November 27, 2010
"Female Leaders Are Still Stereotyped"
"Two opposing ideals hinder leadership development programs for women, according to researchers Athena Vongalis-Macrow and Andrea Gallant"
By Athena Vongalis-Macrow and Andrea Gallant
I really like this article, maybe because I came upon the ideas it discusses so many times. The two authors of this study and article review why leadership programs for women are often flawed, but why there is, nonetheless, a continuing need for them in today's world.
Most of us are familiar with the "glass ceiling", a term which refers to the barriers preventing women from climbing to the top management and executive levels of their companies and organizations. Many researchers and academics have different speculations as to what contributes to that "glass ceiling", ranging from cultural, political and social inequalities with legal basis, all the way to physical differences between men and woman; some going so far as to argue differences in the brain size and intelligence.
Programs have been created to help women achieve their highest leadership and management potential and therefore minimize the gap that exists between top men and women leaders and executives. According to Macrow and Gallant, many of those programs unfortunately work to the disadvantage of women, because they set unrealistic and excessive goals. The example mentions a dean of business school, woman in her mid-forties who just had twins, looked incredibly put together, walking in high stilettos while giving an inspirational presentation to aspiring women-leaders. The authors of this study, as well as myself, find that this representation might strike most women as unachievable. In addition, it begs the question of whether so much more is expected of women than men. Not only are they scrutinized to perform equally, or perhaps even at a higher level than a man would be, but they are expected to have a great family life and impeccable looks while maintaining it all. If that is in fact what it takes to be a good leader or achieve a top position, many women would not even try to take the leap.
A second problem the authors of this study discovered is that often these programs focus on women's problems and weaknesses at their workplace, which further reinforces a stigma of women being incapable of handling the tasks and pressures of a job, which men easily can. Leadership programs for women should focus on inspiring and giving examples of how to perform better, so instead of pinpointing and exaggerating each individual’s flaws, it encourages women to accentuate their best qualities and strengthen their verbal, communication and interpersonal skills. I concur; a part of me would also not mind going to one of the mentioned programs myself and learning what it has to offer.
(http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/oct2010/ca20101012_599532.htm)Gabriela J.
It is quite true that women are held to a different and even greater standard than men. A good example that comes to mind was Hillary Clinton when she ran for presidential nominee in the Democratic primaries. There was constant criticism against her outfits, hairstyle, and overall presentation, which I found rather unfair. Despite my views of her political agenda at the time, I felt the media was criticizing her looks and appearance more-so than Obama's. Her political agenda was also harshly criticized, but I truly believe it was because of the fact that she was a women. A great percentage of voters still have a patriarchal mentality upon voting, which may have hindered her chances of becoming the Democratic nominee in the Democratic primaries. My sympathy for her grew greatly the day I overheard a classmate comparing her with Sarah Palin; not on her political viewpoints, but because of her looks. According to this old classmate of mine, "Sarah Palin [was] much hotter." I personally took great offense to that comment, yet I knew my classmate was not the only one to have that viewpoint in mind. Women are truly held to greater expectations than men when submitted to public scrutiny. They are expected to be great leaders with superb professional positions, with a successful, a righteous household, and show impeccable hygienic presentation. Hopefully one day, we will come to see a world where both men and women are compared equally for their political viewpoints, professional experience, and leadership skills.
ReplyDelete~Janet Echeverry
I think this is because we are living in a period of time when things are changing, it is like a “transition time” type of thing; leadership roles for women are practically new, and society is still trying to assimilate these new roles for men and women. I personally think that with time we will see more men involved with the house and kids work and women leading more powerful leadership positions. I think with time society will find a balance defining roles between the both genders, what happens is that women is still in the process of establishing themselves in the business world, and it will take some time until we can say the expectations are fair for men as well for women. Women are strong and if in so few years we have achieved so much I can’t wait to see what is waiting for us in the future.
ReplyDeleteMaria Falvey
This is a great article. We have more than once in class touched on the subject of gender differences and equality. Farah's posting of the article "Sheconomy" made many of us wonder to what extent this could be true, and if the glass ceiling could actually be broken once and for all; and earlier in the semester Professor Casey gave us the NYTimes Corner Office article "No Doubts: Women are Better Managers" to read in class, which presented a very stereotypical, biased view of men and women. The truth may be more situational than that.
ReplyDeleteMen and women are physiologically different, therefore we may have different general needs and answer to Maslow's hierarchy of needs in a different way. However, we are not only a gender, we are individuals with particular attributes and defects. After all the class discussions we had about this subject, I have concluded that feminists took it to an extreme, and what could really break that glass ceiling is equality of opportunity to all individuals regardless of gender. It should not be a competition between men and women as Carol Smith states in the Corner Office article, who makes it seem that we, women, are seeking to create a glass ceiling for men.