Monthly Archive for September, 2009

Women and Leadership: a Delicate Balancing Act*

Published on 30 September 2009 in Employment and Gender issues. 5 Comments

In an article*, Hilary Lips, writes that leadership by women is a delicate balancing act. A women leader can neither be too “pushy” nor too “soft”, neither too strident nor too accommodating, neither too sexual nor too sexless. Women leaders are judged more strongly and far more is expected from them than from their male counterparts. They frequently face exclusion from “informal networks”, such as evenings out among male colleagues where decisions are made, which strongly impacts their general advancement.

Lips cites research that suggests that people listen and take direction more comfortably from men. In the study, when male and women leaders gave the same solutions, using the same words, the male leaders were received with attention, nods, and smiles and the women leaders by turned faces and frowning.

Perception of women leaders depends on the context. Lips discusses results from another study that showed that in Norway, with its long and deeply-rooted history of women’s involvement in leadership, women felt a strong sense of legitimacy in their leadership roles.  In France, in contrast, where this was relatively new and rare, that sense of legitimacy was absent, and women were called upon to prove themselves repeatedly. Norwegian women expressed joy and a sense of efficacy in their leadership roles; while the French women, spoke of difficulties, conflicts, loneliness, and marginality.

Have you experienced this balancing act during your career? How are women leaders viewed in your culture?

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*”Women and Leadership: Delicate Balancing Act”, article by Hilary Lips (April, 2009)

(In two weeks time we will blog on differences between men’s and women’s leadership styles)

The “leaky pipeline”

Published on 16 September 2009 in Education and Gender issues. 2 Comments
© European Communities, 2009

© European Communities, 2009

Women today form the majority of university students but few stay on to become professors or reach other higher academic positions. This “leaky pipeline” phenomena is most often associated with science and technology fields but also concerns research positions in the private sector.

What causes this steady attrition of women? A report by the European Commission suggests that women may drop out at the beginning of their careers due to lack of support, role models and mentorship. At later stages, women abandon their work mainly because they find it too hard to balance career with personal life. Flexible working arrangements are proposed at some places, but women taking advantage of these benefits are often seen as less committed to the job.

Women also often find a “chilly climate” at higher levels with unequal opportunities, isolation and exclusion due to the usual clichés and stereotypes of a “man’s world”.

What is the situation in your country? How can the “leaky pipeline” be fixed?

Source: Women in science and technology

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Reconciling Work and Family

Published on 2 September 2009 in Family and Gender issues. 4 Comments

The traditional family model, with men supporting the family and women caring for the household, is no longer realistic. Women today most often share the role of provider with men. Yet, men have not taken on an equivalent share of responsibility for domestic tasks. In Mexico, for example, in families where both partners have paid jobs, men spend 52 hours a week on paid work and 12.5 hours on domestic chores, while women spend 37 hours at work and 38.5 hours on domestic chores.

A recent report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), “Work and Family: Towards new forms of reconciliation with social co-responsibility”, suggests that reconciliation between work and family has to happen through social co-responsibility: “redistributing care responsibilities between men and women, as well as among the family, the State, the market and society as a whole”.

The report proposes measures ranging from alternating the time between work and family life (paternity leave, flexible working hours and work place), shifting tasks originally performed in the family sphere into the market and public services, and redistributing roles between women and men by fostering cultural change during primary education and within the family.

What is the situation in your country? Which measures, if any, are be used to encourage a work/family balance?

Source: “Work and Family: Towards new forms of reconciliation with social co-responsibility” (Decent work in Latin America and the Caribbean)

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