“The strong tendency to favor men
over women in filling high level leadership positions has been referred to as the
“glass ceiling” (Yukl, 2013, p. 371). There
is evidence that suggests that the glass ceiling is shrinking and the
percentage of women’s salary in the workforce is increasing. Despite the progress, the pace of each has
occurred at a very slow rate due to numerous reasons. Historically and
statistically our culture has been dominated by men occupying high-level
leadership positions such as chief executives.
However, our culture has been in a constant change to reverse that
trend. Rosabeth Moss Kanter proposes
that the very top jobs possess a greedy and demanding nature; which I agree to
be true. But I disagree it is a reason
that prevents women from breaking into high level positions. Kanter assumes that men holding high level positions
do not give women an opportunity because women may not be quite as dedicated or
may place too much focus on their family.
This seems like an incredible falsehood to me because in my experience,
a person will be selected based on past performance, skills, and knowledge; not
their gender or their dedication to family.
Yukl suggests that “in the absence
of sex-based discrimination, the number of women in chief executive positions
in business in government should be close to 50 percent” (Yukl, 2013, p. 371). I disagree with what I consider to be an
assumption by Yukl because to say that these positions should be evenly shared
between men and women does not seem accurate.
For example, if there were two positions in a lower level or
non-leadership position, should one man and one woman each get hired? Or, should the best qualified candidate be
hired regardless of gender? Of course,
in a perfect world, the latter would be the correct choice. However, we do not live in a perfect world
and I realize gender-based discrimination exists. I think the difficulty in totally eradicating
this discrimination is challenging because even if gender-discrimination
occurs, a hiring authority can usually substantiate the reason or reasons they
hired someone. In my opinion, the only
way to truly know if someone was not selected for a position based on gender is
to be able to read the hiring authority’s mind.
And that is simply not going to happen.
Kanter also discusses women finding the
balance between money and happiness. I believe
this is another factor that cannot necessarily be controlled in identifying
gender-based discrimination. Everyone has to make career decisions at some
point in their life, regardless if they are male or female. For example, I am a male who has had to make
career decisions based on what I felt was more important at that time. I have
made decisions throughout my career based strictly on money, quality of life,
family, and career progression. I have been
fortunate enough to never witness gender-based discrimination in my
career. That is not to say I simply did
not recognize it occurred; it may have.
Although, I would like to think the individuals I have seen selected for
positions or promoted were given the opportunity based on everything they had
to offer and not based on their gender. Nevertheless,
only the authorities making the selections or promotions can answer whether or
not gender-based discrimination occurred.
References:
Kanter, E. R. (2010, April 02). Harvard Business
Review. Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhquUOlBuOY&feature=youtu.be&t=5s
Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership
in organizations (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall
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