Average Salary of Women

Section A

3.
In the top 200 companies in the United States the average salary of women chief executive officers is superior to the average salaries of men CEOs.  However, the part of women at the CEO position represents less than 10%. This example shows that women can be excellent managers and may be rewarded for that but that the equity of sharing the top executive seats is still not done nowadays.  The identity work of contemporary managers is shaping by many discourses.  This essay will critically evaluate the masculine and feminine approach to management.  First it will discuss about the mainstream approach of gender.  Secondly, it will evaluate the critical approach of gender.  Thirdly, it will describe the impact on the identity work of the managers.  

Discuss about the mainstream approach will put the base of our understanding of the gender in management. Historically, men are seen as better than women. Women had to face to a wide range of barriers. Men have in fact traits and characteristics which make them good to manage in organisation. They are for instance dominant, confident, logical, tough, risk taker, and so on. This characteristics are parts of the combination of biological and socialisation processes. In the 1990s discourse explained that the way of managing in the 21st century will be in an equation with feminine characteristics and traits.  For instance, these characteristics are caring, nurturing, listening, helpful, friendly, and so on. Women are considered as naturally born with these behaviours but also gain them through the socialisation process. The organisation of the 21st century will be successful in less hierarchical systems, team orientated, more flexible and fluid. When these discourses are compared with the practices in small organisations women and men business owners practice management both with a mix of feminine and masculine approaches. The feminine characteristics associated to women and the masculine characteristics associated to men do not depend anymore of biological factors.  Indeed, men and women could be seen as sharing traits of each other.

The discourses not only create management but shape how people behave in a popular moment of time.  The performance management allows people to create their identity through the knowledge.  On the contrary performativity puts management on a being basis performing, minute by minute, day by day.  It’s an ongoing process.  To critically assess the feminization and masculization of management it is important to use a wide range of discourses because people use a mix of them.  Moreover, people are nowadays individualist, this is one of the forms where neoliberalism is expressed with people responsible of their destiny by using entrepreneurial skills.

In the critical approach, men put their career as a calling, having a family is not a priority for them, they are able to do sacrifice to succeed in that career and will put the god of the organisation in front of everything else.  Women are seen likely to have a family, they can become pregnant, which can be a problem for the organisation.  However, as seen before they have some qualities required to perform in management and prove that they can efficiently manage with a mix of masculine and feminine behaviours.  People agree or disagree with the discourses but the feminization of the management has been shown as useful.  The era of neoliberalism is shown as having a part on the changes with individual deserving what they have through meritocracy and competition regardless of the gender.