Barriers and obstacles
Although women managers have high levels of education and a desire to progress in their careers, few achieve the same status or salary as their male counterparts; men managers are more likely than women managers to be better paid, to be in more secure employment, to be on higher grades, to be less stressed, to be older at each responsibility level, and to have not experienced prejudice and sexual discrimination. (Broadbridge and Hearn, 2008)
Introduction
This chapter focuses on the various possible barriers and obstacles to career progression. It is complemented by the next chapter, which considers the specific issue of the ‘glass ceiling’. Having identified the main types of barrier and obstacle, each is considered in turn. The four main areas covered are: discrimination, especially early in the women’s careers; masculine work cultures and the women’s approach to these; the barriers that some of the women themselves erected and how they overcame them; and barriers put up by other women. In addition to these four categories, the chapter looks at issues of snobbery, which may not necessarily have a gender base. The chapter ends with a discussion of the perceived lack of barriers experienced by many of the women in our study and issues related to their – and other women’s – career progression.
Types of barrier and obstacle
On the whole the women in our group were keen to point out the numerous people who had been helpful to them during the course of their careers. Many of them saw the role of mentors or other supporters as crucial to their self-confidence and to their eventual success. Nonetheless, given the continuing existence of pay inequalities for women and evidence of more subtle, cultural factors operating in the workplace (see, for example, Cross and Linehan, 2006; Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001; Lau-Chin, 2007), we wanted to know whether these high-achieving women had experienced any obstacles in their path to the top and, if so, what form these obstacles had taken. It was also interesting to consider whether high-achieving women experience fewer obstacles on their way to the top, or whether they simply do not perceive the obstacles in hindsight.
The range of responses fell into four broad categories. Some women reported instances of overt bias or discrimination which had caused them difficulties and had (in some cases and at least for a period) held them back. Other women talked more about cultural factors in the workplace which, while not always perceived as overtly discriminatory, meant they were left out, ignored or passed over. In these cases, the women had encountered established (masculine) ways of working and socialising which did not appeal to them or from which their domestic responsibilities precluded them from participating. Alongside these various responses, at least two women described how they had at times perceived barriers that they subsequently came to believe had been nonexistent – ‘the demons in your head’ as Maggie put it. In these cases, the women believed they had imposed limitations upon themselves and only when they were able to shake these limitations off were they able to progress. A small number of women commented on the lack of support they had received from other women, even in some cases describing how other women were ‘worse’ than men. As well as these types of obstacles perceived by our group, there were women who felt they had not really encountered any barriers, but nonetheless told us (often in response to a different question) about circumstances which, from another point of view, could well be regarded as barriers to progress. It is fair to say that the responses were often complex and partially contradictory – or they were modified as memories were tweaked during the interviews.
Obstacles based on discrimination
Given the age profile of the women in our group, stories about the most overt forms of discrimination tended to be related to the past. For instance, Jessica told us about something that happened when she was beginning her career in 1970:
So I went to what’s now [name] and did their trainee programmer tests and they rang me up that evening and said ‘we’ve never had anybody with 100 per cent before, we have to offer you the job, we’re worried because you’re likely to get married and get pregnant and you’ll leave and it’ll be a waste of our money, but despite that we’re going to offer you the job’. They were allowed to say that then.
Later in the interview Jessica spoke about how obstacles to advancement for women could be both a taken-for-granted aspect of work culture and yet simultaneously an embarrassment to the organisation at a time when it was attempting to support women’s promotion:
You’re in a conference of 450 men, one woman, and they don’t know how to talk to you and they ask you to get them some coffee. [The organisation] were just great because they were hugely supportive … But there was one guy who wasn’t supportive … I went for interview … it was obviously a pivotal thing. I went into the room and I was interviewed by this guy who told me, actually you know within 30 seconds whether somebody’s got a job or not, and the HR manager said to me, ‘what will you do if you don’t get this job?’ and I laughed. He said, ‘what are you laughing about?’ and I said, ‘I’m not going to get this job. I’ve already been told by [name] that I’m not going to get this job but they have to interview me to be seen to be doing it correctly’. This guy looked absolutely horrified. I said, ‘that’s right isn’t it [name]?’ and he said, ‘well not quite’. I said, ‘come on [name], you know as well as I do that I’m not going to get this job because I’m a woman’. The guy who got it said he would resign if I got it because he couldn’t bear working for me.
In a somewhat similar vein, Diane was describing her determination to succeed when she related this tale from her early career:
I applied for a few jobs. I had no careers advice or any of that … you sort of trudged around, and the guys who were interviewing me said, ‘why have you applied for this job?’ and I said, ‘well I think I can do it’, and they said, ‘we’ve never had women applying for a job with the [organisation] before’, and I said, ‘well it never occurred to me that women couldn’t work in this organisation’. I didn’t get the job, needless to say. then it struck me that there were things out there that people were thinking, ‘that’s a job for a girl, that’s a job for a bloke’, and you go for girly jobs and so on.
In Diane’s case, the existence of differential opportunities for men and women in the workplace seemed to be something she knew about in theory but had not encountered until this particular incident. Rather than perceiving it as a barrier, however, it only made her more determined to succeed, something that a good many senior women in numerous countries have in common (see, for example, a study by Laurence Parisot in Bremner, 2010).
We also heard about instances of discrimination based on ethnicity, class and sexual orientation as well as those based on gender. As already noted in the previous chapter, Eliza had encountered ‘horrendous racism’, combined with sexual harassment, from a colleague and a superior. She was working in a particularly male-dominated sector at the time and encountered these barriers in more than one workplace. Like many of the other women we spoke to, Eliza was determined to overcome these obstacles:
It was not an easy start, but I didn’t want to be a person that used my colour as an excuse for not achieving and basically trying to get my own way. I do not approve of that. So I stuck it out at [organisation] even though it was pretty unbearable, and was told that I was too good for my job. I was too good at my job and basically I needed to relax a little bit more and just let them feel as if they’re better than me.
Eliza succeeded despite the level of opposition and discouragement she encountered. She summed up her position when she told us ‘I was damned if I was going to fail and I did pass with flying colours’.
Among the women in our group, overt discrimination as a barrier to promotion or advancement was reported as relatively uncommon in the present day, although it had been a significant factor historically. When it was reported, it was more likely to be seen as a result of the characteristics of specific, difficult individuals rather than as a more general situation encountered by women, though Ruth commented on the fact that there were at times expectations of how she should behave as a woman and if she did not meet these expectations then an implicit barrier to progression might be the result:
A work culture of masculinity
More frequently, our interviewees had examples to share of barriers that had presented themselves in the form of traditional masculine working practices and networks, with ‘the use of masculine models, stereotypes and symbols’ (Broadbridge and Hearn, 2008; see also Kumra and Vinnicombe, 2008; Pringle, 2008; Wilby, 2008). Bella had been talking about her current position where she worked mainly with women in a very supportive environment, when she remembered that things had not always been so straightforward:
I think I’ve chosen to work in an area where I’m comfortable subconsciously I guess … I think I would’ve encountered more barriers if I’d chosen to work in a more male orientated environment. I’ve never really experienced any barriers; probably in [previous sector] there were a few. In fact, that’s a good example; that’s a really male macho environment, some aspects of [that sector] don’t welcome women and I think probably my career path would have been different working in [that] side. I would have done quite different things.
… I don’t enjoy going out drinking in pubs with lots of people. I just don’t. I enjoy drinking, but not for great long sessions, and they’re awful, all evening drinking sessions you had to do at [company] and I hated it – yuck – I don’t know whether that’s a gender thing or a class thing … But that’s not a barrier; well I suppose it’s a cultural barrier.
We can see here that while Bella is able to describe a culture that she hated, she was keen to point out that she did not perceive this as a barrier and went on to say that she felt she had had a ‘pretty easy ride’.
Lillian also described the existence of a masculine work culture in the context of a discussion about networks rather than barriers per se:
The boys would go out for a drink together and that kind of thing, and I never felt particularly comfortable in that setting. I’ve never particularly liked pretending to be one of the boys. I don’t drink a lot – I can’t – and I don’t like turning myself into something else. But I did join the professional organisation of [profession] and they used to be terribly social, so there’d be lots of events, and you’d meet people at talks and that kind of thing … When you worked for [organisation] and everybody was travelling all over the country all of a sudden it was no big deal. You found yourself in a hotel … and there was a male colleague from another part of your business and somebody else from another department and you’d just spend the evening together and chat. You’d fix something you’d do together, ring them up the next day and say, ‘thanks, can you do this for me?’ I would certainly ring people up and ask for favours and they’d respond very freely. It’s very empowering.
It is interesting to note how, in this extract, Lillian first comments on the drinking culture within which she did not feel ‘particularly comfortable’, but is quick to demonstrate her ability to adapt to the culture, so that eventually it became ‘no big deal’ and, indeed, a useful tool. It is possible to draw the conclusion that some women deal with cultural barriers at work by navigating around them, adapting them to their own style and needs.
Nuala answered the question ‘What barriers have you encountered?’ in an original way:
Inevitably being noticed and remembered (being the only female or one of very few). Height is also an issue! Male-dominated environments (and these include most professional environments) are set up for average heights well over 5’9”. Women are on average well below this, and hence are always working at a stretch – may appear trivial but this is a subtle and subconscious mark of inferiority.
While this answer does not directly touch upon work culture or overt discrimination as an issue, it alludes to the notion of how women’s supposed ‘inferiority’ can be marked out by physical characteristics and the work environment, as also observed by Kate in the last chapter. Nuala subsequently picked up the theme in response to a different question, sparking reference to masculine work practices which can subtly act as obstacles. She began by saying that being a woman had been ‘probably more positive than negative’ in terms of helping her career. She qualified this comment, however:
You have to be rugged to the comments and attitudes on occasions. Things that seem trivial and irrelevant can also have an impact. How often has a tea or loo break resulted in a significant change of direction in a meeting discussion? In reality, conversation has continued in the gents, but not while I was alone separately in the ladies! Corporate hospitality and social gatherings often reflect ‘masculine’ interests – rugby matches, car racing, heavy beer drinking sessions, football. Personally, I do not share these interests and hence am excluded (not deliberately) from such events and discussions. On one occasion, I was even placed at a dinner on the ‘partners’ (i.e. ladies!) table, and hence excluded from the main table with the professional colleagues with whom I had been engaged during the remainder of the event. Similarly, I am reserved about inviting out a colleague for an evening while it is totally conventional for same sex colleagues to socialise when away on business.
Finally in this section, it is useful to hear what Isobel had to say – again, not in the context of a question on barriers, but as part of a discussion of the potentially gendered nature of teams:
I don’t speak football and I’ve run a couple of large projects when the World Cup was on and discovered the entire male population of the team went off to watch the latest match, which if you’ve tight timescales and are up against it is not good … In the early years I stuck out. We are talking about just after the Sex Discrimination Act [1975]1 was passed and we are talking about companies that previously probably had not employed women. They were employing, in those days, token women because the law said they had to show that they employed at least some women … I’m also thinking about the things that were very, what I call, ‘traditionally male’. I’m thinking about the mid-90s banking environment where they had executive dining rooms and large plush offices, about what size your office was and what type of carpet you had and how big your secretary’s desk was – the executive’s floor. Nowadays, in most organisations that’s gone out of the window – open plan working … It’s about the best person for the job, especially in today’s environment …
Though this section of Isobel’s interview is not, strictly speaking, concerned with barriers and obstacles, it is useful for revealing some aspects of work culture where gender appears to have some cultural significance. It is also instructive in charting Isobel’s perception of the changes that have occurred more recently.
Self-imposed barriers
A small number of our interviewees introduced the idea that obstacles and barriers can be self-imposed. Although only a minority of our respondents talked about this, it is worth including here because of the possible connections it has to the notion of self-esteem and confidence – a matter that was of concern to almost all the women in our group (see Chapter 3).
Both Kate and Maggie talked at some length about the way in which they put up barriers that impeded their own progression. As Maggie put it:
I realised that the reason why I had a difficult time was that I’d convinced myself I was rubbish, because I had attached subliminal labels to myself and thought because I was a woman, because I was young in service with a new organisation, because I didn’t come from [this area] and, I make a joke of it now, but people think I’m quite posh, because I was young in age and also because I was, and am, gay but at that time I wasn’t out.
At no point in time during that difficult time did anybody actually do anything to undermine me, but I attached to myself all of these labels and convinced myself because of that that I was really rubbish and my confidence went. At that point in time in [organisational] terms there were very few if any visible women at any managerial level in the organisation; there was one [role] in an area of about 300 people. The most senior women in the organisation at that time … were incredibly remote; you never ever saw them. I didn’t have anybody, professionally, to go and talk this through with and again it’s significant because it gives you the rationale around why I’m so supportive of people. I kind of bottled it all up and I convinced myself I was rubbish because of all these labels I’d attached to myself.
Maggie went on to describe how a ‘very powerful message’ from a mentor turned her self-perception upside down, and how this was an important moment of change for her:
At the conclusion of a week’s training [manager] and I sat down and I shared with her how I was feeling and how difficult I was finding it, and she just sent me a very powerful message of ‘just be yourself, be good at what you do, don’t allow yourself to be undermined by your own little demons in your head’. It was all about me; it was all in my head. None of it was reflected in any behaviours towards me, but I had convinced myself that I was automatically rubbish, because I was somewhat different to organisational norms of what a [role] looked like.
Kate’s experience – also with a female mentor – was similar, although, as we can see here, Kate was aware of both internal and external factors influencing her progression:
I think there are two sets [of barriers]. This woman that I went to have the coaching from, I was telling her how I couldn’t do all these things because I’d got a family and I lived in [rural area] and it was impossible. And she said, ‘so you’re telling me you’re building your own cage?’ And I said, ‘no, no, you don’t understand, I’ve got a small child and it’s miles to travel’, and she said, ‘you’re building your own cage’, and that was such a powerful phrase … I think there was a lot of stuff I did when the [children were] small that actually was me saying, ‘I can’t do this because I’ve got a family; I live in the back of beyond’. But in some ways that’s quite a safe option isn’t it? I don’t have to take a risk; I’ve got all these reasons why I don’t have to take a risk. So I’ve had to work through and take quite a lot of ownership. I think I have stopped myself doing things; it all felt valid at the time, but actually it’s a load of bollocks really. Because all of a sudden from ‘no I can’t possibly’, I had this coaching, one phrase, and suddenly … it’s do-able, life goes on, food gets cooked, people get seen, I do the work.
The second set of barriers has always been where there’s a poor organisational fit between me and the organisation, and a manager who thinks, ‘what the hell is this?’, and actually doesn’t quite know … how to really use me. The boss I had when I was head of [section] was quite a sad man in some ways and very insecure. At one stage I was representing [organisation]. because I’d been doing it for ages and actually I really liked it and I was good at it. Our Chief Exec was Chair … and he decided one year that he would be the. representative and I thought, ‘no, I’m sorry, one, I know my stuff and you don’t, and two, this is my job’. So we had a two-hour discussion about this which culminated in him saying, ‘well at the end of the day Kate I am more senior than you and that’s why I’ll do it’. I thought afterwards, that is so barmy, isn’t it?
Women as barriers to other women
Evidence on the influence of women at the top has been somewhat mixed. In some organisations, having a woman CEO can help ‘feminise’ the whole organisation, in terms of introducing different practices, or simply by providing role models for other aspiring women (see, for example, Shapiro and Leigh, 2007; Bendl, 2008). But in contrast, some research suggests that successful women are likely to ‘pull the ladder up’ behind them or be blind to the needs and circumstances of other women – the Margaret Thatcher syndrome (see, for example, Mavin, 2008), otherwise known as the ‘Queen Bee’ concept (Staines et al., 1973). The interviews with our top women were generally laced with an awareness of gender issues and often reflected a warmth towards other women who had been influential or encouraging to them. Moreover, a number of our sample described how during their careers they had tried to establish environments in which able women could thrive. Given the age range of our group, and as noted in Chapter 6, many of them had not had female role models themselves, being to some extent ‘pioneers’ or members of a small minority in their own fields, something borne out by other related research (see, for example, Schultz, 2004). Despite this apparent tendency to empathise with and encourage other women, it was noteworthy that our interviewees were sometimes critical of other women – ex-bosses, colleagues, secretaries, even wives of colleagues – a phenomenon recognised in other recent research (Thompson, 2007). In the following extract, Jessica relates two incidents that are simultaneously sympathetic to and critical of female colleagues:
One of the barriers in the latter part of my time at [organisation] was a female board director. Women are not supportive of other women. There’s actually an interesting thing I learnt. For all my managers – that’s about 60 – I used to run an away-day once a year where we learnt either team building or innovation or creative thinking. So we used to have a theme and we used to run this. One year we did Crystal Maze; we had a whole load of things but one of them was Crystal Maze. This [mixed] group came up … and they were given a puzzle and they had half an hour to solve it. Jane, one of the women, said, ‘if we do that, that and that we’ll get it’. No reaction. She was looking around and she thought ‘oh OK, they’re still reading it’. Five minutes later she goes, ‘if we do that, that and that’ – they ignored her. I was standing there with the Chief Exec of this company who was running it for me. They were all looking at it and chatting it through and after about 25 minutes one of the guys goes, ‘oh if we do that, that and that we’ll get it, but we need you Jane because you’re the lightest and we can pull you up and everything’ and they got the Crystal Maze just in time. It was exactly what she’d said two minutes into the exercise. Afterwards I said, ‘do you know Jane told you that two minutes into this?’ ‘She can’t have done’, and so I said, ‘why not?’ and they said, ‘we hadn’t even finished reading it’. I said ‘I know, she said it to you then and she waited and at five minutes she gave you the answer and you were not receptive to it, you’re not listening to anything – how do you think Jane feels?’ Jane was spitting blood at that stage. Equally, she should have been able to try and work out how she could get them to listen to her … I said to the managing director, ‘this happens to me in board meetings, they don’t hear what I’m saying, I mean really don’t hear what I’m saying and it’s not as if I’ve got a really soft voice. I don’t know what it is, sometimes we’re discussing solving a problem and I will go oh, we could do this, and I know it’s the right answer but some time later a guy will say the answer and they’ll all go well done, that’s brilliant.’ He said ‘this is actually normal for women in boards’. He said we had to help this woman board director because it was driving her round the bend. She kept saying, ‘they don’t listen to anything I’m saying, even though I articulate it they just don’t listen’. He said, ‘what we did was we videoed her board meetings, the Chief Exec said it was OK, and they were all flabbergasted’ … And I’ve experienced that – I was trying to think of a barrier, the barrier is the other board members aren’t receptive to what you’re saying quite often … I used to find it hugely frustrating, so when I said about this [other] woman, I’d recognised this. She joined the board so there were two of us now. So she goes ‘dah dah dah’ and I go ‘that’s a great idea’. I was thinking, if I support her then they might listen. She gave no support back to me, ever. Even when someone said ‘John that was a great idea’ and I said ‘actually, [name] said that some minutes ago’ she would never ever do that for me and she never ever smiled or said thank you. Women are often not good for other women.
In another part of the interview, Jessica related how a problem she was having with a ‘disruptive beyond reason’ male colleague was in part due to his wife:
He would be awful at team meetings. I had to get rid of him … It was mainly driven by his wife [who] couldn’t take it. I’ve had that quite a few times where the wife says, ‘you can’t possibly report to a woman’ … I’ve had some secretaries go ‘I don’t know if I could work for a woman’ and then they go ‘actually it’s quite good’.
This comment from Jessica reveals how deeply held attitudes against women can be turned around by experience. In a similar way, Eliza told us of problems she had encountered with a female colleague:
When I went to work for [company] it was a female member and they are nastier than men and this particular woman was very evil, very evil. It was before … you [took] people to court … you didn’t, it wasn’t common.
We can see evidence of ambivalent attitudes both by and about women at the top. An interchange with Helen is a good example of the complex ways in which some women both recognise situations where they have been disadvantaged but also feel that some other women are themselves negatively implicated in their own disadvantages. Helen initially told us that she had not encountered any barriers:
People say to me, ‘has it been difficult?’ No … The only time I was ever conscious of it was when I was interviewed to take over [a company] … It was a totally male preserve … That didn’t stop me being appointed, but …. I’d been told by the head hunter … that of the four people they were seeing, I was the fourth, I was the only woman and I was their least favourite. They were really quite rude; they were obviously just being dismissive of me. So I let it go for about twenty minutes and then I said, ‘excuse me, I know you don’t want me here but I’m going to tell you why you can’t afford to disregard me’. Anyway, within a further twenty minutes they were inviting me to dinner. The other time was when they were introducing me to the rest of the board. The group board agenda, which I’ve still got a copy of, it had this item ‘Appointment of [name in initials and surname]’. They thought I was a man … And when I walked in, the chairman – it was really quite funny – they were obviously completely nonplussed. There was a Belgian on the board and he simply said ‘Well, this board was always racist, now it is sexist!’
Snobbery
A number of women commented on the fact that there was often snobbery about certain kinds of organisation and profession. While this was seen as non-gender based, given the fact that more women than men work in some of these areas, the result might be an appearance of discrimination against women on occasion, though this had not affected the women in our study as far as we could see. Diane commented as follows:
I’m sure there are all kinds of academic snobby barriers that people think, like I say, because I don’t have the title … I can’t be as good as others, but that never worried me. What you do, and the consequence of what you do, speaks more than what you say you are. So no, I don’t find barriers, I haven’t found any barriers. There probably have been some but I’ve forgotten all about them, you know, now.
Ruth had also experienced academic snobbery, but this varied in different parts of the sector:
No obvious barriers
Many women felt that they had not experienced any barriers in their careers. Following on from her earlier point, Helen had this to say:
Most of the people I talk to think they have had a problem. I can honestly say, hand on heart, I never ever have. If I see a door in front of me I’ll bash it open thank you. Whether it is, a lot of my male colleagues say, that they don’t think of me as a woman, just part of the furniture. I think a lot of it is the way we behave, the attitude … I think [women] try too hard sometimes, because it’s not necessary. I think you just have to be yourself. I actually don’t meet that many successful women. I’m not someone who gets on with women I have to say; well that’s not fair either. Men gravitate towards me and I gravitate more towards men than women. I don’t want anything from them and I think that’s the other thing, I’m not a threat or a challenge in a social or other kind of way and I think that they recognise that.
One of the reasons given related to the field in which the participants in our study were working, as Carrie commented:
[I have] not really [encountered barriers] in the United States. Maybe if you’re not in teacher education; there are a lot of women in teacher education … so if I was a biologist or in another area … maybe the women would have different stories. So I never felt the gender issue quite frankly; I only felt them maybe within myself and the things that women traditionally have to do with family and domestic things.
I’m working in an area which lends itself to women; there are a lot of women working in [this area] curiously, or most people would be black or have some sort of disability or be female … and I’m conscious of the fact that I’ve done a lot of work with women and gender issues, equal pay and that sort of stuff.
Diane commented on the fact that it was difficult in retrospect to remember whether or not there had been any barriers:
I’m sure there have been [barriers]. I’ve probably trampled them down a bit, but I can’t think there have been. I’ve not had to fight. I can’t look back on my life and think, ‘I had to fight to get that’. There were barriers, but I think I chose to ignore them or just bluff it out maybe. I don’t know, but I’m not conscious of there being barriers.
Lillian took a similar positive view, even though she felt – as discussed in more detail in Chapter 12 – that she had perhaps had to work harder and be better qualified than a man to get to a senior position:
There was one period after [my daughter] was born, my immediate boss who wasn’t my mentor in that respect, had moved out. He was [role] and went up to [higher role]: nice chap, but more conventional than [senior person], who expressed the view to other people that I was a dodgy investment because I’d only have more children. But that’s the only thing I’ve been vaguely aware of and it didn’t really make any difference. I tend to take the view that we all come up against prejudicial judgements about us for all sorts of reasons and in my career if there was any of that then it was probably balanced by the fact that at least one of the women I worked for expressed a view, which I think probably was erroneous, that if a woman is doing the same job as a man then she’s probably better. So having a PhD never did me any harm in getting interviews as well, even if it was in an entirely irrelevant subject. I think the opportunities I’ve had and the positive attitude people have taken to my capabilities, even I think sometimes unjustified, have at least balanced out any negatives.
Perceptions
When we examine the range of responses to the question of barriers and obstacles, the perceptions held by our respondents is mixed and at times complex. Many of the women appeared reluctant to identify barriers, or talked about them but underplayed their significance in their own careers, preferring to emphasise how they had overcome the barriers. Others recognised the barriers but, to an extent, perceived the barriers as self-imposed. Some recognised situations of discrimination, inequality and, frequently, embedded masculine work cultures, while a few of the women felt that other women might well be responsible for any barriers encountered. Most of our group, at different times within their interview, had shown awareness of broad gender issues, where getting to the top could be seen as more difficult for women than for men. But they appeared to understand this more in the abstract rather than in terms of their experience. This was the case even when they had volunteered clear and convincing accounts of discriminatory practices and work cultures affecting themselves or other women.
Conclusion
This chapter has considered barriers and obstacles to career progression. We began by looking at the types of barrier and obstacle experienced by the women. We analysed the responses given into four categories. The first of these related to discrimination. Early in their careers in particular, some of the participants in our study gave evidence of sexual discrimination; a few also had to deal with racial, class and sexual orientation issues when applying for jobs. These experiences made the women all the more determined to succeed. We noted that the women felt that the kinds of situation that they described were now much less common than when they were younger, though examples of discrimination and prejudice could still be given.
The second category related to masculine work cultures, with particular reference to heavy drinking events. Working in such environments had often been problematic, not least because of subtle prejudices and even obstacles such as socialising, prevalent hobbies or average height that could hinder women or make them feel uncomfortable, though few of them actually regarded macho approaches and situations a major barrier to their progress. Indeed, many of them had turned the environment to their advantage by finding ways of either working within or round the prevailing culture.
The third category was concerned with the barriers that women often imposed on themselves. Only a small number of the participants in our study raised this issue, but for those who did, it was a major concern. These women felt that they had ‘built their own cages’ but that coaching and mentoring enabled them to see ways forward.
The final category was barriers put up by women against other women. This included women who had themselves got to the top and were thereafter unhelpful rather than helpful to other women going up the career ladder. But it was not just senior women who could be prejudiced – peers, subordinates and women outside work could also present problems.
In addition to these four categories, we observed that a number of the women experienced snobbery against their profession or the kinds of organisation in which they worked. While this was not seen as directly gender related, there were perhaps indirect prejudices, given that the environment in which they worked was often female dominated. The chapter concluded by looking at the many comments made by the women that they had not experienced any obvious barriers or obstacles to their progression and reflected on their perceptions about issues to do with their progression and development. In the next chapter, we look at a particular barrier for women, the phenomenon known as the ‘glass ceiling’.
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1The Act can be found at: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1975/pdf/ukpga_19750065_en.pdf (accessed 31July 2010)