Why are there relatively few women in top managerial positions and Essay

Why are there relatively few women in top managerial positions and what steps might be taken to overcome the obstacles they face - Essay Example Gender discrimination, bias, sexual harassment, cultural, social and conventional factors all led women not to prefer management career line. This work analyses what measures can be taken in order to bring women in to the management mainstream. People think ‘men’ when they think of ‘management’ has been discussed for long by researchers, managements and organizations. Historically, the social attitudes towards ‘women management’ had prohibited most women from becoming managers in functional areas of management. The assumption that women are not as better suited for management traits as men had been, until recently, rarely questioned and seldom explored. Even though most perceive that not only men but women are also capable of management traits, why there are few women in management has been a matter of relevant discussion. This work analyses the reasons why there are few women in management positions and what measures need to be taken in order to bring women managers in to the mainstream. Surveys and researches conducted throughout different countries have proved that women in management are fewer disproportionately to the rate of population and education. There continues to be a great disparity in women representation in management when compared to the number of women educated. Women around the world now represent about more than 40% of the total workforce, but their roles in management and leadership remained comparatively low. According to Sanghamitra Buddhapriya (1999), organizational roles have been traditionally gendered. Certain levels and positions have been considered to be more appropriate to women or men. The gendered aspect made men with occupying dominance over women. (p. 3). Those who have reached some higher level managerial positions are constantly being challenged by ever changing working environment. For women managers and leaders, the affirmation and support from a larger community remains still uncommon. Three

Methodology and Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Methodology and Analysis - Essay Example In effect, the researcher employed the use of comprehensive literature review to serve the purpose of qualitative data collection. For the quantitative method, the researcher made use of primary data collection, which required the collection of first hand data from an identified research setting. The research setting comprised the IT systems development environment where the researcher made use of IT students, IT engineers, IT employees, and other IT experts. The primary data collection took place by designing a questionnaire, which contained questions on various thematic areas, relating to the purpose of the study. There were two major components of the questionnaire. The first sought to collect general background data or information on the respondents. Examples of these had to do with their nationality, years of experience in the field of IT and their role in software system. The second part contained questions on the actual hypotheses that the researcher was testing. ... This means that when repeated with the same variables, the research must produce the same results within different locations or settings. Now, with the combination of questionnaire and literature review, the researcher was offered the opportunity of testing the results gathered through primary data collection with data from secondary sources. In effect, it was possible to internally check for consistency of responses and how they conformed to universally accepted standards. With the questionnaire as an independent data collection tool, the advantage that it offered the researcher was that it made quantitative data analysis very easy. This is because almost all the questions posed were closed ended questions, requiring the respondents to select their answers from given options (Kimberly, 2009). This way, it was possible to easily quantify the answers into mathematical indexes. What is more, the literature review was very useful in collecting highly authenticated data because options o f researchers were compared and contrasted with each other before making personalized conclusions to suit the research problem. 3.3 Shortfalls of other available Research Methods Apart from the use of literature review and questionnaire, there are other research methodologies that the researcher could employ in the data collection process. However, these were not selected because they do not pose merits and advantages that surpassed the ones that the questionnaire and literature review offered. Two of these research methodologies that the researcher could fall on are interview and field observation. An interview is a question and answer session that a