Women and Leadership in Corporate Australia : Questions of Preference and "Adaptive Preference"

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Women and Leadership in Corporate Australia : Questions of Preference and "Adaptive Preference" Dr. James Doughney Abstract We are told that the second generation of women leaders will reap the benefits of the breakthroughs made by their predecessors. Yet will they? Research shows that women's numbers in executive positions are still appreciably less than are men's, and progress toward equality has slowed. This article seeks to explain the persistence of gender inequalities in organizations. In particular, it describes the phenomenon of "adaptive preferences," whereby many women confronting a dominant male organizational culture reduce their expectations. They resile from leadership ambitions both because they adapt their preferences to prevailing possibilities and because they make a conscious decision not to play by the existing rules of the game. In this way, gender inequalities can be self-reinforcing. Overcoming gender inequality therefore demands much more radical organizational change than has occurred to date. Women and Leadership in Corporate Australia: Questions of Preference and "Adaptive Preference" Pulling back from leadership is a response by many women to the problem of gender inequality. To overcome gender inequality, we must understand why, even in the face of organizational action favouring equal opportunity and opposing discrimination, women still comprise only 10-30% of executive management. Only then can we feel confident that the actions we propose to overcome systemic bias against women will have a chance of succeeding. Sections 2 and 3 summarize a number of salient international and Australian contributions on gender in organizations. Section 4 presents a set of stylized facts about women's recruitment and advancement in Australian organizations. Section 5 contains a distilled summary of barriers to women's advancement and, in this context, discusses preferences and "adaptive preferences," namely the "phenomenon of adaptation , in which individuals adjust their desires to the way of life they know" (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 136). Section 6 suggests policy conclusions and recommendations. Barriers to Women's Advancement: Issues and Themes The following facts about women's representation in business leadership are useful background for the discussion that follows. According to the annual census by the Catalyst organization in the United States , women held 8.7% of Fortune 500 corporate officer positions in 1995. By 2002, the percentage had nearly doubled to 15.7% (Catalyst, 2002b; Wellington , Brumit Kropf, & Gurkovick, 2003). According to the Commonwealth Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA), the executive ratio for women in the Australian ASX 200 is 8.4%. The British corporate data are similar to those for the Australian ASX (Mann, 1995, p. 9).


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