Greatly summarized, the case study of The Glass Ceiling (Northouse, 2018, p. 412-413) describes the story of Lisa, a competent, confident, experienced, extremely well educated, investment executive who was blatantly discriminated against because of her gender. In spite of outperforming her peers, she was denied promotion. She was publicly discriminated against when the CEO, when seeing Lisa with another woman, “he called out to the men, ‘Hey, guys, two women in one room. That’s scary’.” (Northouse, 2019, p. 412). This obvious gender discrimination is disturbing to me. I would like to think that Lisa would today have grounds for a law suit.
In the light of this article, and other readings in the context of gender discrimination, I have assessed my own organization of 65 people. Half of our sales force is female. Our plant manager and assistant manager are female, three of four departments are led by woman, two of three production managers are female and three out of four of the highest paid salaries are paid to females. However, I acknowledge, that in our management team (of three woman and four men), the men “out talk,” the woman. While this is largely because the men have more technical knowledge in the areas we discuss, I plan on making it my goal to tip the balance of conservation, so it is more balanced.
When thinking about gender discrimination, this week I’ve read of a number of discrimination instances that have received a public profile. For instance, recently there was tremendous backlash again when “women scientists who were told that they might be too distracting to the male scientist in the lab” (Dulski, 2018, p. 27).
Historical evidence of gender discrimination is the fact that not a single woman is pictured on Canadian currency. To address this, Merna Forster “led a successful campaign calling for women to be put Canadian currency . . . [to ensure] woman are recognized for their contributions to society” (Dulski, 2018, p. 172). Eventually Forster was successful, and Viola Desmond was placed on Canadian currency (Dulski, 2018, p. 175).
A woman named Celine Schillinger who worked in a very large organization recognized “that her organization possessed a significant gender imbalance – where the majority of the senior roles were occupied by men and the majority of promotions were awarded to men-Celine wrote a letter to the CEO” (Pontefract, 2016, p. 89). She described the problem and identified ways in which to remedy the situation. The letter went vial throughout the organization. Over 2,500 people supported her. The CEO agreed that gender balance was an issue and changes were made. Her outspoken voice made a difference.
The president of one of the greatest universities in America “opined publicly that perhaps biological differences were responsible for the underrepresentation of woman in science and technology.” (Hennessy, 2018, p. 71). Ten years later after an immensely strong criticism of this opinion, “this struggle continues, as evidences by the famed “Google memo,” containing similar opinions about biology and ability” (Hennessy, 2018, p. 72). As the author says, that in spite of ten years of voluminous push-back against a university president’s, gender discrimination statement, it obviously hasn’t ended the debate.
Kahnweiler writes that female introverts are judged by men “as being ‘cold and unfeeling’” (2018, p. 13). In contrast, these same men do not view male introverts “as cold and unfeeling”. This is clear evidence of gender discrimination. Because of this study I am much more aware of gender discrimination. I plan to more proactive about identifying ways this discrimination shows up in my organization, church and friendship circle.
References
Dulski, J. (2018). Purposeful. New York, NY: Penguin.
Hennessy, J.L. (2018). Leading Matters. Stanford, CA: Standford University Press.
Kahnweiller, J.B. (2018). The Introverted Leader. Oakland. CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Northouse, P.G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Pontefract, D. (2016). The Purpose Effect. Boise, Idaho: Elevate Publishing.