25 Oct Women in Leadership

Do you know the common thread? What links all but one of the following countries?

• In Chile, 75 percent of women in the agricultural sector are hired on temporary contracts picking fruit, and put in more than 60 hours a week during the season. But one in three still earns below the minimum wage.

• In the UK, more women are working as home-based workers, using their homes as their workplaces with little regulation and few protections.

• Fewer than half of the women employed in Bangladesh’s textile and garment export sector have a contract, and the vast majority get no maternity or health coverage – but 80 percent fear dismissal if they complain.

• Six million women in the Philippines—20 percent of the working-age population—migrate overseas as domestic workers often working seven days a week for substandard salaries and experiencing abuse and harassment.

• Ninety percent of women workers in India are in the informal economy, working as street vendors, rag pickers and incense rollers with little protection for their rights under labor laws.

• Women in the United States have no right to paid maternity leave, unlike women in every other industrialized country.

• In Pakistan, there are only sixty-four literate women for every one hundred literate men.  Men earn higher wages: women’s salaries are between 20 and 50 percent of those of men. Men own 92 percent of all property and approximately 84 percent of gross domestic production.

• Women employed as domestic workers in Indonesia confront many of the same spectrum of abuses as domestic workers in Malaysia:  long hours, no rest days, low or unpaid wages, restrictions of movement, and mistreatment by the employer.

The common thread? All but one of the above countries has had a woman holding the position of Prime Minister or President. Several of the countries have had more than one.*

So, what do people in the U.S. think about women’s leadership?

According to a 2005 study of the US workplace, perceptions of women’s leadership are influenced by common stereotypes held by both men AND women. This is despite analytical reviews of over 40 studies on gender differences which indicate there are more similarities than difference in women and men leaders in an organizational setting. The Catalyst study “Women ‘Take Care,’ Men ‘Take Charge:’ Stereotyping of U.S. Business Leaders Exposed,” women are associated with feminine, less-essential, skills such as supporting, rewarding, team-building, and consulting; where as men are associated with more masculine skills such as problem solving, influencing upward, and delegating.