Gender Issues in the Workplace

One of the keys to leadership is good communication. According to the 2011 Catalyst Censuns: Fortune 500 Women Board Directors, Executive Offers and Top Earners, women held 16.1% of board seats in the United States. This statistic contradicts the fact that women are excellent communicators. The contradiction of this statistic suggests that women communicate differently than men, which has huge impacts on women advancing up the corporate ladder. For a woman named Tanya at my workplace, differences in way men and women communicate leave her feeling insignificant; more importantly, she has been passed up many times for a promotion.
Describe the situation
In my department, there are five male managers. I hear their constant picking on Tanya. They ask why she gets up from her desk to talk to technicians. They avoid conversations with her in the hallway for fear of being “chatty”. They don’t invite her to meetings that she should be part of. She has been passed up for promotions by men who have been at the company for a shorter time. All of these behaviors are due to Tanya’s extremely friendly communication style and lack of assertiveness.
Tanya is the customer liaison for our department. When customers have a problem, they go to Tanya. She is excellent at communicating with upset customers. Her communication is reflective of Wziatek-Staceko’s theory that women use communication to make stable contacts and cooperation to reach a common goal (2008). She has a way of making friends with the upset customers. They enjoy working with her because together they reach the goal of completing service requests. Tanya is a breed of her own in the male dominated department.
Not only is she good with customers, but she is also good with the technicians. When someone on the team has not completed their tasks, she uses open communication to understand the problems. This is supportive of Mueller’s theory that women make decisions based on subjective values, allowing emotion,

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