Yesterday in class, we
discussed about how women have become more active than in the past at workplace.
Women are getting advantages over men in the job market. And even in the top level positions of university and college,
numbers of women are growing.
This article mainly
talks about gender equality in the workplace. The article points out that one reason why women
should be treated as equal as men. It is because there is an increase in
profits when women are in senior positions of company. It is proved by the
study of 500 firms in US that promoting women to
senior positions are 18%-69% more profitable than the median Fortune 500 firms
in their industries. Today, however, most of companies treat their
employees especially women with lack of full understanding of gender equality.
It could cause more problems in the future. Therefore, companies with more knowledge
would be more successful later in the future.
As I am a Korean I will
talk about Korea as an example. Now in Korea, there is the upcoming presidential
election. There are three leading candidates and one of them is female from the
ruling party. This becomes a big issue in Korea and there are many people who
support her. People cannot imagine about female president in the past, but now
there is an increasing of female who belong to in high positions. So I think
there will be more female participation and leaders in the future.
By. Sangjun Kim, Jihyun Shin
I think this is such an interesting topic because when we completed the activity in last weeks seminar and revealed three leaders that we believed had an impact in our life or life in general, most of the leaders that were chosen were male. The business people we notice and read about are mostly male, where females are not recognized as easily. Why don’t females have power? Is it because of the Queen Bee Syndrome? Or maybe invisibility where women want to work out of their homes? These two issues distance themselves from other women and the company itself therefore might be a reason for having less power.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting how you mentioned having a female president in Korea because I do believe that this gender, equality and diversity will change in the future. Even though there is a number of women who want to be “stay at home moms” or want to work out of their homes due to flexibility but there are also a large amount of women who want to become managers and I feel that this number grows every year. For a company to be successful there has to be gender diversity because it’s important to have a vast amount of unique and creative ideas.
I found an article on Forbes called, “Why Women Make Better Leaders” and talks about some powerful women in the world and why. Important attributes that makes women better leaders is communication, empathy, having a vision, perspective and maturity. Through time, people might see these qualities being more effective and companies might create more opportunities for women to be managers. Hopefully in the future there will be an equal amount of male and female leaders in the world that will influence our life.
Ashlyn Somers
Great article. I personally feel that in Canada we are making progress with increasing women in the workforce. I have read articles in the past that talk on how maybe government's should step in and force the percentage of women in the board rooms. I don't believe this would be an effective way of increasing women in the workplace.
ReplyDeleteWomen in this generation are beginning step up and throw out the the typically "get married and have a family" abd I believe as we grow as a society we will see an increasing number of women in the worforce !
Mario Basque
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI think we can all agree that progress is being made in terms of gender equality in the workplace, however we still have a long way to go and the issue cannot be ignored. I think many of us would agree many women make excellent managers, and even more so that women have an equal potential to be powerful leaders and influence positive change within an organization.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Ashlyn made the great point that we are still unable to identify many powerful/influential women compared to men in our society. Also, we see very few women at the highest levels of an organization, whether that be the CEO, COO, CFO, etc. or as our political leaders. Is it possible that women just want to stay out of the spotlight? If you think about our school, Mount A., our S.A.C. Executive has been male dominated for at least the last four years, but that is not to say that our female students have not been leaders or influential on campus. Many of the other leadership roles such as Shinerama Chair, Orientation Chair, and Presidents of various clubs and societies have been held by a female student; and I am sure that the same case can be made for various organizations in our society.
I think that a huge part of the problem is in how women are portrayed in the media, and how this subsequently affects their decisions on what career path and jobs to pursue. I came across an interesting documentary called "Missrepresentation" on this subject. It is about 1hr 30mins, but you can grasp the overall message of the film in the first 20-30mins. In class we talked about how gender inequality in the workplace are not the result of individual biases. The film got me thinking about how perhaps one of the main reasons why we do not see more women at the highest level of an organization or in politics is in how we talk about the women in the media spotlight. If women try to be a strong, intelligent leader, they are criticized for not being compassionate or feminin enough, or trying to be like a man. On the other hand women are also often criticized for their appearance, instead of focusing on their success or what they have to say; and it's not just men doing this to women, but women doing this to other women.
I do not believe that we should force organizations to hire women into positions of power, but rather we need to better support our women on an emotional level. We need to encourage them to be confident, assertive, and embrace their feminin qualities that make them good leaders instead of trying to become the type of leader that we have continually seen in the past. Through this approach we will begin to see more women striving for success in business.
- Rebecca Hebb
This is an interesting article on a topic that I find quite intriguing being a female. I strongly believe that the problem of few females in senior levels in the workforce has been given increasing attention over the more recent years. Numerous companies are realizing the importance of diminishing this gender gap and see that women do have an equal potential to be influential leaders within an organization, although it is an issue that will take time to equal out.
ReplyDeleteRecently, I was going through the interview process with multiple CA firms and the majority of firms had only male partners and even very few female senior managers. This is sort of a scary thought as I was going through this process of choosing which firm I would like to work for. The worry that kept crossing my mind was will I ever have the chance to work my way to the top of the workplace hierarchy?
Going along with the topic of politics, in the recent news with the US election, I was reading an article about how on Election Day the state of New Hampshire made history becoming the first all women delegation to be elected. I feel that in our society with this reality of women not reaching high levels in the workplace, the more publicity and news stories about powerful women that do beat this reality will hopefully diminish this gender gap when it comes to senior levels in the work place.
In addition, I came across the following interesting map of the world with a large number of interesting statistics in 2012 for women in politics. Take a look: http://www.closr.it/show/O_lLmCGs1-x
I was surprised when a female announced her candidancy in the coming presidential election. Since one of the candidates withdrew, there are only two candidates for president election now. One person is male and other person is female. I wonder who is going to win.
ReplyDeleteThere are many kinds of qualities that make for a good president, but I would like to ask a question.
As you know, South Kora and North Korea have been divided since the 1950-1953 Korean War. The war has not finished yet. It is temporarily stopped due to armistice. North Korea has been provocating by force every year.
Do you think female president will have difficulties with making a decision to take an appropriate action for North Korea's armed provocation?
- Ki Cho, Jung