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Women in Business and Work

The document discusses strategies for promoting gender equity in the workplace and shattering the glass ceiling. It notes that while women have made progress in leadership roles, discrimination remains systemic through subtle biases. It advocates a "small wins" approach of incremental changes through diagnosis, dialogue and experimentation to address biases. For example, one company found meetings scheduled last minute negatively impacted women more. By setting meeting discipline, it benefited all employees. The small wins method creates positive change by involving people in addressing specific problems and showing how small changes add up to systemic improvements benefitting both women and men.

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Rizma Ahmed
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54 views4 pages

Women in Business and Work

The document discusses strategies for promoting gender equity in the workplace and shattering the glass ceiling. It notes that while women have made progress in leadership roles, discrimination remains systemic through subtle biases. It advocates a "small wins" approach of incremental changes through diagnosis, dialogue and experimentation to address biases. For example, one company found meetings scheduled last minute negatively impacted women more. By setting meeting discipline, it benefited all employees. The small wins method creates positive change by involving people in addressing specific problems and showing how small changes add up to systemic improvements benefitting both women and men.

Uploaded by

Rizma Ahmed
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ASSIGNEMENT NO: 2

WOMEN IN WORK AND BUSINESS

TOPIC: A Modest Manifesto for Shattering the Glass Ceiling

SUMBITTRD BY
RIZMA AHMED (29)

MUNEEB AHMAD (04)

FAIZAN KAKER (46)

SESSION (MORNING)

(2020-2024)

COURSE INSTRUCTOR
DR. AMBREEN SALAHUDDIN

SEMESTER 5th

DEPARTMENT OF GENDER STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF THE PUNJAB, LAHORE


A Modest Manifesto for Shattering the Glass Ceiling
MAIN POINTS

∎Women are now running major companies as prominent leaders and power brokers that would
not have been imaginable, a half century ago, but still women are rare at the highest levels of
business.

∎In 1962, 1977 and 1985, women’s movement was used to ostracize overt discrimination.

∎There is still a glass ceiling but it’s not a revolution that will shatter it because today most of the
impediments are insidious−¿ they are almost indiscernible.

∎Barriers to women’s advancements can be chipped away through small-wins strategy,


incremental changes directed against systematic biases.

∎The small-wins approach is used to create change by diagnosis, dialogue and experimentation,
usually ameliorates overall efficiency and performance benefitting men, women and the
organization as a whole.

∎Today discrimination is systemic, a part of an organization’s status quo.

∎ Example of a retail company whose set norms made it difficult for men and women to work
efficaciously, employees had to defend their turf by being available all the time to attend
meetings. This meant that women who are disproportionately responsible for home and family
could not afford to do this, missing out of essential conversations made them appear less
committed as compared to their male counterparts.

∎ To speak up in meetings was obligatory but had a bias against women.

∎ Organizations are built for and by men based on their experiences. Even though women have
entered the workforce in the past generation, add extensive value but still leadership and
competency are typically associated with male traits: tough, aggressive, decisive.

∎Men interview women candidates for job positions tend to have a partisanship towards men

and against women.


∎ One of the business’s major problem came to light is gender inequity, but women have blamed
themselves for not fitting in.

∎Three approaches in order to create changes for women includes; tall people in a short people
world

1. Assimilation: training women to adopt more masculine attributes.


2. Accommodation: provide mentoring programs, substitute career tracks, flexibility in
family needs (maternity leave and rooms for fostering infants) etc.
3. Celebrate their unique differences: training to help men appreciate conventional feminine
roles where women naturally thrive.

All the above approaches have helped to promote women’s equity in the corporate circle, but the
problem is that they don’t deal with the sources of the inequality.

 First approach fails to deal with systemic factors that hold many women back.
 Second approach empowers women but fails to give even playing field and
accommodation is unable to solve the problem of family being a woman’s responsibility
to balance home and work.
 Third approach value efforts of women in the marginal sense as business are structured
to reward male behaviour.

∎Changes will drive when people work collaboratively and the way work is designed and
distributed is regardless of heights.

∎Gender inequality is deeply rooted in cultural patterns and thus in our organizational systems.

∎ Indicators of gender inequality: not able to recruit meaningful numbers of women; many
women are stalled before they reach leadership positions or are not progressing as their male
colleagues; women hold low-visible jobs or jobs in classic “women’s” sectors, for instance; HR
senior women waiting longer to have fewer or no kids, women having fewer resources to achieve
comparable errands; women’s pay and pay raises are not commensurate to men’s, women are
leaving the organization at above average rates.

∎Next step after recognizing problem: diagnosis and experimentation −¿ eradicate practices that
are source of inequality and replace them with equitable ones.
∎Example; lack of discipline around time not only affect women though damaged everyone’s
productivity and creativity. Senior managers set in place more disciplined use of time and
discouraged the undisciplined approach e.g. last-minute or late-night meetings.

∎Changing recruitment methods and tactics helped eliminate built-in biases.

∎Undervaluation of support work affected many women as it was not rewarded or recognized,
which women were often found doing.

∎Invisible work can be made visible by gathering input from peers and direct reports who saw
the work they did.

∎Shift from directive to collaborative leadership.

● Small Wins Method−¿ Works effectively

1. The “problem with no name” opens up the possibility of change.


2. Change behaviour and understanding
3. People involvement in small wins sees how their efforts impact the big picture (larger
systematic change).
4. One small change begets another, and eventually add up to a whole new system.
5. Fix the problem by fixing the organization, not the women and when it is fixed, it will
6. benefit all.

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