A Woman’s Regime: Barriers to Women’s Leadership

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The by-gone decades have witnessed a gendered revolution within the expansive professional world. Women have successfully asserted their distinctive contributions to this arena. However, statistical analysis suggests that gender bias remains quite conspicuous, especially along the higher management ranks. Women who have successfully managed to accrue leadership positions unequivocally assert their agreement with such an assessment of the professional arena. Thus, it is potent to evaluate the underlying barriers to the progress of women in leadership roles. Highlighted below are some of the most deterministic obstacles that contribute towards the gendered conceptualization of leadership roles and the exclusion of women from these positions:

1. The Glass Ceiling: Limiting the Progress of Women

The proverbial ‘glass ceiling’ is felt quite intimately by women who strive to ascent higher along the leadership hierarchy. This intangible obstacle is seminal in circumscribing the roles and positions of women within the professional field. The prevalent socio-cultural views of the wider social order are implicated in the reproduction and persistence of this proverbial glass ceiling. The gender bias prevalent in society comes to be intermittently replicated and reflected through corporate organizations. The idea that leadership is undeniably a male prerogative contributes to this professional upper limit encountered by most working women. The glass ceiling is not based on the lack of an individual’s expertise to hold a top leadership position, but rather it is based on a stereotypical generalization about the community of women as a whole. Thus, the professional mobility of women workers is circumscribed to the various lower and mediocre levels of the operational hierarchy simply because they are women.

2. Gender Bias in Assessing the Professional Competency of Women

When a new occupant to a top level executive position is to be prudently selected, the professional competency of a worker is of the most significance. However, this parameter also becomes an indirect barrier for female employees. The general socio-cultural discourse around the leadership styles of women is that they are less competent than men when it comes to handling important leadership positions. Thus, a gender gap in the assessment of employees is noted, whereby, women employees are viewed as lacking the core managerial and leadership skills needed to ace the operation. However, studies have suggested that this argument lacks evidence. Women leaders have demonstrated an equal, if not more, enhanced leadership styles as well as secured more fruitful results than their male counterparts.

3. Gender Pay Gap

The gender pay gap is another potent material barrier that hampers the advancement of women into top leadership roles and positions. The same work done by both women and men is evaluated in a disparate manner. The professional expertise of a man is valued higher than that of a woman. Thus, a man secured a much higher remuneration for any task. Although there has been a crusade against the gender pay gap in the recent years, it still continues to exist in the shadows, preventing women from attaining the material benefits of a leadership position.

4. Work-Life Balance and the Doctrine of Domesticity

Maintaining a sound work-life balance is an absolute barrier for most women. This balance becomes further threatened if they assume leadership roles. Generally, women have to operate under the profound double burden of work. They have to manage both childcare responsibilities and household chores in the domestic front as well as competently perform their professional tasks. Most of these women find themselves at an impasse. The challenging nature of leadership positions and the round-the-clock involvement needed from the incumbent of the position intensely clashes with the domestic roles embodied by the woman. Women are often discounted from evaluations for vacant leadership roles because they are considered ‘encumbered’ workers. Their caregiving functions in the domestic arena contribute to delimiting the heights of their professional careers.

5. The Assumed Masculine Character of Leadership Roles

In a bureaucratic backdrop, leadership roles often have an overwhelmingly ‘masculine’ definition. Qualities associated with men like dominance, abstract rationality, etc. are associated with these leadership roles. While ‘feminine’ qualities are deemed unfit for such contexts of operation. This essentializes the working of the two genders and creates unavoidable roadblocks for women. Thus, the gendered superstructure of organizations contribute to limiting the prospects of women in assuming leadership roles.

A significant number of the aforementioned barriers have been tackled partly by legislation over the by-gone years. The most notable shift we have witnessed in the current period is that these obstacles -rooted in a gendered ideology of work -were previously overt and explicit. However, today they have embodied a much more covert and subtle form of existence. The myriad barriers to female leadership can be annihilated effectively with a shift in the larger socio-cultural discourse around working women. Although women have successful claimed their rightful place in the work of business, there remains a significantly extensive frontier to conquer.