Women and Leadership
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Women and Leadership
Since the historic days, there has been a clear distinction between the various roles between males and females in the society. Females were the ones to who bear children. Therefore, most of their responsibilities used to be domestic. On the other hand, males were protectors and providers causing them to work outside the home. However, due to changes in time, there has been a shift in the roles of both males and females in the society. Currently, a significant number of women are performing traditional tasks that used to be dominated by men. People would assume that there are more or equal women in the leadership roles compared to men. Conversely, this is not true because there are still more males holding the leadership position compared to females. The reason being women face more obstacles compared to men. Some of the barriers that women face are family responsibilities, globalisation, culture, stereotypes, and selection process. The aim of writing this paper is to discuss some of the barriers that cause women not to attain the top most leadership positions.
Women have more family responsibilities compared to men ("Obstacles to Female Leadership" 2015). For example, women are the ones who bear children. They are supposed to take some time off from their work to be able to deliver the baby. They have to stay with the child as they grow up for some months. Also, when the child is sick, they are forced to take offs and take care of them. It is a reason that makes some women are unable to attain the highest position in the leadership role.
Globalisation and working for longer hours are other challenges that are making women not achieve the top most position in leadership. Most of the top leadership position requires that the person spend more time at work. This means a woman will not have enough time with the children causing them to refuse the leadership position. Since it will give them more time to spend with their children and family. Another challenge is that leaders are supposed to be flexible to relocate to a different location such as town, city, or country. It becomes a problem for the women who want the promotion but have families and spouse who are working. As a result, limiting the number of women in the leadership position.
Cultural barrier also affects the number of women who can attain top most leadership positions in their workplace. Some culture does not allow women to become leaders in the society. The reason being their traditions claim that males should be the leaders and females their helper. Therefore, discouraging women to consider such positions (Haden 2015). Some cultures believe that women are not capable of doing businesses effectively. This resistance by many communities has caused employers not to choose women to take the top most position in their jobs.
Most stereotypes relate achievement and business success with male characters. They claim that men are more aggressive, assertive and task- oriented compared to women. They also argue that women are not able to become better leaders because they are more emotional, modest, nurturing more generous and quiet (Caprino 2013). Therefore, the above characteristics about women make them not be considered as executive qualities.
The selection method used by most companies is a barrier to why few women hold a leadership position. For example, despite the fact that women might have qualified for a leadership position, the method companies use to recruit the leaders causes few women to get the position. For instance, a company when making an advertisement would include they prefer a male person (THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP 2016). Also, most men in the leadership position prefer to choose other men. Also, most companies are used to males being in the leadership position. Therefore, they do not consider female to top most leadership position despite their qualification.