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The past, present and future status of women in management, and women in management research, in Canada is examined. Women have entered the Canadian workforce in unprecedented numbers, including managerial and professional ranks. Increasing numbers of women have prepared themselves for career advancement through business education and additional years of work experience but, despite these developments, women continue to find it difficult to attain senior management ranks. Research initiatives as well as development activities designed to assist both managerial and professional women and their employing organisations are discussed. Despite some reasons for optimism, further gains will continue to be made only slowly.

Looks at the frustrations of women managers within local government management in the UK over a period from 1989 to 1992. Forty women managers were intensively interviewed, and they unanimously agreed that gender relations at work affected not only them personally but also their work. The majority said that the gendered institutions and culture of their authorities encouraged a lack of planning and attention to detail, a lack of responsibility and a tendency to compete and blame colleagues. They perceived this as being damaging to services and staff. In the past this culture has rendered many women managers ineffectual and demoralized. However, by 1992 many more women had reached senior positions in local government and were beginning to transform their organizations by dismantling formal management structures and restructuring towards more open forms of management and shared values. All the women interviewed are aged between 35 and 50 and worked in Northern metropolitan authorities.

This is a report on the first European Foundation of Management Development Seminar on Women's Management Development.

The intent of this chapter is to discuss women managers as change agents in higher education. It focuses women’s increased access to senior academic management positions in Swedish higher education and investigates to what extent this increase is accompanied by changes to a masculine management norm.

The chapter draws on a study that involved qualitative interviews with 22 women in senior management positions in 10 Swedish higher education institutions.

The analysis highlights how women managers become agents of change by challenging a masculine management norm in a work setting where men have dominated management positions. The women challenged the masculine management norm by their mere presence as women but also by adopting a different management style. It also illustrates the multiple aspects of women’s potential to take on the role as change agent.

The results could benefit the development of gender equality strategies and the making of structural changes in organizations dominated by a masculine managerial norm.

The study is based on unique empirical material. The interviewees are women pioneers in the Swedish Higher Education Sector, contributing to the demographic feminization of senior academic management positions and the organizational restructuring.

This chapter examines if women in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are constrained in their leadership style and if the organizational culture makes them less valued in senior management teams. It then explores if the 7-S organizational framework has relevance to gender and leadership in HEIs.

The nature of authority within HEIs increases the complexity of leadership within an academic context. Leadership is often vested in a single person, and the positional power of Rectors/Vice-Chancellors (VCs) is based on authority, discipline knowledge, experience, and peer and professional recognition. The literature highlights that HEIs continue to be male dominated and that women are underrepresented in university leadership.

A total of 44 interviews with female and male university senior managers in Australia and Portugal were conducted by the authors and then analyzed using thematic content analysis.

This chapter analyzed the leadership styles of female and male leaders in HEI management teams in Australia and Portugal. It found that both women and men in Australian universities valued transformational leadership skills, whereas the male respondents in Portugal saw traditional management as more effective, even though female respondents considered women demonstrated transformational leadership. It also found that while women’s leadership is recognized in Australian universities, in Portugal men saw women’s leadership as problematic.

The findings suggest that there is more possibility for transformation in the academy if both men and women in HEI leadership value women’s leadership role.

Purpose – In this chapter, I assess women's progress in achieving greater access to management positions in United States workplaces. Although many researchers focus on segregation, women's changing representation in management is a relatively undocumented story about workplace inequality.

Methodology/approach – To increase our understanding of workplace and labor market composition and women's representation in management, I utilize data collected by the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from large, private sector workplaces in the United States over time (1966–2000, N=237,934). Using these data and successive regression models, I explore the effects of supply, demand, and organizational processes on women's representation in management.

Findings – The findings indicate that women's representation in management is uneven across industries, with women holding higher shares of management in the service industries. Further, changes in the labor market supply of women and workplace segregation have much smaller effects on women's representation in management than the demand created by the tremendous growth in the service industries.

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter shows the gender revolution is far from over in United States workplaces. Women are most likely managers in industries in which women provide services. In other words, women have simply added paid work providing services to strangers to their unpaid work providing services for families. In sum, women's progress is largely the result of demand created from economic restructuring.

In this paper we use a large linked employer-employee data set on German establishments between 1993 and 2012 to investigate how the gender composition of the top layer of management affects a variety of establishment and worker outcomes. We use two different measures to identify the gender composition of the top layer based on direct survey data: the fraction of women among top managers, and the fraction of women among working proprietors. We document the following facts: (a) There is a strong negative association between the fraction of women in the top layer of management and several establishment outcomes, among them business volume, investment, total wage bill per worker, total employment, and turnover; (b) Establishments with a high fraction of women in the top layer of management are more likely to implement female-friendly policies, such as providing childcare facilities or promoting and mentoring female junior staff; (c) The fraction of women in the top layer of management is also negatively associated with employment and wages, both male and female, full-time and part-time. However, all of these associations vanish when we include establishment fixed effects and establishment-specific time trends. This reveals a substantial sorting of female managers across establishments: small and less productive establishments that invest less, pay their employees lower wages, but are more female-friendly are more likely to be led by women.

The authors aim to contribute to current knowledge on women's networks in organizations by exploring the strategies employed by members of women's networks, Human Resources (HR) management and senior line management to negotiate the role of these networks in their organizations.

The authors employ the theoretical perspective of micro-politics to analyze qualitative data they collected in an action research project using open-ended interviews and participant observation. The interviews were conducted with network board and active members, and members of their organizations' HR departments and senior management. Participant observation of the interviewees' interactions took place during facilitated workshops.

Adding to the literature, the authors find that members of the different parties employ different micro-political strategies. Many senior HR and management members demand that the networks' activities contribute to the organizations' diversity aims and bottom line. They largely avoid strategic cooperation with the networks. Most network members, in turn, resist the restricted role of the networks as an instrument to realize their organizations' business case. They claim some freedom to independently decide on the networks' strategies and activities. They resist being attributed tasks and responsibilities that they consider to reside with their organizations. Moreover, they try to sustain cooperative relationships with senior HR and management in an advisory role.

The action research approach enabled the authors to contribute to existing knowledge and extend the micro-politics theoretical perspective to include the collective agency of members of organizational groups and cooperation between these groups.

Women in Hong Kong do not yet enjoy full freedom from differential treatment in access to employment in the managerial field, judging by analysis of the content of nearly 2,000 recruitment advertisements. However, the pace of social change, and change in cultural norms concerning the roles of women will accelerate and evolve towards giving women a better deal. As more women become visible in the management sphere, expectations regarding their future roles in the corporate world are heightened, thus demanding access to all levels of the organisation. The integration of women will mean society adapting to women's life cycles, enabling them to become good mothers, wives, and successful managers.

With more women now working than ever before, there is also an enormous growth in younger women's entering many of the formerly male‐dominated jobs, including the field of management. In the USA, with the strongest legislation affecting the employment of women, 23.6 per cent of managers and administrators are women, followed by the UK with 18.8 per cent. Even so, in the UK, the occupations in which women are most likely to be managers are traditionally female occupations such as retailing, catering and personnel. At senior levels of management there are fewer women and only 8.3 per cent of general management jobs are held by women in Britain.