Analytical writing and research about women in the organizations and management can be found dating back to over thirty years. These writings covermultiple facets of the subject; from discussion of gender roles on an individual level to the impact of gender roles on organizations and societies.Comparing older research and writing to recent works makes it apparent that while much of the larger world has changed, little has changed forworking women executive within it. For women to actually move beyond the stagnation of their niche in the modern management, matters traditionallylabeled“women’s issues” have to be properly addressed as “family issues”.
Various societies differ in their culturaattitudes, behaviors and values and it is possible to identify consistent tendencies in values within a cultural group and consistent differences between cultural groups, although not everyone in each society thinks or acts the same way. Despite the great variety of cultures, femininity is quite consistently associated with concepts such as nurturing, tenderness, weakness, submissiveness, intuition and emotionality, while masculinity isassociated with strength, rationality, decisiveness and control/mastery. The socalled feminine traits consistently receive low appreciation and reward in the businessworld, in addition to the negative consequences of acting outside the acceptable parameters of the gender. Historically, a female manager could bedespised for doing the very thing that her male counterpart would be appreciated for. |
