Supporting Women's Career Advancement: Challenges and Opportunities

Human Resource Management International Digest

ISSN: 0967-0734

Article publication date: 1 April 2006

2687

Keywords

Citation

Burke, R.J. (2006), "Supporting Women's Career Advancement: Challenges and Opportunities", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 14 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2006.04414cae.001

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:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Supporting Women's Career Advancement: Challenges and Opportunities

One of the best book reviews recently published by Emerald.

Supporting Women’s Career Advancement: Challenges and Opportunities

Edited by Ronald J. Burke, Mary Mattis,Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005

Two years have passed since I last reviewed from the perspective of a practitioner. That book was also edited by Ronald Burke and the emphasis was on “advancing” women’s careers. This follow-up volume shifts the focus to “supporting” so I was hopeful that the research content would recommend the “how to do it” in addition to providing a fresh take on the current state of play. The stated audiences include practitioners as well as academics. Although I can no longer claim to live the life of an academic, I suspect, like a Catholic upbringing, it is something that always informs one’s view. Therefore, seeing the caliber of the editors and contributors, for me the academic credibility of this book is a given. Academics reading this review will find solid research to add to the basket of knowledge and further research suggestions. However, the introduction (p. 7) acknowledges a deliberate choice of practitioner contributors to close the gap between theory and practical application. At this point in my career, my feet are planted in the field of management consultancy, working for a small New Zealand company, Tall Poppies, which has operated nationally and internationally since 1988. Founded by two women, currently owned and directed by four women, this company strives to integrate business imperatives with values-based leadership. Being a managerial and professional woman, I also bring a personal perspective to a book such as this one. I was eager to discover how useful this book would be for a person like me working with organizations and coaching individual women who are keen to progress their managerial careers.

The five parts to this book provide an initial status report on the past, present and future; followed by research on work, career and life experience; ongoing challenges; best practices for advancing women; finally, a description of two company initiatives for advancing women. Part I provides the backdrop starting with Ronald Burke’s review on progress and obstacles to women’s career advancement. We learn good news and bad news, and for readers steeped in this research, many of the themes will be disturbingly familiar. Recently, I attended a Women’s Convention in Wellington, capital city of New Zealand (NZ), celebrating 30 years since the first such gathering. Certainly, local and national themes from that convention reflected the much bigger picture of statistics and findings presented in this chapter. The pay rates for men and women are still different, women are not figuring much on the boards of private sector companies, women are still leaving organizations to start their own businesses, integrating family life comes at a career cost, gender stereotyping is alive and well, and male CEOs and senior women disagree about the barriers. Generational differences shift the ground somewhat for high achieving women – earlier it was how to fit in and be accepted, now it is how to be a woman leader. At the most positive end of the spectrum, more women are visible in leading roles (ask any red-blooded NZ male who sees himself surrounded by women in leadership roles including the Prime Minister, Governor-General, Chief Justice, Speaker of the House). And for those in organizations, Burke provides the really good news that relevant HRM change initiatives are being increasingly linked to organizational effectiveness.

It is always refreshing to see a contributor from the Antipodes, and Phyllis Tharenou continues with the global view, exploring the perennial issue of women’s under-representation in management. “Worldwide, women on average comprise 20 per cent of managers, with the highest proportion being 45 per cent in the US … the higher the management level, the lower the proportion of women” (p. 31). Her analysis using individual, social and organizational influences has produced a table which is a practitioner’s delight. Researchers will also find this chapter poses a number of research questions for the future. And there are findings to shake some of the fundamentals, e.g. while mentors help men they do not seem to help women in the same way to advance to top levels; there is no evidence to suggest family-friendly practices increase women’s advancement in management but women-friendly cultures do. It was good to see the final recommendation, that women choose organizations with cultures conducive to advancement on merit, came with the cogent reminder that the women’s success in the US mentioned earlier could be explained by their acceptance that the problem rests in the context not the individual.

When reading a book such as this one, without the advantage of being steeped in the literature, a practitioner asks questions similar to the one Ralph Waldo Emerson used to ask his friends when he had not seen them for a while, “what has become clearer to you since last we met?” For this reviewer that question alters slightly to, “is there something new here since last I read? What is provocative or stimulating?” The final chapter in part I talks about puncturing the glass ceiling (GC) and suggested the GC was an artifact of women’s career/life choices. I valued the generational perspective and, of course, the inclusion of a Downunder sample (p. 70). A fresh view from the first chapter in part II, incorporating research from The Netherlands and Spain, focused on how perceptions influence careers of men and women. There is satisfying discussion on leadership styles and effectiveness – the facts and the beliefs. The academic reader and the practitioner have plenty more work to do. Leadership images, for men and women, continue to be gendered.

Other contributors provided provocation and stimulation. Marie Line Germain and Terri Scandura advance the role of self-determination in choosing a mentor and their chapter adds productively to the mentoring literature and practice. Formal mentoring programs are so popular within organizations that organizers of these would be pleased to mitigate failure by advocating self-choice. Any baby boomer, particularly a woman of middle age who daily experiences the phenomenon of being invisible, will welcome a chapter which spotlights them as an important part of the workforce, yet overlooked in the research. Chapter 7, “Women at midlife: changes, challenges and contributions,” added a new word to my vocabulary “recalibrate”. Midlife women “do more than simply adjust previous behaviors and attitudes; they reset the standard, changing the benchmark against which they assess their attitudes, actions and relationships” (p. 129). Thank you, Judith Gordon and Karen Whelan-Berry.

But it was the first chapter in part III “Ongoing challenges” that fully met my expectations as a career coach. Recently, a Chief Executive client asked me to work with a young woman employee who had handed in her notice because her workplace romance had failed. Her manager wanted her to reconsider the decision from the career as well as the personal perspective. Lisa Mainiero’s chapter on office romance was such a help. It was refreshing to know the topic is out in the open and this contributor elucidates the ethical dilemmas and the appropriateness of management actions (or in action). This section of the book continued to meet practitioner needs with two chapters on work-life integration. Quotes from Canadian employees tell of strategies that have worked for them and Linda Duxbury and Christopher Higgins also provide practical recommendations to employers. One that stood out for me was the encouragement to introduce new performance measures that focus on objectives, results and outputs “move away from a focus on hours and presenteeism to a focus on output” (p. 206). Work-life balance is another familiar theme and this time the research is from a field where 70 percent of the workforce are women and there is a crippling shortage of expertise. Healthcare case studies illustrate six practices that are working well in the US. Busy organization people will find Peter Weil and Cynthia Kivland’s writing very accessible.

The final sections combine best practices and company initiatives for advancing women. I suspect these chapters will have the most appeal for a human resources manager or a consultant. Success stones with enough headings, bullet points and boxes will keep a non-academic reading beyond their usual cut-off point. A large corporate highlights its diversity program’s success, “… today women comprise the majority of the Shell Oil Leadership Team – an unusual phenomenon in an industry that traditionally has been dominated and led by males” (p. 325). The training and development reader will eagerly read about the success of Procter and Gamble’s workshop with the brilliant title, Sex@Work.shop. And for the organization person trying to convince others about diversity, Leslie Levin deals with how to market gender and diversity initiatives. However, Mary Mattis and Katherine Giscombe in their respective chapters on engineers and women of color not only provided case studies and easy to read lists of “do-ables” but tackled with verve two of the outstanding tough areas. Recently, a colleague was mentioning issues facing one of her mentees in an engineering company. This young woman had been raised in NZ during the “girls can do anything” campaign. Guiding her to a gendered analysis might take time, but the relief when she sees her experience is not personal inadequacy but blind spots within the profession, will pay dividends. I suggested reading Mary Mattis, the co-editor of this book. The young woman would gain understanding as well as practical strategies.

While the picture looks brighter for some women in the corporate world, particularly in the countries featured in this book, Katherine Giscombe reminds us that women of color experience “a double outsider status in the workplace” (p. 267). Stereotypes associated with race and other barriers produce a “concrete ceiling” (ibid.). Seven change management elements are presented as a framework for action, illustrated with company examples as IBM’s Asian value proposition and Verizon’s performance management process. Given our experience at Tall Poppies that for organization change to occur it has to start within individuals, I welcomed the inclusion of a meaty section on the key role of middle managers. Searching questions assist individual managers to assess their organizations, their policies, work environment and, most importantly, themselves. I was especially taken with the suggestion to join an organization in which you are a minority (p. 290). During a year spent in the US I volunteered at Head Start (a pre-school program for black American children) in South Carolina. In a small but unforgettable way, I learnt about being an outsider.

In conclusion, have the editors achieved their aim? Have they presented academic research and writing which has practical relevance? If I were not a recovering academic, would I have found the chapters easy to read? Overall, I would answer “yes” “yes” and “maybe”. In my dreams, when a book is intended for practitioners, academics will always include a summary of “how to use this” which practitioners can go to straight away leaving fellow researchers to absorb the detail. Then a thought occurs to me – as a consultant it is my job to interpret research findings for others to implement! So, I will use the research and strategies to inform my work, and refer colleagues and clients to specific chapters. Finally, to these leading thinkers and researchers who have contributed to this book, please keep providing women with new career steps and strategies – and keep challenging organizations to reduce the length and slowness of that “long, slow, uphill struggle” (p. 8).

Reviewed by Mary Cull, Management Consultant, Tall Poppies, Wellington, New Zealand.

A version of this review was originally published in Women In Management Review, Vol. 21 No. 1, 2006.

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