Employee Resourcing Continuous Assignments

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Employee Resourcing

Continuous Assignment

Top 2

Junjie Rong G00268475

08/03/2013The 21 century which we are living is a time of opening thought, globalization, and diversity. People are willing to accept and try to understand new things which could happened in their life. Diversity may be the most popular common view that many people would experienced as a concept. Diversity include such different sectors, including age, religion, culture, race, language and gender. However there are always come with some barriers to reminder us that this is not a complanate road to going through. Some may doubt about how could gender be a problem in discrimination after women’s right has already permeate into every country’s law and people’s daily life. The truth is there are still some people said: "The existence of a glass ceiling for women is merely a notional one in the minds of those involved in the feminist movement." Would this be the fact that glass ceiling effect has gone far away from actual situation or it could be a cover for those invisible crime?

We will discuss it start with what is "glass ceiling" and it’s origin. Glass ceiling is an unacknowledged discriminatory barrier that prevents women and minorities from rising to positions of power or responsibility, as within a corporation. The term, in the barrier to advancement sense, was used by several writers on the topic of women in the corporate workplace during the 1980s; for example, Alice Sargent, in an interview about her book 'The Androgynous Manager', with the 'Washington Post' in 1987: "Women in corporate America are bumping their heads on the glass ceiling."

The earliest citation in print that we can find is from an article by Nora Frenkiel about magazine editor, Gay Bryant - "The Up-and-Comers; Bryant Takes Aim At the Settlers-In.", Adweek Special Report; Magazine World, March, 1984: "Women have reached a certain point -- I call it the glass ceiling. They're in the top of middle management and they're stopping and getting stuck. There isn't enough room for all those women at the top. Some are going into business for themselves. Others are going out and raising families." Since becoming commonplace in contemporary language it has become generally applied to obstacles encountered in any field and by any group; for example, this piece of economic news from the Daily Telegraph, 1994:

"After several spirited assaults, the FT-SE's 3200 glass ceiling finally gave way yesterday, allowing the index to close sharply higher after a day of drifting."(Gary Martin, 2013) Therefore, glass ceiling effect seems like a transformed approach of sex discrimination, which hide for a long time and still influence female society today after woman’s right defeat Male chauvinism and The Male Age.

There is an article published on Irish Independent showing some evidences of its influence. According to the report made by accountancy firm Grant Thornton, new figures show that women remain severely under-represented in corporate life and the situation may be getting worse. On International Women's Day, further research from recruitment company Accreate has found that just 8percent of plc board members in Ireland are women. Grant Thornton said that the number of women in senior management was unchanged last year, down slightly on the position in 2009. It said the global average level of representation was 24percent, with Ireland 36th out of 44 countries surveyed. This report also summarize that 7percent of Irish companies plan to promote more women into senior management over the next 12 months. 17percent of board directorships in Ireland are held by women, despite a target set by the European Commission for women to make up 40percent of non-executive directorships by 2020. In additional, Ireland is the lowest-ranked EU country, apart from Greece, on flexible working, with 53percent of companies offering family friendly working solutions compared to an EU average of 74percent. From all those figures we could say studies have shown the positive effect gender-balanced boards can have on business management and performance and Irish companies need to realise that.(COLM KELPIE, 2013)

This phenomenon is not just an individual case in Ireland, it is growing and becomes a globalization quiz. It affect from Western countries to Eastern countries, only few place had less influence under its power. New Zealand having once been a world leader in the number of women in senior management roles in business, now is dropping back to the pack and the outlook continues to get gloomier, according to the latest research from Grant Thornton. Last year New Zealand were ranked 10th out of 40 countries surveyed and this year they have dropped to 17th out of 44 countries. During that time the global average has grown from 21% to 24% and New Zealand peaked at 32% in 2011. The number of businesses offering flexible hours has dropped from 81% to 78% and the number of companies looking to employ or promote more women into senior management is also going south with only 13% of companies expecting to do this against a global average of 15%. Reinforcing these trends is the fact that in 2012, 26% of businesses had no women in senior management and this year that figure has risen to 30%. This is in sharp contrast to what is happening around the rest of the world where this figure has dropped from 34% to 31%.(Grant Thornton, 2013)

Thousand miles away from New Zealand, another country located in the southern hemisphere share the same issue. According to Grant Thorton's International Business Report (IBR) on women, just over a quarter of top decision-making roles in South African businesses was filled by women. As had been the case since 2009 only 28 percent of senior management positions were filled by women. The percentage of working women in senior management positions in South Africa was inadequate and had been static for the past six years, Grant Thorton said. This stagnant trend was the same when global averages were reviewed, with international businesses also showing no improvement since 2009, at 24 percent. The Women Empowerment and Gender Equality Bill, which seeks to ensure a 50/50 representation of women in decision-making structures in both the private and public sectors, has been approved by Cabinet for public comment. Women CFOs in the country more than doubled to 32 percent in 2013 compared to 14 percent in 2012. CEO numbers continued to be low although there was a slight improvement from last year. They got a conclusion as this steady improvement, although still small at this stage, may fare well for us in the long term. The number of accomplished women in CFO positions could just be the launch pad for women achieving a greater presence at a corporate board level. (Sapa, March 8th, 2013)

Things in other hemisphere going a little bitte interesting. According to India's official investigation, in some sectors women’s presence is yet to scale up. While the women’s movement has helped many take long strides over the years, we’re still falling short. We are yet to reach a stage where the male-to-female ratio in organisations shifts to 20:80, says Aparna Kumar, senior vice-president of a leading private sector bank. Even for executive programmes, the number of woman applicants is quite low, says Meher Afroz, general manager, Microsoft. "Only 10% of our class comprised women when I did the postgraduate programme in management for senior executives at the Indian School of Business. Since such a programme is only for people who have a work experience of 14 years, there might not be many women at that level who are willing to take a break and pursue a course." A survey, the results of which were released by consulting firm Booz & Company in 2012-end, confirmed our worst suspicions: It ranked India a poor 115 out of 128 countries in terms of economic empowerment of women. ( Priyanka Golikeri, 2013)

Even in the world biggest freedom country- American, the shadow of Glass ceiling can be find in the comer. In many respects, the degree of freedom women enjoy, or rather do not enjoy, has a great deal to with the politics of economics. Women who are not able to pursue a career or who do not earn enough to maintain an adequate standard of living are dependent on their husbands or government agencies for financial support. During the period from 1985-1986, one out of every four U.S. women earned less than $10,000 a year (Rhoodie 259)--which is a less than adequate "living wage" for single mothers and divorced women with custodial children. For those women who do pursue a career and hold a university degree, that degree confers no advantage in the job market. Eschel M. Rhoodie reports that such women, on average, have an effective income little more than that of a man with comparable years of work experience without a high school diploma (271). These numbers may seem startling for the times in which we live, but the truth of the matter is that since the inception of the women's rights movement in the late 1800s, the comparative improvements in the status of women have been few. This is due partly to the low number of women repre- sented in the higher echelons of the legal establishment as well as to a lack of governing bodies to enforce the few laws that have been beneficial to women. Yet, one must realize that the existence of such bodies do not necessarily guarantee the en- forcement of these laws. The wage gap between men and women is then an important aspect of the status of U.S. women--social, legal, and economic. Thus, the combination of these factors has resulted in the formulation of state and federal statutes that contribute to the devaluation of women and their achievements.(Johanne Toussaint, 1993)

A separate recent report by the London School of Economics for cosmetics company Avon predicted a doubling in young female entrepreneurs over the next decade, with 72% of the 2,000 16-24-year-old women questioned saying the idea of being their own boss appealed to them. Karren Brady, vice-chairman of West Ham United and an Avon mentor, said she believed young women would "define the next generation of entrepreneurship and rewrite the rules in this perceived male-dominated world". Liz Gardiner, head of policy at Working Families, a charity which campaigns for parents and carers, said the trend towards more women entrepreneurs sent out a message about the need for change to the overall design of work. "One of the reasons women want to set up businesses is because they have more control over the hours they work," she said. She said there was plenty of evidence that in many UK workplaces there was discrimination, "particularly against those who choose to be mothers, and also against those who choose non-traditional patterns of work".(Graham Snowdon, 2011) Interestingly, those countries with less flexibility tend to have a higher percentage of women in senior management. In the low-ranking G7 countries, 72% of businesses provide flexible working arrangements, while in China, where women hold 51% of senior management roles, only 27% of businesses offer flexibility.

The reason for holding women back can be variable, in the final analysis is male and female have different attitude on same things. Flexibility gives choice and women are weighing up whether to take fulltime, senior management roles, or possibly less senior positions with more flexibility in order to balance other commitments in their lives. Another factor possibly holding some women back from committing to these senior management positions is the peer pressure from other women who have not chosen to return to their careers quickly. More than that, there are some subtle exclusion which are more terrible bother female during the work. For example, the job entails standing for long hours in crowded buses, trying to push my way through male passengers, some of whom can be nasty. On compare, male peers have to go through the same rigmarole, but they don’t have to deal with "unwanted attention" from passengers. In the corporate world, the methods of exclusion are more subtle. Key decisions are sometimes made during ‘smoke breaks’, which several women may not attend. If you are the only woman in a conference room and you feel that your views are not really being considered, this implies subtle exclusion. The concept of the old boys’ club is all-pervasive, during promotions, they tend to recommend people who think alike. There is a perception that women cannot be policymakers. Then, of course, is the bias against women who resume work there after maternity leave or personal breaks. Working women have another inner demon to tackle. They are often put on a guilt trip when they are forced to leave family after maternity leave or are put on night shifts or have to travel for work. If a man needs to work late or has to travel regularly, no questions are raised. Working women’s needs should be measured by the same yardstick.

Women are rising their voice to let people knowing the "Glass Ceiling". However their is an article writing by Georgia Nugent and published on The Washington Time in 2013 use an title as "Can we stop talking about the glass ceiling?" provide much food for thought. In this article, the author use her successful career as instance, try to tell audience that women can harvest in a man’s dominated world. She said "On a day-to-day basis, I am so dramatically more impressed by the windows of opportunity that have been flung open for women than by the occasionally stale air that lingers in a few rooms." She is no Pollyanna. Despite the fact that women have outpaced men in attendance and completion at all levels of higher education, women still occupy only one-quarter of all college and university presidencies. That can be fixed by pass on lessons learned over 35 years in higher education. What she want to do is reflect on strategies for women, not barriers. In her experience, succeeding in a male-dominated world has often entailed knowing when to say no, and having the instincts to extricate yourself from a tricky situation — often through humor or through the assistance and advice of other female leaders. If you need a mnemonic device for it, you might look to the old country-western refrain of The Gambler: "Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em; know when to walk away, know when to run." Humor, she have learned, is the equalizer that makes clear our common humanity, independent of gender. Particularly earlier in her career, she often found herself in the opposite situation of needing to hold my ground with the firmness of saying no rather than the lightheartedness of humor. She helped a female graduate student who simply wasn’t making the grade, when her male colleagues who had known the student for years were reluctant to deal with the problem. She could also surprised when found the list of appointees are all women. She took the opportunity to make it clear that gender balance isn’t about selecting all women. She also highlighted the fact that women were all in deputy positions, not executive ones. Either the constitution of the group needed to change or she needed to walk away from its leadership and then restructured the committee. Throughout her career, more often than not she has been warmly welcomed as a woman in a leadership role. But she believe the best way to deal with such issues, and to help more women get ahead, is not to focus on the barriers, or to get stuck by feeling downtrodden or oppressed. A sense of humor, a strong spine and a supportive network can take you much further. (Georgia Nugent,

2013)

The dreaded glass ceiling, long believed to be keeping females out of senior positions, could be all in the mind, a report suggests. According to a survey by management experts, the biggest obstacle on women’s climb to the top is their level of confidence – not their gender. Only 30 per cent of women under the age of 30 said they expect to become senior managers, it found – compared with 45 per cent of men. Half of women managers said they have a high level of confidence, against 70 per cent of men. Some 73 per cent of women say there is a glass ceiling limiting their prospects of promotion – but only 36 per cent of women feel their own careers have been hindered. And nearly half of female managers of all ages – 47 per cent – believe there should be quotas of women in the boardroom. Fewer women than men have ambitions to reach middle management, department head, general management or director level.’ But women appeared to be far more confident when it comes to starting their own companies, the survey found. It found more young women than men are looking to start and run their own business. One in four women aged under 30 said they were planning to start an enterprise in the next ten years, compared with one in five men in that age group. A decade ago, an inquiry by the previous government found there was no discrimination against women at work. The most recent figures on the gender pay gap show that women aged under 30 earn more than men. But women’s pay begins to lag behind after this – mainly because 30 is the age at which many women start easing off at work to spend time looking after their growing families. The ILM study backs up the findings of a controversial report last month by London School of Economics researcher Dr Catherine Hakim, which said many women do not want careers, but aspire to having a successful husband and a family. (Steve Doughty, 2011)

To summary, we can not ignore the ‘Glass Ceiling’ is exist, any action or thought which try to bury it is unrealistic. All the female have to face it and bring their courage and confidence to challenge it. Those glass wall may not that solid as you image. And when you overcome, don’t forget you have a social responsibility to support others to do the same but also to remind colleagues in senior management and boards of directors what their organisations need to be doing to develop and maintain supportive environments to nurture the talents of these aspiring leaders.