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Volume 3,
No.1 BOOK
REVIEW: |
More Women than Ever Before Are Entering
Managerial Occupations or Starting their Own Businesses Among the trends in business today, we are all familiar with restructuring, reengineering, outsourcing, downsizing, managing change, quality management, and worker training and flexibility. But there's also a very important, and sometimes overlooked, trend: the expanding role of women in business. The U.S. Department of Commerce
reports that in 1970, 38% of the labor force (a total of 82.7 million
persons) was made up of women. By 1994 this number had increased to 46
percent (the labor force was 131 million), and by 2005 the Department
projects that 48 percent of the labor force (expected to be 150.5 million)
will be women. Not only are the numbers of women entering the labor force
increasing, but their participation rate (the percentage of the working
age population, 16 years of age and older) is also rising dramatically
while the participation rate of working age men is declining. In 1970
this rate for women was 43.3 percent, in 1994 it was 58.8, and by 2005,
projections put this number at 63.2 percent. Comparable data for men in
the same years are 79.7, 75.1, and 74.7 percent, respectively. Looking at Table 1 we see
that 48.1 percent of the occupations in the Managerial and professional
specialty category are filled by women. Women are entering managerial
occupations in increasing numbers, from nearly 3 million in 1983 to more
than 4.2 million in 1994 (see Table 2). Over this same time period, the
percentage of women in these occupations went from 38.9 to 53.8 percent.
Total employment in these the occupations between 1983
and 1994 increased at an annual rate of 4.2 percent, while the percentage
of women holding these jobs increased at a 7.3 percent annual rate. If
the same rates of change were to continue from 1994 to 2005, the percentage
of women in these occupations would be over 70 percent.
Women
as Employers The National Foundation for Women Business Owners (NFWBO) is the not-for-profit research and leadership development foundation established by the National Association of Women Business Owners. The Foundation has determined that there are 7.95 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., employing 18.5 million persons, and generating nearly $2.3 trillion in annual sales. Women-owned businesses in the U.S. employ 35 percent more people than the Fortune 500 companies employ worldwide. Research conducted by the
NFWBO shows that traditional business ownership by women has been in sales
and services. But since 1991, according to Women-Owned Businesses:
Breaking the Boundaries (NFWBO and Dun and Bradstreet, April, 1995),
the most significant growth in businesses owned by women had been in the
services sector "especially in business services, personal services,
and ...legal, educational, social and engineering services." Occupations
in the services sector in general predominate among those projected to
grow the fastest to the year 2005 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In September, 1995 Fortune
Marketing Research and Yankelovich Partners sponsored by Deloitte &
Touche (hereafter, Fortune/Deloitte Touche) conducted a study to
determine the perceptions of selected top and middle female and
male managers (who were also Fortunesubscribers) on selected issues
relating to the topic Women at Work.
Status and Satisfaction When comparing current professional status to expectations,69 percent of the responses were in the range from About Where They Expected to Be to Very Far Ahead. Higher income (above $75,000) and smaller company size (less than 100 employees) tended to enhance current status of the women managers compared to expectations as measured in these categories. When asked about perceived barriers to women's success in business, here is how women responded:
Companies
Can Help Women Move Up When rating their company's efforts to recruit, develop, and promote women into senior management positions, the Fortune/Deloitte Touche survey found that 54 percent of the women respondents rated these efforts from Good to Excellent. The study also showed that women, on their own, thought that they must develop greater self-confidence, assertiveness, and aggressiveness in order to "move up the corporate ladder." In order for their companies to assist them in professional advancement, women suggested the following initiatives:
Women and Men as Entrepreneurs Whether as employees of employers, women tend to emphasize intuitive thinking to a greater extent than do men. However, the National Foundation of Women Business Owners found that men and women entrepreneurs share some special traits. In their study, Styles of Success, The Thinking and Management Styles of Women and Men Entrepreneurs (NFWBO, 1994), the Foundation found that:
Different
Styles But entrepreneurial/management styles of men and women do also differ: As entrepreneurs, women tend to organize their business on the basis of networks. Men emphasize hierarchies. Compared to male entrepreneurs, women tend to be more reflective in running their businesses and will gather more opinions before making decisions. Women go into their own businesses in order to control their destiny. They develop a sense of pride and accomplishment which comes with building relationships and growing a successful business. Women tend to share profits with employees at an earlier stage than do their male counterparts. Women are also more apt to offer flex-time and tuition reimbursement programs to their employees. The Foundation discovered that the highest rate of growth among women-owned businesses falls into the 100 or more employees category. Recall that the Fortune/Deloitte Touche study found that women employees tend to be more satisfied at companies of less than 100 persons. Hence, if satisfied there is probably less motivation to move on into one's own business. Although the Foundation identifies"
being taken seriously"in a "Male dominated" environment
as a barrier for women business owners, business ownership for women appears
to be a leveling factor producing greater opportunity and equality for
women compared to being an employee. As employers, women have the opportunity
to use skills which in the workplace (as employees) may be underutilized
or inhibited by the "glass ceiling." Success in business comes both from education and from learning by experience. Knowing how to think and how to use knowledge are vital skills for both women and men to possess in order to move up the ladder both as employees and as employers. In his recent book, Managing In a Time of Great Change (Truman Talley Books/Dutton, 1995), Peter Drucker writes that the industrial worker is being replaced by the knowledge worker. Knowledge work, which requires continuous learning, is learning based, not experienced based, and requires the ability to grasp and apply theoretical and analytical knowledge. There are "priority tasks" which must be accomplished along with the development of "knowledge work." First is education. Drucker writes: "We will have to think through education -- its purpose, its value, its contents. We will have to learn to define the quality of education and the productivity of education, to measure both and to manage both." By the year 2000, Drucker expects that knowledge workers will comprise about one-third of the labor force in the U.S. He believes that emphasis "has shifted from manual workers doing and moving things...to knowledge and service work...The disappearance of sex roles in knowledge work (will) profoundly affect...how we live." As indicated earlier, the
Bureau of Labor Statistics projects service sector jobs to be among the
fastest growing occupations into the next century. The National Foundation
for Women Business Owners finds that women business owners are moving
in the direction of services. Combined with education and training, "knowledge
work" might be the ultimate leveling factor for
women as employees as well as for women as employers.
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