What Men think of Women
Recent research report (Harvard Business Review) by Bowman, Worthy and Greyser examined 2,000 US Executives on how they feel about women in executive roles. To quote Dylan.. "these times, they are a changing!" Overall, 88% of the men had a favorable overall attitude toward women in management, an increase from less than 40% in 1965. For the first time, men equal women in their response. Women have been in the 80% favorable range since 1965. Other interesting findings is the sexes are equal in their willingness to work for a women as well (71%). Where the sexes differ in whether women will be accepted as leaders.
- a higher pecentage of men belive that women will be accepted as executives
- a lower percentage of men believe that women have to be exceptional to succeed in business.
It is always dangerous to draw implications from data like this and personally I am just trying to understand the realities of the past. What strikes me as most interesting is the significant personal conflict that women must fill. At a minimum, almost half of the women feel favorable toward women in leadership, but feel they will not be accepted. Ouch. This is valid if you look at 1965 data, but the new data sets points to only about 20% of the population being resistant to women in leadership. I guess a few bad apples will spoil the bunch.. or at a minimum create the illusion that there are more bad apple than we thought. What is the implications.. here is the real dangers part of this post.. The field may be more level than ever and women should have more opportunity to succeed! So... Forget about the 20% (male and female) out there that don't get it.. That is not a battle worth fighting.. focus on the 80% that are ready for your leadership.. And go for it..
Posted at 08:59PM Sep 12, 2006
by mowen in General |
