Barriers in career growth of women managers: an Indian scenario.

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Barriers in career growth of women managers: an Indian scenario.

Abstract:

This paper investigates the various factors that thwart the career growth of women managers in private organizations. The study follows an exploratory--cum -analytical research design, with a questionnaire administered to 440 men and women managers. The data analyzed using Factor analysis, discriminant analysis and factor mapping revealed that work--family pressures, structural barriers and managerial stereotypes are the major factors that thwart women manager's career opportunities.

 

Introduction

The number of women in administrative and managerial occupations has increased over decades, but the proportion of women employed and moved as top level managers still remains small. Therefore it is important to understand why women are underrepresented in management cadres and how the HR policies and practices can integrate more women into managerial ranks of the organizations. These gender inequalities at the management level of organization have been explained in various ways. Some researchers had focused on differences on career progress between women and men, identifying reasons like less education, seniority, training and experience. Some studies have also indicated that the women managers are confronted with structural barriers. Research by Harlon and Berheide (1994) observed that sex-segregated jobs, holding jobs in lower position and lack of job ladders are major factors for women's under representation in the top management cadres. An Accenture research report (2006), states that family commitments and persisting male networks in the corporate world are two often-cited explanations for the existing disparity between male and female manager's career progression. A study by Crotty and Meier (2002) had found that the existence of bureaucratic structures in companies are inherently male characteristic that leads for disparity in treatment of women from the top management and are detrimental to the professional career success of women. The study conducted by Marshall (1995) had found that many organizations explain high turnover of women employees in terms of low level of adaptability to work environment, lack of job involvement due higher levels job stress and long working hours, lack of emotional balance and women's desire to spend more time for personal commitments viz., Break in career for maternity etc.

An Australian Research study by Kirchmeyer (1998) found that lack of supportive relationships from mentors, superiors and access for network as determinants for career progression of women executives. Even a research work by Bartram (2005) found that organizations still fail to be gender sensitive in their initiatives for development of woman managers. Powell et al., (2002) observed that organizations often associate good qualities of a manager to masculine characteristics and this impact of negative stereotyping limit challenging job assignments for women that eventually hinders women executives' career advancement. Any form of gender inequality in the work place whether it affects women or men is problematic and needs attention. These inequalities deny the opportunities for career development and growth in an organization. This in turn leads to lack of motivation and low productivity among those working group (particularly women) thereby undermining the very goal of the employing firm. By examining the perception about the existing gender inequalities in HR policies and various career growth factors, it will be possible to identify those aspects of employment that thwart the growth opportunities for women at work place. This study will contribute significant knowledge and information that could be useful for the organizations for establishing the process of gender proofing while the formulation and effective implementation of Human Resource (HR) policies.

Present research study has been designed to investigate the various factors that thwart the career growth of women in an organization. Several studies indicate that it is impossible to explain all of the variances in career progression and upward mobility of the women to higher echelon, this study is an attempt to identify those key factors that hinder women's career progress. This process of analyzing the manager's perceptions on the various thwarting factors provides a deliberation on gender issues for the organizations in formulating innovative HR policies and practices for retaining the women workforce.

Methodology

 

Research site and unit of analysis

 

The study was undertaken in India covering six major cities viz., Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Bombay, Delhi and Calcutta. These cities were chosen because there are more private companies established and attract a large pool of labour (especially women) is involved. These cities were considered to have a higher level of gender awareness due to the presence of better living standards and opportunity of education. The specific unit of analysis was people employed in the management cadres of the private sector.

 

Sampling design and description

The present study depends mainly on the primary data. The questionnaire was distributed to 550 men and women executives in seventy two organizations of the private sector. After a careful scrutiny, 440 valid questionnaires formed the sample for the present research study. In order to avoid gender bias in data collection both male and female executives are included in the sample. The sample consisted of 51% of female and 49% of male executives. Majority of the sample (50.9%) were in the age group of 26-40, 22.5% less than 25 years and 23.9% between 41-55 years. Nearly, 64.8% of the sample executives were married and 47.8% of the sample had at least one child. 59.3% of the executives belong to the middle management, 26.4% belong to Chief Executive Level and 12.5% of executives were from top management level. 26.8% of the sample executives belong to Chennai, 17.3% each from Bangalore and Bombay, 14.5% from Hyderabad, 15.2% from Delhi and 8.9% from Calcutta. In an attempt to identify the organizational profiles, it is found that 75% of these seventy two organizations have more than 60% of male dominance in their organizations and 1.4% of the organizations had only male employees while the sample had one organization were only women are working .

 

Instrument and measure

Women and men's equal participation and involvement in the labour market can be measured not only in terms of access to jobs but also in terms of their career growth prospects in the jobs. To present a comprehensive overview of the nature and extent of this progress in career, the research study had identified 20 variables from various review of literature that are acting as stimulating agent in the career of every woman (Variables shown in Table. 1). The sample executives were asked to respond to a scale having 4 points. They were placed negatively representing the following weights viz. True for most women--4, True for some women--3, True for both men & women--2, Not a relevant factor at all--1.

The reliability of this scale estimated by Cronbach's alpha is 0.8606 and standardized item alpha is 0.8637, which may be considered adequate reliability. Factor analysis has been used to create empirical evidence. In this process, variables that satisfy any one of the following three conditions were retained for the purpose of factor analysis--(a) Variables having communality and loading greater than 0.5 (b) Variables having communality or loading greater than 0.5 (c) Variables satisfying measures of statistical adequacy (MSA) using anti image correlation greater than 0.5. With this criterion, variable 18 (disparity in treatment by the top management) was removed for factor analysis.

Analysis of data

In the analysis process, the variable wise mean scores were computed in order to identify the importance attached by the sample towards the various variables. Factor analysis has been done to identify the important factors that are perceived to thwart the career growth of women executives. The study also attempts to classify the entire sample into 3 groups based on the total mean scores and verify the same through discriminant analysis. Mapping of the emerged factors has been done to explore how differently people perceive on an issue.

Results and Discussion

Variables and Mean Scores

In order to understand certain characteristics of the variables, the variable wise means scores are presented in the Table 1. The mean score of 3.0977 for the variable maternity shows that the executives feel this variable mostly affect the progress of a career woman. This shows the common attitude of executives considering maternity to be a career break for a working woman. The study also divulges the fact that it's mostly women who has to face the problem arising out of work and family balance. This perception is substantiated from the mean scores on family role being a primary obligation (2.9432), lack of family support (2.6091), marriage during the prime of career (2.8682), unwillingness to participate in parties/business meetings after office hours (2.6295), resistance to work beyond office hours (2.5409) and avoiding transfers on jobs (2.5750). The sample executives had perceived performance being perceived low due to gender bias (1.9568) and lack of gender friendly mentors (1.9795) as variables not relevant for one's career growth.

Factor Analysis

An exploratory factor analysis was performed to investigate the underlying structure of the variables influencing the career growth opportunities of women managers, with an objective of reducing the 20 variables into separate distinctive components This facilitates the researcher to identify the best combination of variables called factors (that have a common characteristic) and helps to develop an understanding about the percentage of variance accounted for by each factor. By using matrix with Kaiser Normalization method of rotation, 19 variables resulted in 6 factors solution explaining 62.993% of total variance for the sample executives (N = 440), converged in 6 iteration. Factor solution is shown in the Table 2. The factors were labelled as 1) Structural barriers, 2) Managerial stereotypes, 3) Normative pressures, 4) Depersonalization processes, 5) Family pressures, 6) Space for private lives.

Factor 1 represents 'structural barriers' representing those perceptions institutionalized in the organization with a male dominated social context. These constitute variable which act as an enhancing agent to develop a lower perception about women by the appraisers of the management's which greatly thwart women's career. Factor 2 represents 'Managerial stereotypes' which forms for negative stereotypical assessment of women directly affecting their performance evaluations which determines one's placement in organizational hierarchy. It reflects the negative stereotypical assessments that thwart particularly women's growth to top positions in organization. Factor 3 represents 'Normative pressures'. Women and men experiences normative pressures to conform to the gendered behavioural expectation assigned to them (Burn S.M., 1995). These Normative pressures refer to the threat of gender roles (i.e. traditional gender norms assign women the role of home maker) and are perceived as a thwarting factor for career growth. As mentioned earlier, 'normative pressures' refers to the threat of social sanctioning or rejection. Factor 4 represents 'Depersonalization process'. Generally the alienation of self from the work place is inherently detrimental to women because women are ultimately concerned with relationship in both personal and professional lives (Crotty J N and Meier K J, 2002). Hence the variables such as perception that she is less committed to work, lack of capacity to manage emotions and superior relationship form as 'Depersonalization process' of influencing a women's career. But the organization's insists that private life is very different from work life to establish one self's commitment for work, for which women are blamed often, in the process of appraisal.

Factor 5 represents 'family pressures'. These are the pressures most of the women face in combining paid work with family responsibilities. It includes variables such as, lack of family support and family being the primary obligation. Factor 6 represents 'space for private lives'. Inability of working beyond office hours and maternity leave are variables that are unavoidable for working women in normal course of life. But, the managements demand employees to put more hours of work to prove ability. All the executives in the study had perceived, the variables maternity leave having a least impact in the career growth of women employees. It could be the fact that women can avail it as a right specified by law and the organization must provide the benefit. But the underlying perception of 'career break' is not much measured and reflected from this study.

Grouping of the Executives

The entire sample has been categorized into 3 groups based on their individual total mean scores on the perception of career growth factors of the women managers and shown in Table. 3. The top 25% of the mean scores represent group 1. The executives in this group are people having an opinion that the variables under this study thwart most of the women. Hence this group is named as 'most affected group'. They are named so because these executives feel that the factors thwarting career growth mentioned in the study only affect women. The lower 25% of the mean scores are 'least affected group', as they share the opinion that these thwarting factors have an effect even in men or no effect in both men and women's career growth. The remaining 50% are the 'moderately affected group'. These group executives feel that these factors only thwart some women's career growth.

Reliability of Group Classification

Fishers' linear discriminant functions, using canonical discriminant analysis was applied to cross-validate the classification of executives on their perception of the factors thwarting career growth of women executives. The results of the discriminant analysis are given in Table 4. The classification of executive groups is proved to be have highly significant values (P values = 0.000). Further verification is done through discriminant analysis and the classification statistics given in Table 5 shows the extent of correct classification of executives. In the Table 5 the diagonal values of the matrix represent the number of individuals correctly assigned to the classified group. The classification of group 1 is 100%, group 2 is 80.9% and group 3 is 100%. All these reveal that 90.5% of the originally classified groups were proved to be right. Having showing the extent of correct classification of the groups, using factors the Table 6 shows the differences among groups. There is a significant influence of each factor in segregating groups. It could be observed from the inferences that all the factors differentiate significantly between the groups.

Group Characteristics and labelling

The average score of each group on each of the factor measuring the opinion on the career growth of women managers was calculated. This facilitates for selection of a label that best describes the classified groups. Table 7 shows that members of Group 1 score high on all factors. They are executives who feel that the variables thwarting the career growth mentioned in the study affect mostly women. It could be assumed that this group would understand women's difficulty in career progression and eventually would help women to overcomes these hurdles. Hence they are named as 'encouragers'. Group 2 has obtained a moderate score on all factors. This group had expressed opinion that the above identified variables thwart only some women. As they have an understanding on women issues it is possible for them to act as 'enablers' to bring in more women into management. Group 3 had scored low score on all the variables indicating that this group feels that these variables have some /no effect in both men and women's career growth. They are executives who arbitrarily or deliberately do not find the differences arising out of gender. Therefore they are called as 'diplomats' who are neither supporting nor opposing gender as an issue in management.

Factor Mapping

 

The position of the classified group of executives on their perception was analysed by mapping these factors based on the canonical discriminant function for the samples executives. The position of the groups will help to identify those factors that had contributed for discriminating a group as encouragers, enablers and diplomats. An attempt had been made to map these factors on a graph using the following Standardized Canonical Discriminant Function Coefficients (Table 8) and the functions at the group centriods (Table 9). It can be observed from the Standardized Canonical Discriminant Function Coefficients that the factors such as normative pressures, Family pressures and Space for private lives are the factors that form for function 1. These factors relate to the pressures that attribute from dual roles taken up by women. Hence it is named as 'work family pressures'. The factors like Structural barriers, Managerial stereotype and Depersonalization process form as function 2 representing attitudinal bias. Therefore it is named as 'encumbrance from organizational structure'. It can be observed from the figure 1 that 'enablers' had felt that 'work family pressures' as well as 'encumbrance from organizational structure' are acting agents for thwarting women's growth. Group 1, the 'encouragers' had expressed that 'work family pressures' contribute more on thwarting women's career growth than the function of 'encumbrance from organizational structure'. The 'diplomats' group had their centroids at quadrant 3 and no particular factor was found discriminating this group.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that there is a significant difference in the challenges faced by men and women executives in the career growth. Efforts from both organization and individuals can only remove the barriers that are hindering the advancement of women to the higher levels of management. The organizations should realize at the prospect of the women's role in management and the negligence of the entire group of women employees, will take away the talents, skills, intelligence, experience and commitment. In order to provide bias free environment, organizations should realize the role of the employer, HR Manager and the peer employees.

The whole process followed by the stake holders must go through the procedure of gender proofing and gender mainstreaming in order to avoid any form of gender differential effects on the employees. This would surely lead to develop a gender friendly work environment to the employees. Thus, the present day organizations must recognize that the provisions made for women through HR policy is not an incentive, but is the duty to uphold the rights of working women.

Table 1: Mean Scores of Perceived Factors Thwarting Career Growth of

Managers

 

S. No   Variable Name                                      Mean scores

                                                            (N = 440)

 

  1     Family role being a primary obligation               2.9432

 

  2     Lack of family support                               2.6091

 

  3     Perception that she is less committed at work

        place                                                2.2909

 

  4     Unwillingness to participate in parties/business

        meetings after office hours                          2.6295

 

  5     Marriage during the prime of one's career            2.8682

 

  6     Maternity leave                                      3.0977

 

  7     Being unable to manage one's emotions at work

        place                                                2.3750

 

  8     Performance being perceived low due to gender

        bias                                                 1.9568

 

  9     Lack of gender friendly mentors                      1.9795

 

 10     Gender bias among the top management personnel       2.1886

 

 11     Resistance to work beyond office hours               2.5409

 

 12     Lack of friendly relationship with superiors         2.1818

 

 13     Holding jobs in lower positions                      2.1477

 

 14     Avoiding transfers on jobs                           2.5750

 

 15     Absence of job related skills & potentials           2.0568

 

 16     Lack of access to informal communication &

        networks                                             2.0545

 

 17     A low level of adaptability                          2.0977

 

 18     Disparity in treatment by the top management         2.1318

 

 19     In-ability to cope up with work overload             2.2682

 

 20     Dearth of job ladders                                2.1477

 

Table 2: Rotated Component Matrix for the Perceived Career Growth

Factors

 

                      Component

 

Factors       1           2           3

 

  B.1     -3.72E-02     .137        .133

 

  B.2     6.43E-02      .135      6.57E-02

 

  B.3       .239      7.28E-02      .272

 

  B.4     1.25E-02    2.84E-02      .780

 

  B.5       0.273     5.19E-02      .646

 

  B.6     -1.13E-02   7.48E-02      .161

 

  B.7       .355        .136        .184

 

  B.8     7.52E-02      .704        .207

 

  B.9     9.49E-03      .370        .149

 

 B.10     -4.30E-03     .698        -.215

 

 B.11       .159      7.87E-02    -7.89E-02

 

 B.12       .185        .661      3.35E-02

 

 B.13       .333        .574        .250

 

 B.14       .115        .345        .599

 

 B.15       .732        .335      9.87E-02

 

 B.16       .399        .540        .199

 

 B.17       .798      7.21E-02      .131

 

 B.19       .722      6.88E-02      .165

 

 B.20       .554        .334        -.265

 

                      Component

 

Factors       4           5           6

 

  B.1       .234        .777        -.147

 

  B.2     -1.80E-03     .769        .288

 

  B.3       .603        .274      -2.17E-02

 

  B.4       .268      -7.59E-02   -5.63E-03

 

  B.5     5.20E-02      .333        .119

 

  B.6      -0.104     4.76E-02      .826

 

  B.7       .533      -1.51E-02     .401

 

  B.8       .223      8.08E-02      .117

 

  B.9       .680      8.57E-02    -5.59E-02

 

 B.10       .395      -5.74E-02     .208

 

 B.11       .424        .107        .561

 

 B.12     9.11E-02      .147      -1.56E-02

 

 B.13     1.81E-02      .104        .166

 

 B.14     3.35E-02      .158        .122

 

 B.15     4.44E-02    5.57E-02    -5.36E-02

 

 B.16     -5.63E-02     .145        -.166

 

 B.17     3.20E-02    -1.45E-02   8.78E-02

 

 B.19       .287      -5.95E-02     .269

 

 B.20       .251        .222        -.158

 

Table 3: Classification of Sample Based on their Perception on Career

Growth Factors

 

                       Mean                         No. of

Category            score-Range    Classification   respondents   %

 

                      Overall

                      sample

 

Top 25% (>q3)         >2.8410      Group 1          110           25

 

25% -75% (q1-q3)   2.0924-2.8410   Group 2          220           50