Women still scarce at the executive level

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The good news is: Women have made excellent progress as managers over the last 10 years. The bad news is: in spite of impressive progress made up to the middle-management ranks, progress has come to a grinding halt at the executive level.

A Fortune magazine article (April 1984), "Why Women Aren't Getting to the Top," points to an important yet subtle reason.

"The biggest hurdle is a matter of comfort not competence," Ann Carol Brown, consultant to several Fortune 500 companies told Fortune. "At senior-management levels, competence is assumed. What you're looking for is someone who fits, someone who gets along, someone you trust. Now that's subtle stuff. How does a group of men feel a woman is going to fit? I think it's very hard."

An article in a 1981 issue of the Wall Street Journal based on interviews of men and women managers across the country stated: "For men, the office is no longer a male club. The unspoken rules have changed. Some of the old easy ways of relating - the jokes, the banter about sports and women - aren't appropriate anymore. Having a female boss can be awkward, even embarrassing or threatening, especially for an older man."

Alma Baron, professor of management at the Management Institute, University of Wisconsin - Madison, recently completed a study designed to uncover problems women managers face at work. She, too, discovered that women tend to remain in middle-management positions. To the question, "Do you feel you get all the support you need from top management?" 53% said no. The biggest problem facing female managers was "poor top company management."

Of the 73 executive women nominated by executive recruiters as the top contenders for executive positions at the senior vice-president level or higher, 65% see gender as a barrier, reports Working Woman magazine.

Who is creating this discrimination? Men? Or women themselves?

There seems to be no one at whom to point an accusing finger. At one end of the continuum, some people say that women are victims of sexism. At the other end, some people believe women are not suited for highest managerial jobs, the Fortune research asserts. "Somewhere in between is a surprisingly large group of men and women who see 'discrimination' as the major problem, but who often can't define precisely what they mean be the term."

Other research points to the same fuzzy definition. The discrimination appears to be unintentional and a product of how men and women are raised. It appears that "discrimination" consists simply of treating women differently from men.

Baron, who has tracked the career progress of women since the mid-'70s, doesn't believe there will be total acceptance of women in the work force until after the year 2000.

On the flipside, Baron's research indicates that women are mixing career and family with very positive results. The majority of the 1,000 executive women she surveyed felt they could have a challenging career plus a family.

This is a development worth watching. Many male executives believe that women don't take their careers seriously. Their perception is that they will leave to raise children or because the pressures of work are too much, according to researcher Mary Anne Devanna of Columbia University.

Women are under tremendous pressure to succeed. Many feel they have to work twice as hard. Perhaps that's why so many executive women who have been on the cutting edge have chosen to never marry or have children. (52% and 61%, respectively, according to a UCLA - Korn Ferry study. For executive men, 5% and 3%, respectively.)

This commitment to career goals is also supported by a study by the American Management Association and published in the February 1984 issue of Psychology Today magazine. When men and women of similar age, education, salary and level of management were compared, two things emerged. Women were more likely to make sacrifices for the sake of their jobs (even if it meant foregoing an important function at home), and women were more likely than men to accept a promotion that significantly changed their lifestyle. The researchers believe that these differences may result from the need to overcome obstacles that women historically have faced in corporate advancement.

Where is all of this taking us? For many women who have hit the ceiling in advancement, it means leaving the company and starting businesses of their own. According to Small Business Administration, the number of businesses owned by women increased 33% from 1977 to 1980. The numbers continue to rise.

The problem of the '70s was bringing women into the corporation. The problem of the '80s may be keeping them there.