Factors influencing women managers’ success essay sample

 

Women managers are not a striking novelty already. Females are reported to hold about 40 percent of all managerial positions in the US, which is not bad at all. But when it comes to super-successful top-rank enterprises, their CEOs appear to be male. Women make up only 5 percent of Chief Executives in top companies on the Fortune 500 list. The situation is similar in Europe and all over the world, and it brings no positive prospect for women managers.

 

So why gender gap still exists in the managerial positions? On the individual level, women do not receive the same reward for investing their capital as men do. Educating and training newcomers takes time, but women are often expected to teach others for free. Women are often perceived as less confident than men in the workplace. Besides, women are less likely to assert their self-interest, unlike men.

 

On the organizational level, women usually do not belong to powerful networks and have powerful mentors. They are less likely to thrive in the organization that is guided by politics and external stakeholders rather than by cooperation and teamwork.

 

It appears that society also influences the ability of women to hold managerial positions through gender-role stereotypes. Men are often viewed as leaders in the society, and it is incredibly difficult to eradicate the stereotype from the workplace.

 

Increasing the number of females in management is not only the issue of gender equality. Recent business studies provide the evidence that empowering women is the way to better use of human resources, better understanding of customers, and greater creative potential of companies. Measuring the performance objectively allows to retain employees and achieve a better teamwork.