The Hindu Business Line : <I>Women and management </I>

Gender issues have caught the attention of the corporate world. Part of a broader concern with women's rights and privileges, they have led to the formulation of policies to acknowledge and assign them their rightful place in the managerial matrix. Further, civil rights activists have taken up the cudgels to combat gender discrimination and defend women from being treated as second-class citizens in the corporate context.

For long, management was thought to be a male occupation. Thus, men are most often in top jobs. Why this state of affairs?

One argument is that women and men are programmed differently, with distinct temperaments, preferences, and styles of action.

Thus men are naturally aggressive, competitive, and risk-intensive, while women are placid, collaborative, and risk-averse.

The contrarian view is that while men and women are different biologically, the differences in attitude, behaviour, and orientation are social artefacts. This idea is that people are born into their sex, but socialised into their gender; they are more a product of their culture than of their nature.

Indeed, a dispassionate analysis reveals that the working environment has been so designed and governed by men, that women have been forced to face barriers in their progress to power. These constraints must be removed so that men and women compete on a level field. The temperamental differences — whether biological, evolutionary, or socially induced — may explain to some extent the difference in career outcomes between men and women.

People in the senior management cadre, whether men or women, unhesitatingly assume major responsibilities, display a flair for crisis management, work long hours, and place work at the centre of their lives. Yet, often men are seen laboriously climbing the corporate ladder even as some women zip up on the elevator. Perhaps, in the ultimate analysis, it is the persona grata that matters.

(The author is a Chennai-based freelance writer.)