Bài giảng Managing Diversity - Chapter 10 Women in management

Chapter 10Women in managementErica French and Alison SheridanCopyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs to accompany Strachan, French and Burgess, Managing Diversity10-*Women in managementDespite early progress following equal opportunity legislation, female managers remain concentrated in lower management levels in Australia.The 2008 Australian Census of Women in Leadership shows women held 2% of CEO positions and 8.3% of Directorships (down from 2006 figures).Women’s poor representation in management is consistent across metropolitan and regional Australia.Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs to accompany Strachan, French and Burgess, Managing Diversity10-*Industry segregationThe labour force remains gender-segregated.Industry sectors where women hold the largest share of management positions:Health care and social assistanceEducation and trainingAccommodation and food servicesWomen are poorly represented in industries where average earnings are higher (construction, mining, electricity, gas, water and waste services).Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs to accompany Strachan, French and Burgess, Managing Diversity10-*Barriers to women’s access to managementOver time, many factors have been identified to explain women’s limited access to management: Individual Social OrganisationalThe focus of this chapter is on the responses by organisations to increasing women’s representation in management.Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs to accompany Strachan, French and Burgess, Managing Diversity10-*Organisational approachesEquity structures and strategies – formalised HRM structures developed in response to EEO legislation. Identify conscious structures: those that explicitly and formally include demographic group identity in HR decisionsIdentify blind structures: those that do not explicitly include demographic identity in HR decisions.Konrad and Linnehan (1995) found identity-conscious structures were linked to increasing the employment status of women, while no change was associated with identity-blind structures.Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs to accompany Strachan, French and Burgess, Managing Diversity10-*Organisational approaches (cont.)Despite the above, in the past decade, we have seen a shift from identity-conscious to identity-blind structures.French and Strachan (2007; 2009) analysed equity policies in the finance and transport industries. They found:50 to 60 per cent did not address equity as an issueRelatively few organisations in either sector implemented proactive strategies to increase recruitment, promotion or development of women.Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs to accompany Strachan, French and Burgess, Managing Diversity10-*Importance of specific legislationThe strength of specific and clear legislation such as that prohibiting sexual harassment is seen in the strong response in this category with 65 per cent of finance and 75 per cent of transport organisations reporting policies categorised as consistent with legislative requirements (French and Strachan, 2007; 2009).Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs to accompany Strachan, French and Burgess, Managing Diversity10-*Temporal flexibilityThe most common ‘equity’ policy reported by organisations has been temporal flexibility – allowing both women and men to remove themselves from the workplace for family reasons (but this has been most commonly taken up by women).Concurrently, time devoted to work remains a common proxy for measuring an individual’s potential for senior management.It seems, then, that the ‘equity’ policy of temporal flexibility is not assisting women’s movement into senior management positions.Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs to accompany Strachan, French and Burgess, Managing Diversity10-*EEO: white elephant rather than gift horseWhile we acknowledge the importance of the legislative framework, the limited progress of women into senior management positions suggests it is time to revisit the legislation. Other means may need to be considered if substantive change in women’s representation in management is to occur. Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs to accompany Strachan, French and Burgess, Managing Diversity10-*Revising the legislationChanges to the EEO legislation should include:Requiring greater strategic reporting of outcomes, e.g. the setting of gender targets and reporting of progress in annual reports;Toughening the sanctions for non-complianceExtending the sanctions to outcomes-based measuresExtending the reach to organisations with less than 100 employees.If these changes were to happen we may see the white elephant becoming useful.Copyright  2010 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd PPTs to accompany Strachan, French and Burgess, Managing Diversity10-*