Women in Business

There is no denying that it is still tough to be a woman in the workplace. Today, women account for 47% of all Canadian workers, but only 37% of management in the country’s top 500 companies. This number continues to shrink despite the fact that women have been flooding into the job market for the past three decades. The reason for this is that women have been socialized not to take credit for their work, which this essay will touch upon later on in more detail.

Personal branding has a huge impact, when you look at the covers of the business magazines in Canada there are very few women. Its not that women are not trying, a lot are just not comfortable with the sacrifices that comes with leadership positions. Cultural norms of society surrounding the roles of women continue to constrain and repress individuals (Billing and Alvesson, 2000). Cathy McDonald, CIO of Xplorenet expresses “it is really important that as women we feel more comfortable being in the spot light because ultimately, if there aren’t enough mentor and role models out there, women won’t even believe that landing leadership positions is possible.” I also believe that looking to other successful women for inspiration, support, advice and encouragement is enabling. Witnessing success removes any preconceived notions that tell women “they can’t succeed”. Social constructs of gender have portrayed women as a group subordinate to men, and this barrier has caused this doubt.

Studies show that women down play their capabilities. When asked to estimate their grade point average or other objectively measurable goals, women guess too low and men guess to high. When asked the secret to their success, women are more likely to attribute it to the assistance of others, whereas men tend to claim they did it all on their own. Male ideology in the workplace centers on networking and confrontational approaches. Studies show that 57% of men entering the work force negotiated their first salary, and only 7% of women do. This stat just shows that women’s perceptions of their value to businesses are off. In the opinion of Mia Pearson, Co-Founder of North Strategic, “we are not being as proactive as we should be, or doing ourselves justice in terms of the roles that we need to take.” For gender equality to be really represented fairly in such an environment, just as many women as men need to be sitting on corporate boards and placed in leadership positions. A study by statistics Canada in January 2012 showed that women comprise only 23% of all senior management positions, proving that power and distribution of labour is yet to be equal. It is not great that women represent such a low number at the executive ranks especially because work forces are very diverse and we need to be more representative of that diversity.

Yet, data analyzed by Catalyst in 2012 reveals women are good for business and infact spur high revenues. Despite a rough economic period,