Sweden possess the forth place as the most gender equal country in the world (World Economic Forum, 2013). But when it comes to women in higher-level positions, Sweden ends up below the European mean (European Commission, Justice, 2011). How can this be? And more importantly, how can Sweden work to attain gender equality in higher-level positions in the future? Why this gap exists in Sweden and how to reduce it is in need of further investigation and research. The thesis aims to investigate why men keep dominating higher- level positions within organisations in Sweden. A focus has been put on municipalities and their extensive work for gender equality. The thesis will address the extensive work Swedish municipalities have done within gender equality and why they are relatively equal when it comes to gender equality in higher- level positions. Further on it will provide a general understanding of their successful work and how it can be useful in other organisations. Additionally, it will be investigated how this extensive gender equality work, with a primary focus on gender equality policies and plans, and other regulations can help women reach and keep the higher-level positions in an organisation. A qualitative research approach has been used for this research. The primary data was collected through in-depth semi- structured interviews with five Swedish municipalities. The data was later analysed through qualitative data analysis. In conclusion, the most successful factors to include when working towards a gender equal workplace and encouraging more females to aim for higher-level positions are extensive work with gender equality policies and plans, including changes in the recruitment process together with providing options of how to allocate your working hours. This to open up for equal opportunities, excluding gender based prejudices, for those individuals who have the right competence and are interested in possessing a higher-level position in an organisation.

Are men and women equally likely to be perceived by people to possess similar requisite characteristics in comparable yet diverse occupations within management, leadership, and entrepreneurship? Because modern workplaces continue to be impacted by the persistence of varying perceptions of men and women about requisite attributes of successful people in several organizational roles, the concept of gender bias and occupational stereotypes has warranted the attention of theoreticians, scholars, and practitioners to a large extent (Koch, D’Mello, & Sackett, 2015; Kuwabara & Thébaud, 2017; Pinker, 2003; Pinker & Spelke, 2005). Although empirical evidence clearly indicates that gender inequalities in the workplace can have a significant effect on peoples’ perceptions about different characteristics of individuals in general and in specific organizational roles, there is a paucity of research examining these perceptions in a variety of leadership positions. Previous literature has investigated the gendered construction and re-construction of these professions but only to a limited extent (Gupta, Turban, Wasti, & Sikdar, 2009; Heilman, 2001, 2012; Heilman, Wallen, Fuchs, & Tamkins, 2004; Koenig, Eagly, Mitchell, & Ristikari, 2011; Kuwabara & Thébaud, 2017; Ryan, Haslam, Hersby, & Bongiorno, 2011; Schein, 1973, 1975, 2001). However, research in years past has not yet examined the full range of industry and entrepreneurial contexts that may create gender typecasting of roles. By extension, the current study focuses on how the gender-differentiated perceptions of men and women influenced the requisite characteristics of successful professional personnel in various managerial, leadership, and entrepreneurial positions. Specifically, given that these professions are influenced by gender-role expectations and stereotypes, this empirical investigation drew from role congruity theory of prejudice (Eagly & Karau, 2002) to examine the relative degree of perceived overlap between the traits associated with specific roles in management, leadership, and entrepreneurship with the traits commonly associated with men and women in general. Primary data were obtained from a diverse sample of 600 (12 x 50) working adults in the United States (N = 600, 300 women, 300 men) between the ages of 21 and 65. This was accomplished using an online survey designed via Qualtrics and administered through Amazon’s MTurk, from the lens of the classic think manager-think male (TMTM) research paradigm (Schein, 1973, 1975, 2001). The instrument used for data collection was the 92-item Schein Descriptive Index (SDI), which was used to describe sex role stereotypes and perceived requisite characteristics of twelve distinct target groups. The results of this study indicate that the perceived requisite traits of successful leaders and entrepreneurs are construed in predominantly masculine terms. These findings support and further inform the nature, existence, significance, and persistence of the “think manager-think male stereotype effect” (TMTM effect) and the “glass ceiling phenomenon” across a variety of managerial, leadership, and entrepreneurial roles, contexts, and industries. The TMTM effect was stronger among high tech entrepreneurs, CEOs, and entrepreneurs in general, whereas it was lessened for entrepreneurs in educational and health care roles, as well as for middle managers. Additionally, consistent with prior research, TMTM effects were generally either more likely to occur, or were stronger in magnitude among male raters than among female raters. These results largely support role congruity theory of gender differences in management and leadership that indicate incongruity of female gender stereotypes in general with stereotypes about high-status and prominent occupational roles in various organizations (Eagly & Karau, 2002). Specifically, the perceived trait overlap was noted to generally be stronger between men in general and successful leaders in various roles than that between women in general and successful leaders in various similar roles. The findings of the current study are expected to be valuable for those seeking to encourage opportunity regardless of candidate gender in management, entrepreneurship, and leadership, as well as for those promoting the role of women’s advancement in these professions. The study’s results have both theoretical and practical implications. Understanding these perceptions can have a significant impact on the gender biases prevalent in society, in organizations, and even across the specific entrepreneurial contexts and industries investigated within the current study. In today’s super-competitive business environment, firms must appreciate the importance of fostering equal opportunity, avoiding gender biases, and facilitating racial and ethnic diversity.

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.

Research shows that although the representation of women in the workforce has increased over the past couple of decades, there are many industries that still remain male dominated. In addition, it is generally known that such male-dominated industries have minimal female representation at their managerial levels. One such male-dominated industry in South Africa is the air traffic control (ATC) industry. Women represent about 30 percent of the industry, which suggest their status in the industry is still quite low. The purpose of this study was to examine male and female air traffic controllers’ perceptions of factors that facilitate and constrain women’s career advancement, and to determine whether there were any significant differences in their opinions. The study also identified what male and female air traffic controllers (ATCOs) think the industry can do to help prepare women for leadership positions in the industry, and how to eliminate barriers that may exist to women’s career advancement. Data for this study were collected through an online questionnaire adapted from Zhong’s (2006) study on a convenience sample (N = 147) of male and female ATCOs in South Africa. The data analysis was executed by using factor analysis and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Content analysis was used to analyse the two open-ended questions. The findings from the ANOVA suggest that there were four significant gender differences in perceptions of the Personal effort/External support, Attitude/Internal character, Equity, and Family issues. There also were significant differences in opinion on External support/Personal effort, Attitude/Internal character, Equity and Family issues, depending on the number of children the respondents had, and significant differences of marital status on the External support/Personal effort and Family issues. Finally, significant differences were found in the years’ experience variable for Attitude/Internal character. In response to the open-ended questions, most of the respondents suggested that the ATC industry should offer training programmes to improve awareness of possible barriers within the industry, as well as to offer advice on how to overcome them and improve their leadership skills. This could be done by creating programmes on the knowledge and skills needed to advance one’s career or by providing mentors or role models. Future research could compare the perceptions of employees from different race groups and their perceptions of women’s career advancement in male-dominated industries. It is also recommended that researchers conduct in-depth qualitative interviews together with the current questionnaire to evaluate perceptions of the career advancement of women more critically. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Human Resource Management / unrestricted

Breaking the glass ceiling of boards of directors has been a hot topic globally for over a decade without any significant results. With an increase in demand for sustainable companies, the current composition of most of the boards of directors is contradictory, where homogeneous boards of directors are more a rule than an exception. Contradicting the fact that diverse teams are proven to make better, long-termed, and more sustainable decisions. Small and medium-sized enterprises are often neglected in the debate to increase diversity in boards of directors, even though they hold most of all boards of directors’ positions. Investigating the small and medium-sized enterprises this paper aims to explore how to break the glass ceiling of the boards of directors in Denmark. Similar to Norway where quotas with boardrooms have been introduced in 2008, this study also wants to reexamine the general attitude towards hard legislation or find alternatives in form of other legislation in Denmark. Therefore, it is essential to understand the dynamics and habits of the boards of directors. This study has through semi-structured interviews investigated the culture of boards of directors to find the barriers of the boardrooms and how to break them down. A recruitment company has tried to offer a new way of recruiting for boards of directors through open positions. Here has the researchers conducted qualitative research to investigate their impact on gender and age in boards of directors, to see if the open positions can exhilarate the implementation of diversity in the board rooms. The results of the study show that there is a need to educate small and medium-sized enterprises on the benefits of diverse boards of directors. The boards of directors are primarily recruited through networks of its members, making it difficult to increase diversity. The reason for recruiting through networks is primarily due to a lack of understanding of both the function of boards of directors and a wish to keep the information of the company close to themselves. The overall attitude towards legislation is mixed with a small overweight against quotas. Mainly from an individual point of view is quotas are seen as an undesirable means for increasing diversity in boards of directors. The recruitment company has been proven cable of recruiting younger candidates. However, not significantly change the percentages of female representations where only a slight increase of women in some positions is seen.

Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur diskursen om glastaket har förändrats under en tjugoårsperiod. Detta med avsikt att utifrån ett genusvetenskapligt angreppsätt belysa vilka föreställningar och maktstrukturer mellan kvinnor och män som förändring i diskursen bygger på. Mina frågeställningar följer mitt syfte. Mina avgränsningar är kön/genus, den ojämna könsfördelningen på svenskt näringsliv och en tjugoårsperiod. Dessa avgränsningar grundar sig i mitt material som är två statliga offentliga utredningar från 1997 och 2014 som har behandlat glastaket. Uppsatsens teori och metod består av en kritisk diskursanalys, varav teoridelen består av Faircloughs tredimensionella modell. Slutsatsen dras från resultatet som visar att diskursen om glastaket har förändrats, från ett fokus på en diskurs om befattningssegregering med faktorer som ålder, arbetstid och utbildning till förändring med faktorerna jämställdhet, genus och föräldraskap. De föreställningar och maktstrukturer mellan kvinnor och män som förändringen bygger på är isärhållning av kön och manlig överordning. / The aim of this essay is to examine how the discourse of the glass ceiling has changed in twenty years. This with an approach of gender studies highlight which performances and power structures between women and men this change is based on. My questions follow my aim. My delimitations are sex/gender, the unequal gender distribution in Swedish industry and a twenty-year period. This is based on my material that are two State public reports from 1997 and 2014 that have treated the glass ceiling. The theory and method are a critical discourse analysis, whereof the theory is Faircloughs three-dimensional model. The conclusion can be drawn from the results and it shows that the discourse of the glass ceiling has changed, from a focus on position segregation to change. The performances and power structures between women and men that this change is based on are separating the sexes and male superiority.

American conglomerates are accountable for the underrepresentation of African American women (AAW) in high-ranking roles. Though some progress is documented, this study revealed that inequalities and stereotypical practices still exist. This transcendental phenomenology study explored the leadership development and lived experiences of 25 high-ranking AAW. All participants worked in private or public sectors, resided in America, and held high-ranking positions within the last 5 years. The goal was to explore the lived experience of AAW and uncover any strategies used to address the influence of intersectionality on leadership development that could abate barriers and create career pathways for forthcoming AAW leaders. During the literature review process, the education sector emerged as the most studied area, exposing substantial gaps in literature concentrated on other sectors. For this study, a broader range of industries was explored that could enhance existing leadership and management practices and augment the body of knowledge in multiple sectors. The theory of Black feminism guided the study, and the conceptual framework of intersectionality corroborated the intersecting barriers caused by gender, race, and class unique to AAW. Purposive samples and open-ended questions designed to guide semistructured interviews, supported by the modified van Kaam data analysis technique, were implemented. The social implications of this study go beyond simple diversity in the workplace to highlight a highly resilient and capable talent pool of AAW who bring new perspectives to senior leadership roles that will enhance organizational resilience, contributing to the economic growth of the organizations they lead.

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Although the topic is trending globally, clear steps forward for female leadership are yet to be made. This is impacted even more by the fact that little empirical research has been conducted to examine the attitudes towards females in managerial positions from different countries' point of view. Therefore, the aim of this research is to get an understanding of the current state of affairs of female leadership in a more global context, with input from both developed and developing countries. Specifically, it explores the similarities and differences of female leadership challenges in Afghanistan and The Netherlands. To explore challenges experienced by, as well as strategies of, Afghan and Dutch female leaders, a qualitative study was conducted. Ten semi-structured interviews were done in-person and through video calls, consisting of 5 interviews for each country. Ten participants, meeting the criteria of holding a leadership/management position, were chosen through convenience sampling. The results showed significant similarities and differences in female leadership challenges, as well as strategies.  The unfortunate entanglement of culture in Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, has resulted in the oppression of female leaders. In the Netherlands, female leadership progress appears idealized. Nevertheless, female leaders in both countries share similar strength and strategies to cope with challenges themselves because society seemingly fails to bring change. As the results also show leadership skills specific to female leaders, societies and organizations worldwide should spread awareness and take action in gender equality, unlocking the full potential of female leadership.

Diskriminering är ett globalt fenomen som i dagens samhälle är oacceptabelt i många länder och kulturer. Det är något som drabbar många människor runt om i världen och många gånger är det av skäl man som person inte kan ändra på. Med den ökande globaliseringen och medvetenheten om vad som kan betraktas som acceptabelt och oacceptabelt har diskrimineringen hamnat högre upp på agendan. Detta har medfört att diskriminering inte bara prioriteras utav stater men också inom den privata sektorn. I denna kvalitativa studie undersöks hur diskriminering mot minoritetsgrupper påverkar de i arbetslivet. De delar som berörs under undersökningen är anställningsprocessen, arbetet och grupperingar i arbetet men även karriärmöjligheter. Undersökningsmetoden bestod utav kvalitativa intervjuer där respondenterna fick svara på frågor hur de uppfattade de olika sakerna baserat på deras arbetslivserfarenheter. Undersökningen omfattade sju personer där alla hade en kandidatexamen inom ekonomi, de olika respondenterna arbetade på olika arbetsplatser och olika arbetsuppgifter. Den teorier som använts är teorier som behandlar rekryteringsprocesser, diskriminering, stigmatisering och organisationsteori. Efter att ha analyserat det empiriska data och teorierna så visar forskningen på att det finns en viss del diskriminering på arbetsmarknaden. Dock är den väldigt beroende på faktorer som vart man arbetar och vilken typ av medarbetare man har på arbetsplatsen. / Discrimination is a global phenomenon today and is unacceptable in various countries and cultures. It is something that affect people around the world and often it’s for reasons that cannot change. With the increasing globalization and awareness of what can be acceptable and unacceptable discrimination has ended up higher in the agenda. This means that discrimination is not only prioritized by states but also in the private sector. This qualitative study examines how discrimination against minority groups affects them in working life. The parts that are affected during the survey are the hiring process, the work and groupings at work, but also career opportunities. The survey method consisted of qualitative interviews where the respondents had to answer questions about how they perceived the different things based on their work experiences. The theories used are theories that deal with recruitment processes, discrimination, stigma and organizational theory. After analyzing the empirical data and theories, the research shows that there is a certain amount of discrimination in the labor market. However, it is very dependent on factors such as where you work and what type of employee you have in the workplace.