Introduction

In this chapter, we consider the broader context in which our study is placed. We look at some of the developments in the literature on women’s place in employment in order to provide a framework in which our work may be understood. Unlike the main bulk of the book, where we provide an opportunity for our interviewees to speak for themselves, we concentrate here on background issues and themes.

It has long been accepted that organisations benefit from having a diverse workforce. In terms of age, ethnicity, gender and other social characteristics, workplaces are more effective when their practices function to attract and support those with the greatest talent regardless of background. Many workplace policies and procedures are built around this principle, and it is enshrined in law. For a number of reasons, including legal, social and attitudinal change, women’s opportunities have progressed significantly in the last 35 years. But despite these changes, and some recent assertions (Sanghera, 2010), women have not yet ‘caught up’ with men even on quite basic measures such as equal pay, as recent national surveys have testified (Office for National Statistics, 12 November 2009;³ INSEAD/World Economic Forum, 2010) and this becomes more evident as seniority of position increases. Aspects of this situation are discussed in this chapter, where we look at some of the statistical information from surveys as well as some more qualitative research.

It is unsurprising that for many years, studies of gender equality within the workplace have largely focused on the myriad of difficulties faced by women in working alongside men on an equal footing. Early commentators, especially feminists, were concerned with the lack of opportunity for women in all areas of social life, including employment, and much has been written in attempting to understand the situation and to change it. Some studies have considered the various theoretical models of understanding around sex and gender, while others have focused on specific sectors of employment. In addition, a good deal has been published in the developing field of gendered management studies. An overview article by Broadbridge and Hearn (2008) provides a useful summary of significant developments in the field of gender, work and management. In this chapter we survey some of the literature most relevant to the field of interest covered in this book.

While women’s work experiences have largely been framed in terms of the barriers faced by women at all levels, less has been written about the nature of success for women, and how women who reach the top positions get there or what it feels like once those positions have been reached. We know a lot about the ‘glass ceiling’ but not very much about how women break through it and what they do once they attain positions that men have traditionally filled. Women in senior positions, moreover, have rarely been consulted about the important role they might play in advising other women who wish to follow a similar path.

Progress in context: two steps forward, one back?

The early campaigners would see much evidence of progress in today’s workplace, with women enjoying greater legal protection than ever before and being found in the top positions within both public and private sectors. But they would also recognise that there is still some way to go, with women’s presence at the top continuing to be significantly outnumbered by men in all sectors of employment, though the situation is better in the UK than in some countries, including the USA (Broadbridge and Hearn, 2008; see also the Eurostat website⁴). The situation also varies considerably from sector to sector and profession to profession (see, for example, Kumra and Vinnicombe, 2008). Moreover, despite the narrowing of the gender pay gap over time, legal measures and changing attitudes have not yet fully dispensed with the basic pay inequalities between men and women across the board. In 2009, the Office of National Statistics released their Annual Survey of Hourly Earnings,⁵ which showed that the mean hourly full-time gender pay gap narrowed from 17.1 per cent to 16.4 per cent in the previous year, and the mean part-time gender pay gap narrowed from 36.7 per cent to 35.2 per cent in the same period. Even so, Ceri Goddard, Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society, was moved to comment that ‘while the slight narrowing of the gender pay gap is a cause for celebration, we cannot afford to become complacent. The rate of change over the past four decades has been glacially slow, and while some employers are taking positive action to root out pay inequality, most are not.’⁶

It can clearly be seen that, despite equal pay and sexual discrimination policies which passed into law in the UK 40 years ago, overwhelming evidence exists to show that the gender gap in employment is still alive and kicking, both in raw terms (equal pay for equal work) and in more subtle ways, such as the continuing stratification, vertically and horizontally, of jobs along gender lines (Broadbridge and Hearn, 2008). In other words, women are still more likely to be found in lower-paid, part-time work than are men, are still ‘clustered’ in certain types of jobs, and continue to be overwhelmingly responsible for domestic work and childcare. A European Union-funded study by Cambridge University in 2007 which surveyed over 30,000 people found that the ‘have it all’ woman (with a full-time career, partner and children) has turned into the ‘do it all’ woman, carrying out the bulk of domestic duties, even when working full-time. The survey found that men across member states worked an average of 55 hours a week, whereas women in full-time employment worked an average of 68 hours. Commuting and domestic work, including childcare, were factored in for both men and women. The report highlighted three issues contributing to the persistence of inequality along gender lines in the workplace. These were: ‘the low quality of part-time work, the poor pay and status of female dominated jobs, and the under-representation of women at managerial levels’ (Burchell et al., 2007, cited in Womack, 2007). The report confirms that, in some areas, women have made great strides, but more generally when statistics on senior posts are examined it is clear that men are over-represented at the ‘top table’ across a range of occupations and professions. At a conference held in May 2010, where the Fawcett Society joined forces with the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the trade union Unison and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Kay Carberry CBE, Assistant General Secretary of the TUC, warned that at the current rate of progress, it would take three more generations to close the pay gap.⁷

So far, we have suggested that, although more women are rising to high positions, they do so in the context of continuing gender inequality and are under-represented at the top. A number of examples are useful here in illustrating the situation in specific contexts. Education is an area where women are considered to have been very successful, with a long history of their presence as teachers. In contemporary Britain, women make up 87 per cent of primary teachers, but only 67 per cent of primary heads. In secondary education, women account for 60 per cent of secondary school teachers, but only 36 per cent of secondary heads (Brettingham, 2008). So we can see that while women are well represented in the teaching profession, their progress to the top jobs is disproportionately low. The situation is even more pronounced in higher education where only 23 out of 133 university vice chancellors are women.⁸

Similarly, historically, women have been over-represented as nurses (2009 figures show there are 57,000 male nurses compared with 471,000 female), especially in the lower-paid ranks, and under-represented as doctors, especially as consultants, within the National Health Service (NHS), something that projects such as Women in Academic Medicine have sought to address.⁹ Although this balance has shifted considerably over recent years, with more women doctors than ever before (42 per cent of GPs are women), figures for 2009 show that women at consultant level or above constitute around one quarter of the total (Department of Health et al., 2010) with most concentrated in public health or paediatrics. Only 8 per cent of women consultants are surgeons. Moreover, a 2007 report on women in academic medicine showed that ‘despite the increasing feminisation of the medical workforce, women doctors are still strikingly under-represented in the university sector compared to their male counterparts particularly at the more senior levels.’¹⁰ Across a number of areas studied in the report, including appointments and promotions, mentoring and role models, work structures and work flexibility, women were shown to face the same problems as men but in greater magnitude. The study identified important factors impeding women’s progress in academic medicine and made a number of recommendations to remedy the imbalance.

In some areas such as science, engineering and technology (SET) which are numerically dominated by men, women’s progress has been even harder to achieve. Female candidates for A-level science and technology subjects have increased and there is evidence that girls do increasingly well at this level, outperforming boys at grade A.¹¹ Nonetheless, a 2007 report Transforming Boardroom Cultures in Science, Engineering and Technology Organisations (Singh, 2007) noted the virtual invisibility of women in boardrooms of SET companies and explored the cultural aspects of private and public sector boardrooms and the barriers to women’s progression. The report identified those cultures most and least amenable to qualified women and made a list of recommendations for the creation of cultural change at board level. A similar report in the USA in 2007 by the National Academy of Sciences found that although women have the ability and drive to succeed in science and engineering, they are held back by a number of factors, including discrimination and implicit biases within the educational system at all levels. Moreover, academic organisational structures and rules contribute significantly to the underuse of women in these fields. This report concludes that the US cannot afford the consequences of impeding the progress of women (and other minorities) and must find ways of supporting the brightest minds in science and engineering.

If we look at the Police Service in England and Wales, 23 per cent of the overall workforce is female, while women’s presence diminishes as rank increases. According to Home Office statistics for 2007, a mere 11 per cent of officers above the rank of chief inspector were women and there are only a handful of women chief constables in the Police Service.¹² If we look at the criminal justice system more broadly, we find that 10 per cent of high court judges are women, with only one female law lord. Less than a quarter of prison governors are female, while only 15.9 per cent of partners in the UK’s ten largest law firms are women. At the top 30 sets of the UK bar, there were 42 female compared to 479 male silks¹³ (Fawcett Society, 2009).

In politics, the pattern is similar. Following the 2010 General Election, only 143 of the 650 members of parliament (MPs) are women and at the time of writing just four members of the new coalition cabinet are women.¹⁴ Not only do numbers of women in politics at the national level remain low, but women who do go into politics often have to contend with what Natasha Walter calls ‘a quiet indifference to their views and a loud interest in their looks. if they enter the political arena as wives they tend to be celebrated, but if they enter as politicians they tend to be sidelined’. Walter’s contention is that media attention to women MPs is more often about their looks, clothes or marital status than their policies.¹⁵ As a case in point, on 24 June 2010, Australia announced its first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. By describing her as ‘a childless single career woman’, the on-line news agency AFP voiced a number of assumptions about successful women in a few short words¹⁶ and simultaneously drew attention away from her policies and achievements.

Turning to the private sector, we find an echo of the situation outlined so far. A study commissioned by The Observer in 2009 found that women occupied only 34 of the 970 executive director positions at companies in the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 350 index and only four chairmanships were held by women, equivalent to 1.3 per cent of the total, with only nine women (3 per cent) serving as chief executive officers (CEOs). The survey also found that 132 of the companies surveyed were ‘men-only’ zones, with no female representation at board level. Overall, female representation was shown to stand at 8.8 per cent, if executive and non-executive directorships are taken into account. Interestingly, nine out of ten of the companies in the survey said they had an equal opportunities policy (Cooperative Asset Management Survey, 2009).¹⁷ As a response to the findings, Harriet Harman, then Leader of the House of Commons, commented: ‘A company in the grip of the old-boy network is never going to be successful in the modern world … What does it say about a company that they have an all-male board? It is backward-looking and old-fashioned.’¹⁸

The above examples provide a general flavour, from the abundance of published evidence, of some of the changes and some of the ongoing inequalities faced by women in the contemporary workplace, especially in relation to positions of seniority. The stark figures presented here are only a hint of the underlying conditions that affect women who are striving to have their potential recognised. The next section focuses on some recent research that has sought to explore specific issues in relation to women at the top.

Ceilings, walls and floors: the continuation of disadvantage?

The concept of the glass ceiling has been in circulation for some years (Meyerson and Fletcher, 2000), and relates to the idea that women face certain structural and cultural obstacles to progress that particularly affect them once they attempt to scale the top echelons of work. A good deal has been written on the subject, much of which remains pertinent today. Here we consider some of the more recent work on this topic.

An important appraisal of the glass ceiling was carried out by Wirth in 2002 for the First International Conference of the International Labour Office (ILO). The report found significant progress in gender equality in recent decades, but pointed out that results for women often fall short due to ‘glass ceilings, glass walls and sticky floors’ (Wirth, 2002). Stumbling blocks can often be traced to the way work itself is organised and the challenges faced in reconciling work and family commitments, resulting in persistent occupational segregation. A number of strategies for reaching the top were proposed. These included: the requirement for meaningful change; the need to diversify occupations for men and women; the need for far greater sharing of family responsibilities; the need for innovation with poorer human resources and budget strategies; and the cultivation and nurturing of women’s entrepreneurial talents (see also Fielden and Davidson, 2005, and Brush et al., 2006, with regard to this latter point). The report concluded that companies and organisations have to learn that in order to remain competitive they cannot afford to lose out on women’s talent. The ILO meeting outlined a number of requirements to banish the glass ceiling and these included an end to gender stereotyping, a commitment to ending sex discrimination and sexual harassment, and the need to work on ending occupational segregation in the labour market. It concluded that a key factor holding women back was the ongoing imbalance between the genders in relation to family commitments. Above all, it suggested that there has to be managerial commitment and active promotion of gender equality in all areas of education and employment by governments and civil society organisations.

A study by Thompson (2007) looked at the gendered history of management in teacher training as well as the impact of public sector reform. The research, which consisted of interviews with eleven female junior and middle managers in initial teacher training, found that the women reported a heavy workload and lack of strategic control. The data showed that women were moving into managerial positions and that men were under-represented, and suggested that men could be rejecting stressful and demanding jobs characterised by little power, reduced status and a heavy workload, thus creating space for women. The interviews revealed that while some women were being appointed to senior positions, others felt they were being demoted or sidelined in some way. Some felt there was a value shift in educational leadership from an emphasis on good teaching and relationships to an emphasis on more mechanistic imperatives and a perception that the ability to balance the books is now what counts. Also, they felt that the loyalty of some new managers lay with their institutions and management rather than their staff. The study concluded that management structures have conscripted men and women into more goal-orientated ways of working and, interestingly, it also found no evidence from the interviews that senior women support and empower other women – findings that, to an extent, concur with our own, as discussed later in this book.

Another 2007 study (Smith and Crimes, 2007) looked at the under-representation of women in senior management in the UK travel and tourism industry. This study was undertaken by an on-line questionnaire with 182 respondents and asked questions designed to elicit perceptions about the glass ceiling. Smith and Crimes found that a relatively small proportion of respondents thought that the glass ceiling exists, as we ourselves found in our research, discussed in Chapter 9 in particular, although there was strong recognition that men are more likely than women to hold the top positions. Likewise, a substantial number agreed that women’s career prospects in the sector are hampered by a culture of masculinity and the presence of an old boys’ network (see also, for example, Acker, 1992; Maier, 1999). Perhaps significantly, more women felt this to be the case than men. Other reasons given for lack of progress for women were the lack of mentors or obvious female role models in the sector. All these findings are reviewed and compared with our own in later chapters.

A study by Sampson and Moore (2008) considered male and female professionals in the fundraising industry in New England, USA, a sector that had been largely overlooked to date. The research found that men earned significantly more than women and that women hold a larger number of lower paying jobs, though men and women seem to track relatively evenly until director level. The authors point out that wage disparity exists despite the fact that the majority of jobs in the development sector are held by women. Several areas were identified by the women in the study as hindering their advancement. These were largely consistent with factors identified by corporate women in other studies and included the failure of senior leadership to assume accountability for women’s advancement and the persistence of stereotypes and pre-conceived notions of women’s abilities and roles. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sampson and Moore recommended further studies to see if what works in the private sector is the same in the nonprofit sector.

As we can see, a number of pieces of research have been conducted on the glass ceiling in countries outside the UK. For instance, Bihagen and Ohls examined both the public and private sectors in Sweden in a 2006 study. Their aim was to identify the largest relative disadvantages for women in terms of hierarchical position and to shed more light on the differences between the private and public sectors with respect to occupational mobility. Sweden is a society which embraces family-friendly policies and strong female participation, but where relatively strong gender segregation is still in evidence, both horizontally and vertically. The authors found that women experience the strongest disadvantages compared to men at lower levels in the occupational hierarchy and that female disadvantage appears to lessen with hierarchical level. This is interesting as it runs counter to most glass ceiling theory which suggests the opposite. The study concluded that the ‘gender penalty’ appears to be largest for women with young children, often early in their careers.

A somewhat similar piece of research focused on gender and management in Norway’s state bureaucracy, and its conclusions had some points of overlap with the Swedish study. Storvik’s 2008 study considered whether there are organisational barriers preventing women entering management positions and explored the potentially differential treatment of men and women in working life. The author included assessments of explanations which view the low proportion of women in management as an expression of unequal treatment, the gendering of occupation, homosocial reproduction where leaders select those similar to themselves, gender segregation and marginalisation due to women being shut out from networks. Storvik’s results did not support the idea of a differential in working life. Rather, it was concluded that women have as good a chance of being appointed to senior positions as men. Moreover, the women in the study expressed similar satisfaction levels to men and appeared to have equal treatment so the study did not support the existence of a glass ceiling. Storvik also found that male and female managers showed little difference in motivation and similar levels of willingness to change jobs were found. Family obligations were not seen as creating more barriers. However, women applied for fewer management positions than men. The research concluded that the scarcity of women managers must be attributed to women’s choices and to the conditions early on, such as their education and early employment. It suggests an ‘imagined’ glass ceiling but with the same consequences as a real set of barriers as even though possibly ‘imagined’, it slows down women’s entry into higher management positions. This is something that we consider through our own findings.

A research project by Sanders et al. (2009) investigated how the actual work environment and women’s perceptions of their environment affect the career experiences of women professors in the Netherlands. The study administered questionnaires to 188 female professors. The findings highlight the importance of women-friendly environments as well as the perception of such environments. The more women professors perceive their own work environment to be women-friendly the more they will report their career progression to professorship to have been easy. Secondly, the more women professors perceive their work environment to be women-friendly the more they will perceive it to be easy for women in general to become a professor. The authors concluded that the perception of a women-friendly environment is positively related to both the experienced ease and the perception of general ease for women in obtaining a full professorship.

Finally, it is worth referring to a study of women police chiefs in the USA as this throws light on practices inside one of the most quintessentially masculine professions. A 2004 study by Schultz comprised a portrait of 200 past and current police chiefs and sheriffs and was based on both interviews and questionnaires. The career paths of the women interviewed provide a significant and revealing part of the book, with many of them talking about the pain of being part of the first generation to make it to the top. One point that is emphasised is that in a male-dominated profession if the numbers entering at the bottom stay low then so will the numbers at the top. The women in the study were highly educated and managed to sidestep the glass walls by turning all their experience – even that in traditionally softer assignments such as training or personnel – into pluses. But many felt they had also had to make trade-offs, finding that high professional achievement and domestic responsibilities rarely mix. Schultz argues that it is crucial that early career opportunities are grabbed to ensure that women do not fall behind over a period of years, a theme common to many of the women involved in our own study.

The research examined here illustrates the complex set of factors that can – and do – influence the career patterns of women across a range of contexts. While there continues to be disagreement about the existence or otherwise of the glass ceiling, a mass of evidence points to differential patterns of advancement and a wide range of attitudinal differences in relation to the gendered experience of work.

Family matters

The literature discussed above focuses primarily on aspects of the glass ceiling, but it is revealing that many of those studies include reference to women’s domestic responsibilities and the relationship between family care and career progression. An interesting study by Grummell et al. in 2009 aimed to demonstrate how the market model of education has impacted on the definition and practice of senior managerial appointments in higher education in Ireland. It examined the gendered impact of the changes in relation to care as neo-liberal values of individualism and performativity dominate senior management culture. The study analysed interviews with 13 top-level appointments in higher education and compared these with senior managers in primary and secondary education, with the interviews covering the entire appointments process. The case studies revealed compelling differences between men and women – while women spoke spontaneously about the impact of care on their work lives men mentioned it in passing, if at all. Male interviewees assumed that ‘gender is not an issue’, but when questioned further admitted that people did not apply for jobs because of young families and that those people were almost always female. A career break/job sharing was part of being a good mother for women but not an issue for men. The authors argue that the management of child bearing and caring is crucial to female career paths because an academic career demands a single purpose, so that time spent on childcare implies a lack of commitment. In addition candidates are judged on their management experience, disadvantaging women. The gendered nature of care at different levels was revealed, with primary and secondary level managers of both genders tending to be married with young children while in higher education three of the women had no children and of the others all but one child was over 18. Only one man in the sample had no children. The male managers defined care-related decisions as a woman’s chore and accepted that women would work part-time or leave to undertake childcare but rarely mentioned care as a factor in their own career choices. Similarly, men assumed they would have care support if they held a senior post and saw themselves as having a secondary care role. Women noted that having a supportive partner was of great importance and saw themselves as primary carers – a key area discussed in Chapter 11 of this book. The women in Grummell’s study felt a sense of resignation and frustration because they felt that organisations do not take note of gendered decisions of care at home and this affects the way they are seen at work. The authors put forward the concept of a ‘care ceiling’ that is carried into work and reinforced by concrete walls and floors of gendered ‘care-free’ expectations. They argue that lack of attention given to care and interdependency in the public policy sphere exacerbates the challenges faced by women and that the rules of participation are largely written by and for ‘care-less’ people. Equal opportunities, work-life balance programmes and encouragement of women to seek promotion will have little impact on women’s chances of leading when the jobs are increasingly defined as precluding those who have care-full lives outside of work.

A 2009 study by Guillaume and Pochic, on the other hand, explored work-life balance issues in a French utility company in order to understand both gendered difficulties and the strategies men and women build to deal with organisational norms. The study found that over the past 15 years there has been evidence of feminisation and of women catching up with men in the lower levels of management. Despite this, women were conspicuous by their absence at the top levels, especially in the core departments, rather than the so-called ‘velvet ghettoes’. Reasons for this included the formal requirements for career advancement which insist upon graduation from the most prestigious French schools of engineering and a culture of loyalty to the company evidenced by working full-time and long-term. These norms were shown to be prejudicial for women but the study showed how women developed strategies of ‘sacrifice’ in order to shape their career route. For instance, 30 per cent of women executives lived alone, compared with only 6 per cent of male equivalents, and there was a widespread acceptance among women that they might need to take a mid-career demotion or horizontal move in order to stay with the company and eventually progress. Parttime or flexible working to accommodate husbands’ career needs or children’s schedules were shown to be detrimental to women’s careers as they were seen as contravening the norm of commitment to the organisation. Women wanting to progress therefore needed to work fulltime and achieved this by paying for domestic support. Overall, the study concluded that women faced two major limitations on progress to the top positions, which were the persistent inequalities in family responsibilities and the patriarchal nature of organisational structures that imply that men dominate not only as managers but also as men. Some of these issues emerged in interesting ways in our study and are discussed in Chapters 10 and 11.

Family responsibilities and the broader patriarchal culture also feature strongly in an article by Sanal (2008). The study looks at the factors preventing women’s advancement in management positions in Turkey, a society that continues to be heavily influenced by traditional gender roles and where women managers are still rare. Although there are no legal obstacles for women in Turkey, factors such as gender discrimination, male dominance and domestic violence were all seen to be contributory factors, as well as the continuing belief by both men and women that domestic responsibilities are primarily and overwhelmingly women’s work. Attitudes towards women in the home and the persistence of stereotypes of femininity accounted for women’s reluctance to occupy higher ranks and to avoid career responsibilities. Interestingly, women who chose to resist the cultural norms and who did succeed showed similar characteristics to their male counterparts and exhibited behaviour regarded as ‘male’. In Turkey, according to Sanal, women are believed to be unfit for administrative positions because they lack the traits for effective administration and because the norms of Turkish society hold that the traditional roles conflict with the demanding requirements of their jobs.

Clearly then, there is compelling evidence that issues of domesticity, gender stereotyping and cultures of masculinity continue to play a significant role in the way women experience (or do not experience) career progression in the twenty-first century.

Success

Given the above context, it is important to turn to literature that has investigated how we understand the idea of success as applied to women. The theme figures strongly in this book, particularly in Chapter 4, where the women in our sample are given the opportunity to tell us what success means to them. Here, we consider a range of recent work on this topic.

In 2005, an article by Heslin mapped ways in which future research can be more sensitive to how people conceptualise and evaluate their own career success. Heslin argues that there are four implicit assumptions prevalent in much of the career success literature. These are that objective outcomes are adequate proxies for success, that jobs and career satisfaction adequately capture the ways in which people react to their career, that people are similar in their concern about the success they attain in the objective compared to the subjective domain, and finally that people conceptualise and evaluate their career success only relative to self-referent criteria such as career aspirations. The article aims to encourage scholars to transcend each of these assumptions. It draws on social comparison theory to demonstrate that people use other-referent as well as self-referent criteria to evaluate their success and looks at the range of ways people evaluate and measure their own success. The article goes on to suggest ways that better understanding may help predict and facilitate the experience of career success. Although this is a useful starting point in looking at what success might mean, it does not focus specifically on gendered understandings of success.

In contrast, Johnson et al.’s recent research (2008) centres on alternative work arrangements (AWA) and gender, examining how far these factors influence supervisors’ evaluations of a subordinate’s job performance and career success. The authors asked 142 experienced professionals from two US ‘big four’ firms to evaluate a hypothetical subordinate’s performance in an experimental setting. The supervisors rated a subordinate working in an AWA less favourably than one in a traditional schedule. A part-time arrangement was considered less consistent with career success than a flexible arrangement. Similarly, a reduction in working hours was viewed more negatively than a flexible work arrangement with no reduction in hours. Formal analysis indicates that subjects were sensitive to the public expectation that AWAs should not influence engagement performance judgements. In other words they were aware of being ‘politically correct’ in line with the firm’s work-life balance initiative. Nonetheless, AWAs were associated with lower judgements on informal performance measures and assumed a discontinuity between the public and private workplace cultures. Male subordinates were rated significantly lower if they were working flexible hours than if they worked the same hours in a conventional pattern. This appeared to harm a male’s long-term career prospects, but even in non-AWA conditions the female subordinate received lower career judgements than the male. The results of the experiment were consistent with a traditional male cultural bias, suggesting that superiors viewed non-traditional work arrangements as more appropriate to females and evidencing double standards for men and women working under alternative schedules. The study concluded that public and consistent efforts to create a more inclusive professional culture are clearly inconsistent and suggest a differential view of cultural expectation based on gender.

A related question asks how we actually define success and what matters most to women and men. Dyke and Murphy (2006) undertook a qualitative study exploring definitions of success along gender lines and how such definitions affect men’s and women’s career progression. The study took the form of interviews with 40 successful men and women and found that there were significant differences between the genders. For women, success was based on a personal notion of balance and high importance was placed on relationships. For men, material success loomed large although there were other themes – including relationships, making a contribution and having freedom. When examining the impact these definitions had on progression, the authors found that roughly equal numbers of women and men thought that their definitions of success had limited their career progress. Among men who thought their definition of success had limited their progress the most common reason was their desire for independence. The sense of regret in men’s interviews was rare in women’s interviews and the women seemed to accept the trade-offs they had made. As career was only one component of how most of the women defined success, slower career progress did not seem threatening.

These results suggest a clear gender difference and they echo the gender role stereotypes that still reverberate in our culture. Women in the sample would be considered successful according to traditional measures but status, career progression and perhaps even materialism did not figure prominently in their definitions. The authors suggest that this may be due to true gender differences rather than organisational position. It is fascinating to compare what the subjects of Dyke and Murphy’s work said alongside the definitions of success proffered by the women in our study.

Studies carried out in societies other than the UK offer some useful comparative material when assessing definitions of success. We finish this section by briefly describing two research projects, one from the USA and another from Malaysia. In Amri and Ahmad’s (2008) study of participants from one private and one public sector organisation, two core questions formed the focus of the research. How do Malaysian individuals define the concept of success for themselves and how do individuals define or describe a successful woman? The authors discovered that men’s descriptions of success tended to focus on achievement – in position and status, financial security, ability to balance religious obligations with other personal and professional responsibilities, gaining respect from others, contributing to society and maintaining the family to a good standard of living. Women, by contrast, focused almost entirely on well-being. In addition, respondents found it easy to describe the attributes of a successful man but difficult to describe a successful woman. Over 60 per cent only provided male examples when asked to name three persons they considered to be successful. Regardless of gender or ethnicity the respondents stated that success for a woman was primarily based on how well she plays the role of wife, daughter and mother. Male and female respondents agreed that women tended to work harder in order to be noticed and to be successful. With the added responsibilities of family they have to spread their energies in both the work and family spheres.

A somewhat different approach is taken in Campbell’s (2009) study of minority women who have made it to the top. This article, with a very different starting point and context, focuses on the advice such women can give to others. In recent years, especially in the USA, the focus of much writing on workplace issues has shifted to some extent from gender as a monolithic category towards the way gender interacts with other status elements such as ethnicity, sexuality or economic background. In Campbell’s study, 14 American women from minority ethnic backgrounds and holding high-level posts in government and public sector education describe their careers and provide definitions of success. The first point to emerge was that the women defined career success in a multitude of ways and accepted that there is no one definition. They outlined several common factors they believed led to success including personal drive, family support, religion and the support of mentors. The women also identified a number of obstacles that they had encountered. These included a lack of mentoring, difficulties in obtaining an initial placement in highly technical management jobs, lack of opportunity for training tailored to the individual, little access to critical development arrangements and balancing career and family. Interestingly, governmental barriers were mentioned by only one out of 14 and two women identified no major obstacles. The article takes a practical approach by suggesting a number of questions that upcoming minority women should ask when considering future employers (such as how many minority women occupy positions of authority) and concludes with advice tips from the women interviewed. These, unsurprisingly, reflect issues and themes already identified, such as being determined, not allowing prejudices and stereotypes to hold them back, working hard and being lifelong learners. The very upbeat conclusion is that obstacles can be overcome.

Many of the studies outlined here lead eventually toward a consideration of the solutions and strategies that women may adopt and we now turn to a consideration of this theme in the literature.

Strategies for success and ‘performing masculinity’

A number of recent studies have moved away from articulating the factors holding women back towards a focus on strategies for success. In this context, it is useful to discuss a recent study by Ezzedeen and Ritchey (2009) that aimed to discover how married women executives balanced family and career responsibilities. This study is particularly interesting in that it attempts to send ambitious women the empowering message that adaptive strategies may mitigate the risk of sacrificing career for family or vice versa. The authors carried out interviews with 25 executive women and found that the women had a certain value system, nurtured a complex support network in personal and professional relationships and chose life course strategies to balance career and family. Specifically, the study noted several major factors leading to a positive outcome for women. They found that achieving satisfaction in career and family requires embracing a certain belief system regarding the place of each in one’s life. These values were summarised as ‘preparedness meets opportunity’ and a sense of a right to enjoy both career and family. The women in the study also felt that their choice to combine a family with a career actually enhanced their sense of independence, wholeness and health. But they were extremely reliant on a range of support mechanisms from social support to personal and domestic support (which was largely done by someone employed for the purpose) and the professional support of peers, which was particularly significant. The latter included an emphasis on mentoring, with key individuals being cited as more important than organisational factors in providing support. The study did not find much evidence of companies positively helping women to advance, but nor did it find evidence of the glass ceiling. Rather, the participants in this study saw their career paths as seemingly ‘boundaryless’, in that they spanned multiple employment settings and the women did not see themselves as climbing a specific ladder. The women in the study suggested that they were able to succeed in balancing career and domesticity because of the development of a ‘village’ of diversified support.

Public sector work sites in Australia were the focus for a 2006 investigation by Connell, whose aim was to understand organisational gender arrangements in the workplace with a view to developing strategies for change. The research took the form of a field study of ten public sector work sites in New South Wales. Connell found that both men and women were aware of the blurring of traditional divisions and held gender equity to be a taken-for-granted principle. Nonetheless, a gender division was visible in all ten sites and many long-established recruitment practices could still be seen to reinforce internal divisions. Again, although a sense of changing relations could be found across the work sites, many of them had a history of gender segregation. However, Connell also found that about half the sites were not polarised emotionally and these operated on a lower-key, easy-going basis with more individual focus on personal careers. Where these patterns were evident, there was less loyalty to the organisation. In addition, some sites de-emphasised difference and were in transition in relation to the ways gender is understood, marked and symbolised. The study concluded that for gender equality to be achieved, its practice must be both routine and visible, it must have support from the top and there must be a meshing of principles with experience.

Dehart-Davis’ 2009 study asked whether bureaucracy could in fact benefit rather than hinder organisational women and began by examining the perception of bureaucracy held by public employees in four mid-western US cities. The results showed a distinctive pattern between male and female employees. Women emphasised the efficiency aspect of organisational rules, the ability of bureaucracy to create equity in organisational interactions. They noted that uneven rule enforcement represents a breakdown in bureaucratic functioning, producing an inequitable distribution of resources based on societal power and the legitimising power of bureaucracy. In marked contrast, men emphasised the power of control offered by bureaucratic systems. In addition, women emphasised aspects that enable their fuller organisational participation and contributions, whereas men emphasised the control constraining their behaviour. Dehart-Davis concluded that these differences raise other questions in relation to gender discussions of bureaucracy, the paradox being that bureaucracy can both oppress and empower organisational women.

Finally, we return to the area of engineering, described earlier as a predominantly masculine arena posing special challenges for women. In 2009, Powell et al. published a report based on empirical research explaining women engineering students’ workplace experiences. The article attempts to deconstruct women’s experiences using theoretical arguments to investigate how gender gets done and undone in everyday organisational practice. The longitudinal project investigated the influence of women engineers’ earliest encounters with engineering workplaces on their future career intentions. What is particularly compelling in this report is the way that successful women were found actively to perform masculinity in attempting to fit in with their male colleagues. Many of the women accepted gender discrimination and were reluctant to admit that they had been discriminated against. They also sought to overcome any perceived discrimination or negative attitudes by demonstrating that they were good, capable engineers and they tended to believe that, as a result, their gender would be insignificant. This was important to them in attempting to gain a good reputation in the workplace. The women said that the advantages of being in engineering outweighed the disadvantages of being a woman in a male-dominated environment. Most startlingly, the research showed how many successful women engineers adopted an anti-woman approach. There was evidence of passively performing masculine gender by conforming to dominant hegemonic masculinity and by rejecting femininity. The women were also found to value their status as a novelty in engineering. The authors concluded that these approaches could be perceived as individualistic coping strategies rather than solutions to the problems women face within engineering as a career. They argued that gender conflict was found when women were performing feminine gender. They overwhelmingly stated that they were more likely to ask for help than were men both in the classroom and in the workplace. Engineering is gendered and shows how women’s enculturation or professionalisation into engineering results in their doing gender in a particular way in order to be accepted as fitting into the life they have chosen as engineers. However, this simultaneously results in women’s implicit and explicit devaluing and rejection of femaleness. In doing engineering, women have undone their gender, failing to challenge the gendered culture of engineering and in many ways upholding an environment which is hostile to women.

Conclusion

This chapter has surveyed some recent literature on women’s experiences in work, focusing predominantly on women in senior positions. We have looked at research on women’s definitions of success, some of the barriers to progression, including domestic responsibilities and the glass ceiling, and we have begun to see how women are devising strategies for overcoming these barriers. It is fair to argue that the evidence points to a range of cultural and attitudinal factors that continue to stand in the way of equal participation at the top table for able women. At the same time, more is becoming known about the causes of inequality and the consequences for women. Such knowledge can, it is hoped, be utilised in achieving a fairer and more representative balance in senior positions in the workplace.

References