Still no room at the top for women

Plus ca change . . . the more things change, the more they stay the

same. The latest survey on management in Britain shows that the

continuing existence of an old boys' network is seen by women as the

biggest stumbling block to reaching the top. The report by the Institute

of Management and BhS, entitled The Key to the Men's Club, took the

views of some 1500 female and 800 male managers.

It aimed to look beyond specific needs of women managers, for example

child care, and the examine the general psychological and attitudinal

barriers which stop women scaling the peak. Just a third of the men

strongly agreed that women have positive skills to bring to the

workplace. One commented: ''In general, women don't make good managers

-- although they have much to offer in the workplace.''

Look back nearly half a century, to the war. With the menfolk away

fighting, women continued to raise their families, keep the home fires

burning, and simultaneously run factories, farms and other businesses.

On the men's return, the women's acquired skills became redundant.

For Americans, it was worse. Women who had obtained professional

qualifications not normally available to them were forced by law to give

up their jobs to re

turning servicemen, even when the women had also served in the

military.

The latest surveys show a figure of some five per cent as being the

proportion of UK women in full-time professional jobs or

senior management. That's good compared with the US, where the figure

is two per cent or less.

In 1982, a survey by the Management Centre Europe, of 420 Western

European companies, showed that less than half (49%) had ever employed a

female manager, and 15% of the remainder stated that they would never

promote a woman into management.

The Institute of Management survey paints a picture of women who work

hard at overcoming prejudice, paying a high personal price. A third were

unmarried compared with just 8% of the men; while 12% were divorced or

separated against five per cent of men. Many of the women had opted out

of having a family.

Children and management are deemed by the report to be largely

incompatible for women. Taking a break to raise a family was considered

potentially fatal to a management career. Said one woman: ''If you leave

work to have a child, you effectively lose all skills in the employer's

eyes and have to start again.'' A male manager commented: ''Successful

management requires commitment with no outside worries -- for women to

succeed, they must be single or have adult children.''

Institute director Roger Young concluded: ''Men are the prime barrier

to women in management. Despite some progress, old fashioned, sexist

attitudes still represent a real, not imagined, barrier to the progress

of women.''

The survey recommends that employers and senior managers should change

recruitment and assessment criteria for management posts, so that they

do not reflect a traditional male career. Noteworthy is the comment that

many women reaching for the top are simply on the wrong track -- a

manufacturing or production function is the traditional route to the

pinnacle of a large organisation. Only one per cent of women are on it.

Earlier this year, at the British Psychological Society's occupational

psychology conference, it was claimed that the new ''feminine'' styles

of management, which it is said that many companies will need to adopt

to survive, remained discriminated against by job selection procedures.

One of the main speakers at the conference, Dr Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe,

senior lecturer in clinical psychology at the Nuffield Institute, Leeds

University, believes organisational assessment and selection procedures

are:

* Riddled with potential sources of gender-bias which act against

women.

* Probably gender-biased in psychometric testing which is increasingly

used, but is frequently designed around male notions of management.

* Inclined to ''think manager -- think male''. This is shown by

research in the UK and US to be the norm for most men, so that even

those women competent at managerial work are not regarded as such.

And we shouldn't forget, says Dr Alimo-Metcalfe, that:

* Most ''gatekeepers'' to senior management jobs are men.

* A regular pattern emerging from research shows successful men are so

judged because of their ability. Successful women on the other hand, are

regarded as lucky.

* Unsuccessful men tend to be viewed as unlucky, while an unsuccessful

woman is deemed to have a lack of ability.

''Despite growing acceptance that

'female' leadership styles are more appropriate for modern

organisations, these are unlikely to be identified because it is

predominantly male senior managers who determine what qualities are

being sought,'' she says. So what should be done to change the

situation?

''Scrutinise each step of the assessment process,'' says Dr

Alimo-Metcalfe. ''Firstly, the list of qualities sought for senior

management should be inspected, to determine whether they are based on a

purely male model. The assessment techniques, whether an interview or

psychometric test, should be examined for potental gender-bias. The

assessors should include women, and all should be aware of gender-bias

in evaluation.''

With half the UK workforce forecast to be female by the year 2000, and

three-quarters of new jobs created in this decade destined to be filled

by women, certain changes would seem to be overdue.