Sally Garratt - Women Managing for the Millennium

1 to look at what has happened to women managers in the past so that we may learn from their experiences

2 to set the benchmarks of where women managers are now and where they would like/expect to be as we approach the next century (because only if we do that will we know later if any change has actually taken place)

3 to suggest ways in which women may prepare themselves for the different environments of the next century

It is crucial that women

become aware of the major challenges facing management

understand what qualities and skills managers will need to deal with those challenges

discuss what women, in particular, will bring to the different organizational structures and cultures

work with men to achieve the balance and strength that diversity brings

Having learned from the past and present, women can approach the future confidently knowing what challenges they will have to face, and how they can contribute fully to managing their organizations, businesses and communities in the next century.

PART ONE How did we get here?

WOMEN AT WORK: THE WAY IN, THE WAY UP AND THE WAY FORWARD

The career paths of a great many of today’s women managers often seem to have their beginnings rooted in a haphazard past. In the early 1960s, when I sat my A levels and wondered what I was going to do next, the career counsellors at my grammar school concluded that I was not university material and suggested I went to secretarial college. The choice was that or teacher training college or becoming a nurse. I believed the counsellors when they said I wasn’t clever enough to go to university, and having no idea of what the future might hold and feeling relieved to have got that far anyway, I went along with the idea of doing a one-year secretarial course in London.

For me the secretarial route proved to be an excellent way of moving into junior management and large numbers of my contemporaries (many of whom are now public figures) followed the same path. Today many parents actively dissuade their daughters from taking a secretarial course, primarily because they still perceive the role of secretary as the demeaning stereotype, or because they believe it has no prospects for a ‘proper’ job. Perhaps with more people learning keyboard skills within a job, good secretarial training – and the accompanying self-organization skills – are not seen to be as important in the workplace as they once were.

Another traditional way into management was via personnel and training and, until recently, many senior women in the private sector represented the human resources field. Some took the secretarial administration route, while others began as graduate trainees, choosing personnel as their preferred specialism. While personnel was somehow understood to be less ‘difficult’ than other areas of a company, and the ‘sharing and caring’ skills of personnel were always seen to be the preserve of women, it is now quite usual to find women managers in all other aspects of business, such as engineering, finance, law and marketing.

In the public sector, the health service has a markedly different male/female ratio among its managers from that of the private sector. This does not automatically mean that women have an easier time moving up the career structure, but it does indicate that they are probably more experienced at working with male colleagues who are, in turn, more used to working with women. ‘One of the reasons I have enjoyed working in the NHS is because I have always felt that equal recognition is given to good managers, regardless of their sex. There are excellent managers of both sexes in the NHS – it is very much up to the individuals to create their own opportunities.’

Many of the women managers I have met from the NHS, or local authorities, have spent the greater part of their working lives within the same organization, but have regularly changed jobs within it. They have gained invaluable experience from this, especially in learning how to keep an eye open for appropriate openings and in seizing any available opportunity for advancement and personal development.

As I mentioned in the introduction, there are increasing numbers of women who will no longer tolerate a strictly male management environment. But, having challenged the ‘jobs for the boys’ culture and moved up the corporate ladder, then many women, halfway through their careers, opt out.

Why do so many women having made it to middle management fail to take their careers and their management skills any further up the corporate ladder? The explanations for this include: lack of confidence and not pushing themselves forward; career breaks; the glass ceiling; not going on courses; being late developers (recognizing their abilities at a later stage than their male contemporaries); and being unwilling to play internal politics or ‘men’s games’.

The main points characterizing women’s current positions as managers, particularly those over 35, seem to be:

career counselling, coaching and mentoring were not nearly as sophisticated in the early 1960s–70s as they are now

the range of available jobs has broadened out immeasurably due to change in society’s attitudes generally, self-confidence and aspirations of individuals

for many managers in their late thirties/forties/fifties, the career path to management is haphazard/snakes and ladders, with the necessary skills being picked up along the way

nowadays, careers are and have to be better planned, with the emphasis on an open mind. This means focusing on acquiring skills through experience and training rather than aiming for a particular job level in one particular industry

MANAGEMENT BARRIERS

Women managers identify four main reasons for late entry into managerial roles, or for slow progress in achieving their career goals:

Attitudes of organizations and managers (male and female)

Lack of career guidance/career goals

Family pressures and expectations

Personal limitations

Attitudes of organizations and managers

Not surprisingly, women have found it particularly hard to progress within traditionally male-dominated cultures and organizational structures. They talk of ‘men and their perceptions of who and what is needed and the way to do things’. One human resources specialist spoke of ‘a company culture which is particularly hierarchical, conservative and control-oriented. This has made life difficult for me, given that my career has been about valuing human resources as a strategic and developmental activity.’

Women may come up against male prejudices at work in all manner of guises. Organizations which operate graduate traineeships and management schemes for ‘high fliers’ often tend to favour male Oxbridge graduates. One woman who was employed by such a company realized that being female and coming from an ex-polytechnic was so abhorrent to one of the male managers that he consequently successfully obstructed her progress within the company.

During my research, I heard numerous examples whereby male managers had deliberately excluded women colleagues from management team meetings, or had discussed important issues away from formal meetings so that women were not involved. Such feelings of discomfort and threat or fear of the unknown are experienced by many men when they face working closely with women – possibly for the first time – and they may employ tactics such as using their stronger, louder voices to drown out female colleagues in an attempt to halt their contributions. It is not unusual for the credit of a woman’s work to be taken by her male boss or colleague, but it is becoming less acceptable to excuse such behaviour on the grounds of male feelings of jealousy or vulnerability, or because men are assumed to be following their instincts to dominate, protect and provide.