May 17, 2011
Corporate Women and Office Politics
Is women’s reluctance to join in office politics the reason there aren’t more females in top positions? New research from Carleton’s Lorraine Dyke suggests otherwise, and may just cause a few cracks to form in the glass ceiling.
Dyke is an associate professor of management and strategy in the Sprott School of Business, as well as the director of the Centre for Research and Education on Women and Work and the Management Development Program for Women.
With over 20 years experience in the field of gender issues, she has now turned her sights to women executives and their political behaviour in the workplace.
The findings could serve as an important lesson to both genders working at senior levels in business
Traditionally, women have been stereotyped as more nurturing and cooperative, and therefore more inclined to shy away from office politics, explains Dyke, who wanted to test these long-standing theories to see if they hold up in today’s corporate world. She focused in on the senior management level, mostly because this is an area where politics are rife, and where women are in a minority.
In order to first locate her subject pool, Dyke and her collaborator, Karen Somerville (a Sprott PhD graduate), looked at appointment notices in the Globe and Mail, where men outnumber women almost 10 to one. Women and men in similar positions and industries were identified and contacted in order to balance the results.
Several years of appointments were included in the study in order to obtain a large enough sample of executive women.
The responses to the survey were a surprise. Dyke found that women don’t simply engage in office politics, but they’re actually more active than men, particularly when it comes to network building. The findings could serve as an important lesson to both genders working at senior levels in business.
“What we uncovered is completely contrary to the stereotype, and shows you can’t assume that women aren’t political,” says Dyke. “If you ask women about barriers, their biggest frustration is stereotyping. Hopefully we’re helping to bust some of these myths.”
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