The objective of this study was to identify the strategies (personal and organisational) that would enable South African women to break through the glass ceiling. A questionaire was designed based on the strategies found in a literature study on the topic and used to gather inputs from executive women in South Africa. A combination of snowball and self-selection sampling was used. The questionaire was sent to 138 potential respondents, mostly by means of electronic mail. Of the 47 completed questionairs returned, 44 could be used. These were processed and anaylsed using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and the STATISTICA Version 6 software. In generaL, support was found for personal strategies pertaining to career management, networking (especially the relationship building activities), the reconciliation of home and work responsibilities with the emphasis on building a support system, education, business and organisational insught, skills development and increased input, but not for the assimilation of masculine attributes. Networking opportunities and education, training and development activities were regarded as the organisational strategies with the strongest impact on career progress. The literature was confirmed regarding top management support, an organisational culture conducive to women's advancement, mentorship programmes and a few career development initiatives. Although more than half of the respondents had been exposed to employment equity and affirmative action programmes, they were perceived to have only little to moderate impact on career progress. This was also the case with diversity management programmes. Flexible work arrangements, career adaptation schemes and childcare facilities and programmes were seen as having had little impact on the respondents' career advancement. Only a few of the organisational practices to support women balancing family and work responsibilities were utilised by the respondents' employers. Respondents perceived personal strategies as having greater value than organisational strategies in their progress to executive levels.

Problem: In South Africa, women have not always had opportunities in society or the workplace due to historical discriminatory political and socio-economic policies and practices, including apartheid (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 2011). Gender disparity at the top echelons of organisations is still prevalent, and the South African business landscape is not different despite progressive legislation promulgated in the late 90s when the democratic government took over. Aim of the study: The aim was to identify challenges faced by women when attempting to advance into executive positions and strategies that could assist them in this respect. Method: A literature study was conducted to establish what work had already been done in the field of gender studies and advancement of women in the corporate world. For the empirical study an interpretivist paradigm with a qualitative research approach was adopted. Interviews were conducted with ten women who were members of the Port Elizabeth branch of the Businesswomen's Association of South Africa (BWASA) and who were categorised as hopeful, emerging or already in executive positions. They were asked about the challenges they were facing or had experienced and the strategies that assisted or could assist them in advancing to an executive position. They were also asked to provide critical incidents with the view of enriching the data and gaining a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. Results: Gender-insensitive organisational policies, an unsupportive organisational culture and unknown barriers in selection emerged as key challenges experienced by the participants. Facilitative strategies that emerged included a supportive corporate culture, family support, an enabling supervisor and affiliation to professional bodies. Conclusion: Whilst a large pool of work has been done on the advancement of women, gender equality in corporate South Africa remained a challenge. This challenge should be addressed from a corporate, personal and professional perspective. Recommendations: An integrated organisational approach to this phenomenon is required which should include appropriate company policies, a supportive organisational culture and enabling supervisors. In addition, women should garner the support that their families provide and they could greatly benefit from affiliating to professional bodies.

The primary concern of the study is to examine leadership challenges confronted by women leaders in Eastern Cape municipalities. International organisations has made a number commitments encouraging gender parity and eliminating imbalance against women in the past three decades, through international platforms. In the World Summit held in 2005, it was recommended that a Platform for Action (1995) and the resolutions of the Twenty Third special session of the General Assembly as a crucial baseline in attaining then internationally agreed development goals, as well as those contained in the Millennium Declaration. (www.ilo.org) In the above forums national decision makers worldwide were urged to apply strategies and programmes which would improve gender fairness, in leadership positions, giving women complete and comparable share in economic, social, cultural and political decision-making as men. South Africa as a role player in the international space also joined the world in endorsing various programmes and strategies which seek to address gender parities and strive to eliminate women oppression especially in public sector.

Cette étude a pour but de s’interroger sur l’existence d’un plafond de verre dans les entreprises en France et en Turquie, et ensuite de réaliser une analyse comparée des résultats.Cette thèse souligne les enjeux du plafond de verre dans une entreprise internationale en France et en Turquie en tenant compte de la critique des théories très diffusées (=dominantes) de la ségrégation des sexes dans le travail, sur le marché du travail et dans l’organisation. Selon l’approche de Marc Maurice et Col, les concepts sont utilisés pour expliquer les problèmes de représentation dans le travail, sur le marché du travail et dans l’organisation.Le champ d’étude de ce projet a été mené auprès d’hommes et de femmes cadres travaillant dans une entreprise électrique dans les deux pays. Deux principaux types de données ont été collectés : premièrement, les données récoltées au travers d’entretiens et complétées par des notes de terrain ; et deuxièmement les données provenant de matériaux facilement disponibles tels que des recherches internationales, nationales et organisationnelles, ainsi que les publications des entreprises. Dans notre première recherche exploratoire, nous avons mené des entretiens auprès de 20 femmes cadres dans 12 entreprises internationales dans les deux pays. L’objectif était d’identifier notre question de recherche. Ensuite, nous avons choisi une entreprise dans laquelle nous avons mené notre principal terrain d’enquête. Dans cette entreprise, l’enquête turque était constituée de 15 entretiens enregistrés avec des femmes cadres qui avaient des positions de management élevées. Pour l’enquête française, 15 entretiens enregistrés ont été menés.L’analyse des résultats révèle certaines différentes culturelles en matière de normes de genre, de sentiment d’appartement et d’altérité au sein les stratégies genrées de fermeture professionnelle et les approches organisationnelles pour souligner les enjeux de l’égalité de sexe. En effet, nous souhaitons étudier le fameux phénomène du « Plafond de verre » dans l’organisation en France et en Turquie. Le choix de ces deux pays est justifié par le désir d’étudier deux modèles distincts (européen et non-européen) qui s’insèrent dans deux systèmes législatifs différents. De plus, les deux pays ont des similarités malgré des différences telles que la culture, l’économie du pays, et leurs histoires. Cependant, malgré ces différences, le personnel travaillant dans une entreprise internationale était conscient des obstacles communs basés sur le genre, dans les deux pays.De plus, la situation économique dans le pays peut aussi influencer les managers pour faire évoluer la hiérarchie dans l’entreprise. Cela indique que le modèle produit dans un pays donné ne peut pas automatiquement s’appliquer dans un autre contexte institutionnel et culturel sans prise en compte des différences contextuelles (perceptions éthiques et ses fondements, religion, situation macroéconomique, etc.). / For the purposes of the comparative study, we will address in turn France and Turkey, issues of equality women/men in workforce, policies shelved by the government and companies and the paradigm shift that is taking place and that tries to control retention of women workers. Then we devote a large part in this chapter to explaining our research problem. After clarification of the various issues involved, we will unveil our research question and the specific issues that we intend to develop. We proceed by following a review of the literature on the research that exists on the issue of women’s management practices and continued employment of women. Finally, we conclude this section with the reasons for the relevance of our contribution in this field of research.Firstly, we explain the place of women in heart of the country with historical background of women and we give a definition of the workforce of women in each country and we mention the famous glass ceiling phenomenon. In this chapter, we give many figures and we note that despite our efforts to ensure that the comparison between France and Turkey is as rigorous as possible, we have not always been able to provide similar figures for both countries, since the calculation methods (including projections) are not the same. However, we have tried to demonstrate based on available data the impact of the glass ceiling effect in both cases studied. The main objective of this thesis is to draw attention to the barriers facing female executive directors, even after they have been promoted to middle and top level. These barriers appear to constitute a ‘second glass ceiling’ at the highest levels within large French and Turkish companies. The increasing number of women in the labor force particularly those of childbearing age, has been accompanied by increasing needs for childcare, flexible working arrangements and greater demands for equality in the workplace. This study particularly focused on the glass ceiling issues and the main career obstacles for female top managers/executives in Turkey and France. Prior to collecting the required data, a review was carried out in both countries, the current availability, and attitudinal studies related to the ‘glass ceiling’. A comparative descriptive analysis was conducted to show differences in career barriers for women and policies between countries. The first field study of this project generated 20 semi-structured interviews with 12 main questions concerning their career background and the glass ceiling syndrome with staff from 12 international companies in France and in Turkey. Interviews lasted for approximately one hour and were conducted in France and Turkey. Turkish and French women, despite the geographical, historical, and cultural ditferences between their countries, share a common position as a disadvantaged group in employment. The feminist movements in both countries engage in different debates and activities to promote change towards equality. The statistical indicators of employment and pay by sex, legislative provision and the sociological studies of equality of opportunity in employment in both countries suggest that there is still many opportunities for progress towards equality.

Women remain notably underrepresented in management and leadership positions despite the enactment of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action policies. A critical literature review yielded evidence of a multitude of barriers inhibiting women’s career advancement beyond an apparent glass ceiling, but not which of the factors constitute the major barriers. A knowledge gap was further identified in research pertaining to characteristics of successful professional women and the environments that enable them to succeed in their professions. The purpose of the current study is to expand the empirical body of research and knowledge on factors contributing to the success of professional women, and of factors inhibiting the career progression of women in business. The study extends that of Punnett, Duffy, Fox, Gregory, Lituchy, Monserrat, Olivas-Luján and Santos (2006) and of Duffy, Fox, Punnett, Gregory, Lituchy, Monserrat, Olivas-Luján, Santos and Miller (2006), conducted in the Americas, to the South African context. The study suggests a conceptual framework for investigating factors that influence professional success of women. The developed conceptual framework of factors perceived to influence professional success was employed to empirically test the relationships between the variables presented. The empirical data collected was subjected to a series of statistical tests and the results considered in testing the hypotheses. Statistica 10 was employed to analyse the empirical data collected. Univariate and multivariate tests (MANOVA) were employed to determine whether sufficient evidence existed to make conclusions about hypotheses one to five of the study, relating to differences between two success groups of women based on their demographics and the selected variables. Pearson Product Moment Correlation (Pearson r) was employed to determine whether sufficient evidence existed to make conclusions about vi hypotheses six to ten, relating to significant relationships between the selected independent variables for the study and the professional success of women. Professional success was measured as job seniority level. For the pipeline success group, professional success was measured as seniority in relation to years in the employment sector and age. The contribution of the study to management science and possible limitations are discussed and recommendations made for future research. Recommendations for the development of women and for the social transformation of organisations are made. The study identifies a number of internal organisational support factors and government interventions which are recommended for inclusion in development initiatives for the achievement of gender equity.

No description available.

With few Asian American women executives, little is known of how they reach to the top leadership roles. The purpose of this study was to explore how Asian American women learned and unlearned to overcome barriers and additional activities they engaged in to achieve career upward mobility at large corporations. The study sought to answer three main questions: (a) how do Asian American women describe the challenges they face in advancing their careers; (b) how do they describe how they learn to overcome the challenges they face; (c) what other activities do they engage in to advance their careers. To achieve this purpose, the researchers employed a qualitative, embedded single-case approach drawing upon the career experiences of 26 Asian American women from financial and technology industries at Fortune 500 companies with three data collection methods: (a) a demographic inventory survey and an assessment of perceived bicultural self-efficacy, (b) semi-structured interviews, and (c) focus group. Three key findings emerged: (a) a majority of participants experienced perceptual, organizational and personal barriers in advancing their careers, with nuances in how they experienced them based on career stages, industries, and the immigration process; (b) through critical reflections, a majority of participants unlearned certain Asian cultural values or gender expectations and mastered the experiences and career mobility actions that helped them overcome barriers. They also exercised self-efficacy and received external validation to reinforce their learnings that contributed to career advancements; and (c) all participants enlisted efforts from professional and personal networks to advance their careers, while a majority found organizational activities helpful in their leadership development and career progression. The principal recommendations of this study have implications for Asian American women who are interested in pursuing executive roles, human resources professionals and leaders who are committed to improve organizational diversity and inclusion practices, and adult learning researchers who would like to expand the theory building of transformative unlearning.

Historically, Black women‘s workplace experiences have been understudied, partially due to an implicit assumption that their experiences are subsumed by research on Black men and/or White women. This oversight is even more evident in the field of management. However, considerable attention has been given to the debate about whether Black women are at a double advantage (i.e., as supposed affirmative action ―two-for-one bargains‖) or at a double disadvantage due to their double marginalizing characteristics. Empirical research in the area has found support for each side, furthering the debate, but also advancing an overly simplistic explanation for a set of experiences that is certainly much more complicated. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the conditions under which Black women, when seeking managerial employment, are at a double advantage or disadvantage, using Critical Race Feminism, Cox‘s Interactional Model of Cultural Diversity (IMCD; 1994), and theories of social categorization as the theoretical foundation. A 2 (sex) x 2 (race) x 2 (demographic composition of the workplace) betweensubjects design was used to test the hypotheses that the Black female applicant would have a double disadvantage in a more demographically balanced organization and double advantage in an organization that is more White and male. Participants (N = 361) reviewed information about an organization (where demographic composition was manipulated) and three available management positions. They also reviewed a fictional professional networking profile of a job applicant where race and sex were manipulated iv through photos, and job qualifications and experience were held constant. Based on all of the information, they rated the applicant on his/her suitability for the jobs. Results of planned contrasts and ANOVAs showed partial support for the hypotheses. In the balanced organization, the Black female applicant was rated lower in suitability for entry-level management than the Black male and White female applicants. Likewise, she was rated higher than the Black male and White female applicants in the less diverse organization, when evaluated for upper-level management. Thus, the study clarifies the theories of double advantage and double disadvantage by identifying organizational composition as a moderator of the relationship between applicant race/sex and employment outcomes (i.e., management suitability ratings). The implications of these findings are discussed.

Due to employment equity legislation that opened up opportunities for women, women are under pressure to perform at work - something that may affect their occupational stress and impact on both the individual and the organisation. The respondents comprise six women managers in a market research organisastion. The respondents' perception of stress was supported by qualitative research methods and compared to the researcher's Organisational Stress Model. From the data it is evident that stressors at work such as workload, relationships, role overload and individual traits primarily affect the respondents' experience of stress. These stressors have an effect on respondents' perceptions of stress and impacts on their productivity and personal life. The respondents denoted a necessity for skills development in order to enhance themselves at work and on a personal level. The study has furthermore found that stress at work can, however, be somewhat alleviated by implementing stress programmes in organisations. / Psychology / M.A. (Navorsingsielkunde)

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts Masters (Industrial/ Organisational Psychology) in the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. March, 2016 / This study investigated whether the lifestyle behaviours and psychological well-being of women executives and managers predicted their ten-year risk of developing cardiovascular disease. The sample of South African women executives and managers work in a variety of industries in the cities of Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. The study sought to determine the predictability of the women executives and managers’ risk of developing cardiovascular disease through examining their level of alcohol consumption, level of physical exercise and the nutritional and dietary choices that they made as well as their level of depression, anxiety and stress. The data was gathered through an executive health and wellness programme and logistic regression and Chi-squared tests of association were used in conducting the analyses. The results suggested that the level of alcohol consumption and the nutritional and dietary choices made were predictive of the individual’s ten-year risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Additionally, the level of anxiety was found to be associated with the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. The results suggest that both individuals and organisations should prioritise the changing of unhealthy lifestyle behaviours, specifically excessive alcohol consumption and daily dietary choices, in order to lower their risk of developing cardiovascular disease. / MT2017