This book lives up to its title. The reader finds a gold‐mine of research and practice about women’s careers. The contributors are a satisfying mix of American, Canadian, English and Australian academics and practitioners. The two editors have divided this substantial body of knowledge into four sections:
- 1.
(1) overview;
- 2.
(2) challenges;
- 3.
(3) opportunities; and
- 4.
(4) new directions.
Plenty of figures and tables illuminate the text and each chapter includes a summary or conclusion and references. And the index is generous. The book will certainly appeal to academics and students. It contains a wealth of information for managers and human resource advisers. The issue is how to make this more readily accessible for these people.
I was asked to review this book as a practitioner, a person currently advising students and graduates about their careers. The spiral of my own career at one stage included being an academic teaching women’s career development. More recently, as a director and management consultant in Tall Poppies, a small New Zealand company set up by two women, I provided career consulting to women and facilitated women only career management programmes. Thus my lenses for viewing this book were pragmatic and I had to reacquaint myself with the rigour of academic writing. What inspired me and sustained me were the calibre of the writers in this book; some were speakers I had heard at conferences and others were names familiar from the days of literature searches and academic journals.
The two editors set the scene with the first chapter. There is no introductory warming up to the topic or explanation of the purpose of the book. We get straight to the nitty gritty. Initially there is bad news about the advancement of women in managerial and professional careers. At this point my heart sank as it seemed very little had changed during the decade since I had studied in this area. Women are now entering the workforce girded similarly to their brothers with qualifications and expectations, but the career paths to senior management quickly diverge. Estimates of women in “clout” jobs keep the percentage at 5 per cent. Business cases are still required to reassure decision makers that investing in women’s development is a good thing for the bottom line. Glass ceilings remain and now there are glass walls. Women in organizations are not paid as much as men, are not as visible, are still facing structural and cultural barriers. But the editors bring good news as well; success stories and figures back up some progress. It is not until the end of this first chapter that the reader gets to find out the purpose of the collection of articles or chapters. The editors intend to interest more researchers, to provide best practice blueprints for action and ultimately to increase “satisfaction and wellbeing” for both women and men in management.
The opening section of the book maintains its big picture view through two case studies. A US international food company aimed to increase its global competitiveness by concentrating on its senior and high potential women. The three authors in this study grappled with cultural difference by using a cultural sense making model. The conclusions section to this cooperative effort between Canadian and American contributors contains a very useful list of lessons learnt by the facilitators. Any human resource adviser or consultant wanting to replicate this initiative would find value here. A second case study evaluated various successful actions taken by a Canadian bank during the 1990s to progress workplace equality. Women there now represent 50 per cent of executive and management positions.
Appropriately entitled “Challenges”, the second section tackles emerging and outstanding issues. Marilyn Davidson describes the UK situation, and reviews the literature on the “double jeopardy” faced by black and ethnic minority women managers. We are reminded of the token effect articulated by Kanter. Another UK contributor explores twenty‐first century work and family issues. There are real social and organizational justice dilemmas in some of the strategies once so keenly advocated such as home‐based working – does this in fact increase inequalities in the workplace? The reader’s levels of discomfort are then raised with a hard hitting chapter on sexual harassment. Half of all working women in the USA, and similar numbers world‐wide, face this obstacle. This article impressed not only at the academic level, grounded solidly in research, but it captured human interest in the cases mentioned. The writers make useful distinctions between “quid pro quo” and “hostile environment” cases, explore the implications for career advancement and pay and, most importantly, suggest ways to reduce sexual harassment. A must read for any management student or human resources advisor.
This section concludes in Australia, where Phyllis Tharenou explores, through gender spectacles, the explanations given for relocating or changing organizations for advancement. Six hypotheses (including male dominated environments, family responsibilities, single or married status) were tested out. Organizations, especially those concerned about retention of talent, need to look at the systemic factors that cause women to leave. Exposure to women managers, EEO policies, formal selection methods to reduce bias and flexible work arrangements are endorsed and recommended.
From the natural low experienced when reading about what is not working, the reader welcomes the next section, “Opportunities”. Viki Holton kicks this section off with an overview of changes for women managers in the UK compared to Europe and the USA. Increased numbers of women graduating are offset by low figures for enrolment in MBA and business schools. Training and development and its role in effecting culture change are thoroughly discussed. There is plenty to delight any practitioner. The text is interspersed with boxes containing best practice examples, there is a staged strategic plan for women’s training and development and a concise list of barriers to such initiatives and gateways to handle these. Finally there are appendices which contain questions for company benchmarking, areas to include in a training and development audit as well as questions for surveying women in organizations.
Ronald Burke’s chapter sums up his overview of career development for women in a telling few words: “women had to have more assets and fewer liabilities than men” (p. 140). This chapter really comes to grips with the inadequacies of classic models of career development finally supporting gender specific models. From his research the writer has produced a challenge, recognition, support framework which holds plenty of organization challenges. Reduced workload (RWL), previously viewed with suspicion, emerges as a viable way to provide women with successful alternative work arrangements. Two Canadian case studies further on in this section illustrate how lawyers, accountants and doctors have actually made RWL work and how a financial institution succeeded in implementing a successful strategy. The range of possibilities is exciting such as compressed working week, flextime, reduced hours, job sharing and telework. Other contributors provide further food for thought about standard development strategies such as mentoring and women only programmes. The article on mentoring uses role theory to explore the gender influences on developmental relationships. Business educators will be interested in the account of how a UK university improved its MBA programme by recognizing “that the development process for women is not the same as the development process for men, but a mirror image” (p. 217).
The final section, “New directions”, ends on a positive note providing a pot pourri of articles about women, covering:
entrepreneurial careers;
engagement in work;
work and family programmes;
executive leadership; and
best practice for retention.
Nothing too surprising there, but there was one wild card. Lotte Bailyn stretched my non‐academic brain with a gendered view of industrial time; however, given the emphasis in the previous section on flexible work arrangements, it made sense. Our understanding of careers was advanced in Dorothy Perrin Moore’s chapter on women entrepreneurs and boundaryless transitions.
Bath tubs have never been the same since Archimedes leapt from his, and Bret Simmons reminds us with his image in his chapter on positive stress “eustress” and negative “distress”. “Positive psychology at work” was the one chapter which dealt with the inner being as well as the external influences that affect women’s career development. Ronald Burke contributes two research studies which add considerably to the family friendly debate. Retention of women professionals and managers is the major concern Mary Mattis addresses, and she encourages organizations to use both internal and external best practice benchmarking. This chapter combines thorough discussion, practical suggestions from experienced change agents (Catalyst and Opportunity Now), and results from a number of successful case studies.
What better way to end a book like this than with a chapter on executive leadership which starts with a headline from the Financial Times: “Wanted: more uppity women” (p. 333)? Besides winning my approval for including New Zealand in her discussion about numbers of women at boardroom level, Val Hammond provides uplifting “herstories” of what we from Downunder would call the “Tall poppies”. Initiatives and award winning strategies used by companies are profiled and continue to reinforce a sense that women are making progress. It is the right high note to end this book on. All in all, Advancing Women’s Careers is a valuable and important book but I would have appreciated some help from the editors to prepare for the read, to pull it all together and know where they thought all of this advanced us.
