Power involves networking and it answers the question of how people see an individual as a person of power; women are inherently prim and proper. Women in the corporate world are therefore perceived as nice but not so powerful. Within international companies, those that are able to first start with good performance and then build on power and promotion competencies would be able to move from middle to senior to top management positions. It is thus understandable that a lot of women get stuck in middle management because they continue to focus too much on the performance of tasks in their current positions, this is not a viable path to higher management positions because time should also be allocated toward the building of power and promotion competencies.
Challenges for Women in Management Roles
Women in management roles are encumbered with numerous difficulties not only in advancing their own personal career growth but in promoting awareness among other aspiring career women in their respective organizations. It can be stated that the nature of the problems faced by senior women managers are somewhat similar to issues for women at the lower levels of their organizations: both work under a minority group in an environment that is dominated by men. The following sections show how women [and even men] at the higher rungs of the corporate ladder influence their companies to propel more women to positions of power and authority.
AccorHotels
Sophie Stabile is the Chief Executive Officer of AccorHotels and she is the only female in the executive board of directors; her prior position was Chief Financial Officer [CFO] which was a position of considerable power in the company (VB Profiles, 2016). She started the international women’s network named Women at Accor Generation [WAAG] while she was CFO (Accor Hotels, 2013). It can be argued that had she not been on the executive board, WAAG would not have come into existence. Because she held power from her influential position as CFO, the network she built propelled her into the highest seat in the company, the CEO positon. Stabile implemented a group diversity policy which included all the countries where AccorHotels operated and the diversity policy was translated into the local languages in the respective branches in order to garner cooperation within the different cultures (Accor Hotels, 2013).
Stabile also paved the way to diversity training for all employees through e-learning modules, teaching all staff to be more sensitive to diversity issues, particularly gender diversity (Accor Hotels, 2013). Career mentoring program was also initiated in the company, providing valuable insight on viable avenues that women can take in their path to senior management, while providing its women members with a good network across the international scope of the company (Accor Hotels, 2013). All of these show that women must be able to speak the language of senior management, almost all of whom are male, and use facts and figures to convince them of the benefits that diversity brings.
H&M
Another international company, H&M, has around 104,000 employees (Statista, 2016). As a company providing women’s clothing, about seventy-six percent of those employees are women; at the management level, about seventy-two percent are women; at the executive board level, 50 percent of its members are women (H&M, 2016). Although half of the board members are women, the decline in the number of women, from lower to higher positons respectively, cannot be ignored even in a women’s clothing business. A mentoring program on career awareness of women is also utilized in H&M; through an intranet which promoted gender diversity within the culture of the company, videos and movies are used to show senior women managers talking about their career experiences in the different countries they were assigned to (H&M, 2016). In middle management, the organization encountered a problem because of mobility since female middle managers are not inclined to move from one location or country to another because of their family (H&M, 2016). Therefore, it is not always easy for female managers to follow what they preach to lower-ranking employees. This means that in order to ‘walk the talk’, a career woman must be courageous enough to follow through with action.
Sandvik
Sandvik is a Swedish tooling company for the engineering sector. As in any country in the world where engineering is a male-dominated field of expertise, there are very few women employees in the company. The workforce only has around eighteen percent female employees; however, it is interesting to note that they have more than thirty percent level at the board level (Sandvik, 2016). From this context, they have more women at the top than at the lower rank positions. Sandvik has been working at this distribution for several years as the CEO himself is the person that has been driving this sort of change in the company (Sandvik, 2016). In order to effectively adopt the change, guidelines were provided on how to deal with inclusive behaviors and they trained all their managers on gender equality awareness (Sandvik, 2016). The initiative is driven from the top and it filters down the organization. The main rationale behind diversity inclusion is grounded on academic research. Innovation and quality of decision making were issues that the CEO wanted to improve on; he understood that with a top management comprising of all men, decision might be quicker but it might not be optimal (Sandvik, 2016). This is the same argument that is used in convincing other male managers who oppose the diversity policy.
T-Systems
T-Systems is German ICT company which is a part of Deutsche Telekom. In 2010, Deutsche Telekom initiated a policy thrust to have more women at the executive board level; the goal was to have thirty percent women at the top level of the company by the year 2015 (T-Systems, 2016). This policy trickled down to all the other smaller subsidiaries of the company like T-Systems. Because of this, T-Systems was faced with the question of why they do not have thirty percent women at the top level of their organization, and this tremendously changed the culture within the company, as far as gender diversity is concerned (T-Systems, 2016). T-Systems therefore viewed the quota not as the mere end result of a policy but as a tool which required the breaking up of processes that should lead to opportunity improvement for women going through the ranks. As such, T-Systems was compelled to look into their recruitment and selection processes as well as their promotion processes. Nowadays, top-level women managers are part of the board of directors in both Deutsche Telekom and T-Systems. With the changes in the way that women are provided with better career advancement opportunities, it can be expected that more women can reach top-level management positions in the years ahead.
Conclusions and Recommendations
A lot of women struggle with their level of confidence in reaching the top rung of the corporate ladder. Women tend to underestimate their capabilities and so they need a lot of support. It is in this context that women need help in understanding their own value and the skills that they bring to businesses and organizations. Those who succeed and reach the pinnacle of their careers are women who view challenges as opportunities to stretch their performance capacities in order to get noticed by higher management. Unfortunately, many business women are living down to expectations. This highlights the need for women to look into the business case for general diversity in their company. In order to successfully implement a bias-free system where women can have equal career opportunities as men, the tools and techniques to effectively incorporate such a system need to be identified. Another challenge faced by women in the corporate world pertains to how they deal with resistance from men [sometimes also from women] if such a bias-free system is in place. As such, frontline managers need to rethink the way in which they are working with the women on their teams, making sure that they take enough time to build that relationship to help women understand the ways in which they can navigate the obstacles to success. Male managers need to provide support which can foster belief in a woman’s professional capabilities. Moreover, women need to expand their definition of role models and think about a broader array of people across the organization that can help them blaze their trail to the top. Organizations should never underestimate the importance of spontaneous encouragement which can allow a career woman to believe that reaching the top is possible. In the same light, women should deal with how they appear to inherently have modest behaviors since they are not too forward as men in exerting power or authority over others. Overall, the challenges faced by women in the workplace are shared in both management and lower positions in the company. For women, this requires a change in their behavioral mindset so that they may have the confidence to compete with men for power. Organizations, on the other hand, should continue to encourage equal career opportunities for women whose contributions can be as relevant and as distinct from what the male counterparts can offer. All of these concepts for the empowerment of women in the workplace can offer valuable insights not only into current business practices but also for future organizations which shall benefit from the positive changes brought about by unrelenting initiatives for gender diversity today.
References
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