1980s Women's Leadership Roles

Throughout history a woman's role in the workforce has been depicted as a supportive role next to a male figure such as secretaries or assistants. By the 1980’s many women were inspired to move up in their careers and gain a managerial or leadership role within their career. By the 1980s, women were fighting the glass ceiling phenomenon and believed that in order to move up the hypothetical job ladder, they needed to act like and even look like men. For example, most women in the 1980s wore conservative suits and padded shoulders to relate to and get respect from their male counterparts to gain a promotion. Today, although women hold almost 52 percent of all professional-level jobs. The statistics for women having an executive or leadership
Although many women have overcome sexist stereotypes in the workforce and have been able to move up the job ladder. According to a Washington Post article, Why there are so many female managers but so few CEOs it stated that “women hold 50 percent of middle management positions. But that is as far as equality extends, as less than 5 percent of chief executives of publicly listed companies in OECD countries are women and just 2.8 percent in the European Union.” Even though many women have accomplished great success within their career. Statistical evidence show that only a few of them have been able to bust through the glass ceiling phenomenon. There are many plausible explanation for the lack of gender diversity in higher level positions.Overall, most of the explanations correlates with our society having a gender preference.Which results in men not only being the “breadwinners” for the household ,but the dominant figures in the workforce. In society men have a hard time taking orders from women and hearing their opinions because we still live in an androcentric society ,which focuses on the interest of men than women.Therefore,our cultural norms reflect from us living in a patriarchal society.For example, men are depicted as strong and authoritative leaders, which make them a great asset to their
Women of color are faced with wanting to be authentically their race in a workplace ,but society demands that they sublimate as an "invisibility vise." According to the article, Looking Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on Power, Leadership and the Black Female Professional “This invisibility vise poses a major strain on women of color because it leads to perceptions that include isolation, disrespect, devaluation, overburdening, and feeling torn between race and gender as well as career.” This invisibility can also limit their access to networks and mentoring; their contributions are neither viewed as worthy of promotion nor increased compensation. All women may experience some type of gender inequality in the workforce. However, minority women face more challenges than their white female counterpart. In addition,women of color are not able to demonstrate their true potential to their employers because their boss has already prejudge them based off racial stereotypes.The challenges women of color face in the career impede on their chances of being promoted to a leadership