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The author conducts a study on managers to show the lack of evidence supporting the view that managerial jobs in the market are structured to favour the male gender. She sets out to investigate to which extent the current work practices and norms still mirror the life situations and interests of men? She is concerned with the way people are so willing to understand the challenges of women in the workplace by blaming the male norm.
There are other factors that affect job incongruence that results to the employee being resistant and ambivalent to accepting a managerial position. There are scholars who are concerned with the fewer number of female managers than men in the corporate world. They have stated that jobs in the workplace are inherently gender structured and geared towards the male gender (Meyerson and Kolb, 2000).
It has been suggested that these jobs have become exclusive to the women due to the inherent male image and ethics of the position (Wilson 1998) Managerial jobs demand that the employees socialise greatly to build social networks that will help the company connect with critical suppliers.
A woman who does not have a partner with an agreement to share the household and childcare responsibilities will definitely not have time to socialise and network (Eagly and Carli, 2007). Even if a woman was to become a manager, the higher number of male managers tends to set the attributes and characteristics that are expected of the male position (Acker, 1990)
The author puts forward that what a man or woman can do in the market place is a cultural or social phenomena.
It is simply a question of the attitudes and perceptions that the people have on what the women and men should be in the job market. These perceptions and attitudes are highly volatile as they keep changing from generation to generation.
They are not solid enough to cause scholars to focus on it alone being the source of job incongruence. In the old decades, the man was the breadwinner while the woman played her role in the home.
As the women began to join the work force in the industrial revolution, they were given lower or subordinate jobs while the men had higher position jobs. The men were therefore promoted to managerial positions at a higher rate than the women. The man could participate in the workplace fully due to the great supporting role of the woman.
Day care facilities in neighbourhoods and even in the workplaces are now more comprehensive and the working manager is able to take advantage of their services. The author maintains that this is a thing of the past and women should not claim job congruency on the basis of male structured jobs. Now companies are interested in qualities other than gender.
The job market has become highly competitive with companies concentrating in qualities such as creativity, intuition and social intelligence. The focus is now on teamwork, communication skills and social responsibility (Fletcher, 2004). How a manager handles issues to do with ethics and environmental policies has become a critical consideration.
Organisations are now focused on skills, qualifications and management behaviour that match the needs of the organisations (Greenwald, 2008). The fact that a job demands certain individual characteristics such as flexibility to travel
and willing to work for long hours does not necessarily mean that the job is suited for a man. Nowadays, the women are in the workplace and there are men who are committed to spending time with their children and families. An organisation tends to demand these qualities due to capitalism.
The impact of the Capitalism system on organisational work practices should not be understated. The company wants to make a profit at all costs therefore looking for ideal workers who will assist the company soar in the market
The Research Study
To test the validity of her hypothesis, the author carried out a research on 20 women mangers working in three different organisations. The women were aged between 35-60 years working in the IT, medical and banking industry. The professional fields that the author chose are appropriate. The medical and IT fields are male dominated institutions. The banking profession has more women.
The research focused on how the women talked about themselves. Did gender play a role in their job experiences? Why did they desire to be managers? Was gender the only factor contributing to job incongruence? What other factors played a role in job congruency?
The authors research sample is appropriate as she selected women who were married or cohabiting with young children or teenagers. Most women said they had an early interest in leadership and management due to taking responsibilities early in the home.
The women admitted that being in the home did not provide any challenge therefore they loved the challenge that managerial jobs represent. They had partners who shared housework with them. Others hired help. One of the women early in her management career learnt that the male colleagues earned higher salaries. She complained to her superior and her salary was subsequently raised.
The younger women in the population sample did not perceive themselves to be challenging gender roles when they became managers. This goes to prove the authors hypothesis that the gender factor has gradually ceased becoming a dominant factor in the workplace.
The inhibitions that the women felt towards working in management were several. Reasons ranged from the perceptions others would be better at the role as they had worked for the company for a longer time and the fear of losing friendships with their colleagues.
The adjustment period was challenging and there were a few women who mentioned gender as one of their challenges. There was a woman who mentioned that immediately on being appointed as a manager she would spend a lot of time in decision-making causing the meetings to be long.
She therefore chose to adopt a masculine style of management where she would learn to make decisions immediately the way men usually did. The author handles this information by stating that culture has a role to play in decision-making abilities of an individual. She states that the Swedish managers have been found to be more consensus-oriented than the Danish managers.
There were women who decided to use the male approach in management. They also tried to assimilate themselves in the male cliques or groups. They worked to remove any differences between them and the male managers. However, later they found that the male managers did not meet their standards in what constituted an ideal manager.
They therefore learnt to concentrate on the expected managerial characteristics instead of male characteristic. Some women experienced loneliness in their new role due to loss of friendships and lack of new networks. Others at first found the job less interesting than their old jobs. Managers in the banking sector expressed frustration since they were expected to be more understanding, caring and soft in their new role.
There were women who tried to fit into the expected gender characteristics while others simply refused to conform to peoples ideals. They reasoned they were managers and not women managers. It is evident from the research that the managers experiences are shaped by other factors other than gender such as socialisation, background and the culture at the workplace.
The Conclusion
This is an important study that the author has carried out. Women need to be liberated form their beliefs on the male phantom in the workplace. Women will become better at their work, comfortable in their efforts to be the best managers. The findings of the research show that male norms still play a role in the workplace. There is pressure to change behaviour to be more male oriented.
The women later get tired of being who they are not and exciting the crowd. Their fascinated with male characteristics fades as they realise that the men are not the best managers either. The authors thesis is true. The level of the male norm in the workplace has reduced considerably. However, the fascination with the male norm only causes role conflict and disturbances in the workplace should be avoided.
A job congruency is therefore not guaranteed by the gender of the individual. Men may also find themselves in conflict with the job expectations.
They will be frustrated in their jobs. Organisations have changed over time and there are companies where the women are more dominant than the women such as the Scandinavian public sector organisations (Konran and Linnehan, 1999, pp. 429). The author maintains that having a mentality of the male norm adversely affects women.
The lie causes women to try and adopt different and unnatural lifestyles attempting to fill the managerial positions in what is deemed to the correct way. This leads to the women overburdening themselves and causing conflict in the workplace (Billing and Aversson, 2000).
The women who feel that the men make managers are the ones who have been exposed to high gender-stereotypical assumptions (Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998). Women who are not highly exposed do not have the same view and they concentrate on other work challenges apart from gender.
Organisations have higher expectations on their managerial staff. The author therefore puts forward that scholars and experts should cease portraying the women as victims in the male dominated society. The situation in the 21st century is a far cry from how the situation was in the 1940s-1960s.
This obsession with the male norm tends to simplify the issue of job incongruence. I agree with the author that scholars should instead seek to understand more the complex experiences of the women in management.
The organisational practices and prevalent cultures change making gender norms are contradictory and ambiguous (Billing, 2011). As the author correctly states, the male norm does not reflect the experiences of most of women in the workplace today. This has been proven by the research study.
References
Acker, J. (1990) Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: a theory of gendered organizations. Gender & Society, 4(2), pp. 13958.
Benschop, Y. and Doorewaard, H. (1998) Covered by equality: the gender subtext of organizations. Organization Studies, 19(5) pp 787805.
Billing, Y. ( 2011). Are Women in Management Victims of the Phantom of the Male Norm? Gender, Work and Organization, 18(3), pp. 298-31
Billing, Y.D. and Alvesson, M. (2000) Questioning the notion of feminine leadership.A critical perspective on the gender labelling of leadership. Gender, Work & Organization, 7(3), pp. 14457.
Eagly, A. and Carli, L. (2007) Women and the labyrinth of leadership. Harvard Business Review, 65, pp 6271.
Fletcher, J. (2004) The paradox of postheroic leadership: an essay on gender, power and transformational change. The Leadership Quarterly, 15 (5), pp. 64761.
Greenwald, H.P. (2008) Leadership and followership. Organization, 15(2), pp. 22358.
Konrad, A.M. and Linnehan, F. (1999) Affirmative action: history, effects, and
attitudes. In Powell, G. (ed.) Handbook of Gender and Work, pp. 42952.
Meyerson, D. and Kolb, D (2000) Moving out of the armchair: developing a framework to bridge the gap between feminist theory and practice. Organization, 7(4), pp. 55371.
Wilson, E. (1998) Gendered career paths. Personnel Review, 27(5), pp. 396411.
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