Christine, Sarah, Kyle - Challenges Facing Women in Leadership in India and the United States

Challenges Facing Women in Leadership in India

Women in India face a variety of obstacles that impede their path to success in management positions. While women in India are revered in society for their contributions within the family and community, the same does not hold true as consistently for women’s contributions in the business realm (Budhwar, Siani, & Bhatnagar, 2005). Conflicts between family and professional obligations, patriarchal domination of management positions, gender stereotypes, and lack of resources impede women’s quest for positions of power in India.

Perhaps the most important barrier to women seeking and receiving managerial roles in India is that family is the unwavering first priority of women. Women are often deterred from pursuing a career because they do not want to take time away from caring for their families to pursue a job outside of the home, especially higher level positions that may be more demanding of their time. On the other hand, many businesses are often reluctant to hire female managers because they fear that maternity leave and the obligations of motherhood will significantly impede a woman’s ability to perform in the workplace (Budhwar et al, 2005).

The patriarchal monopoly of management positions in India is influenced greatly by the extremely high percentage (93%) of businesses that are family-run (Mitra, 2002). Within the Indian family, women are expected to be subordinate to the males in the family and therefore do not hold much obvious power in business matters of the family (Budhwar et al, 2005). The same holds true in family businesses, where most women are given low-level positions with no opportunity of advancing into more prestigious roles. There seems to be a glass ceiling that exists for women in family businesses in India because views of patriarchal entitlement to these positions of power are so ingrained in many members of this society. Even when a woman becomes widowed, she is not the rightful heir of her husband’s business and/or property. These assets are either claimed by a son or another male member of the family due to patrilineal tradition (Mitra, 2002).

Considering a woman does break through the many barriers to assuming a managerial position, she is still faced with the heavily ingrained patterns of male dominance in the workplace in her daily business interactions. One study has shown that insubordination of male employees to female managers is one of the most difficult challenges that women face in these positions (Budhwar et al, 2005). Due to the belief that the domain of women is in inferior roles, female managers are often given less challenging assignments and are left out of many major business dealings, which greatly undermines their development and confidence as managers. Along the same lines, the same study found that many males seem to feel the need to protect their egos when they feel threatened by women’s success in the business world. They may go about this process by excluding women from informal networks and by using stereotypes to try to devalue women’s achievements in the workplace.

Women in the workforce in India face many gender stereotypes that hinder their attainment of influential positions within companies and government. The results from a 2002 study indicate the gender stereotypes in Indian businesses are such that:

“Male managers are stereotyped as working in the fields of production, sales and marketing, considered good bosses, leaders and decision makers, and carry out ‘hard’ field work and challenging assignments. On the other hand, female managers are stereotyped as working predominantly in HR, PR and administration at subordinate or junior levels, and in ‘soft’ fields like fashion, clothing and beauty products related organizations” (Khandelwal, n.d., 230)

Female respondents of this study also reported feeling that they did not receive as much credit as their male counterparts for the same amount of work and that they were not given the opportunity to take on more challenging job tasks. In addition, Gupta, Koshal, & Koshal (1998) found that male managers in particular held the opinion that women did not have the ability to gain the skills required of a management position, did not act with the appropriate level of objectivity, could not restrain their emotions from affecting their work, and do not have high enough levels of self-confidence to be effective in a managerial position.

Lastly, women in India face the challenge of having a lack of resources in many different contexts related to achieving success in the business world. First, although many women do receive formal education, it is often found that these women have no particular area of specialization or skill, nor the real-world experience to make them more marketable in the business world (Mitra, 2002). In addition, many of the other barriers that have already been discussed lead to a lack of resources in the areas of finance and networking. For instance, the patriarchal society of India and women’s inferior roles do not give them a great deal of financial power to support many investments in education, job training, or entrepreneurship. Also, the fact that many informal networks in the business world are still only open to men leaves women who are trying to establish contacts within the business world at a disadvantage.

Comparison of Challenges Facing Women in India and the United States

The challenges that are faced by women in business in India and the United States are shared in some respects and different in several others, partly due to their diverse cultural contexts. All of the barriers to assuming managerial roles that were discussed in relation to Indian society certainly do exhibit themselves in American society as well, but they may be to a lesser degree, or actualized in a more covert manner in some cases.

One of the most significant problems that women in the United States face in relation to their role in the workforce is trying to achieve that balance between family and work. Although India is very high in family collectivism and the United States ranks lower on this cultural dimension, this aspect of women’s professional struggles is fairly universal because, although society has changed to accommodate longer maternity leaves and fathers tend to contribute more time to household duties than in the past, much of the household, and, particularly, childbearing responsibilities are still women’s concerns (Budhwar et al, 2005). Both India and the United States have passed legislation in the past few decades that has attempted to accommodate the dual role of women in the workplace as professionals and mothers, although this issue is far from resolved due to somewhat weak adherence to these laws (Budhwar et al, 2005; Harris & Moran, 2004).

As far as patriarchal domination of managerial positions is concerned, more women in the United States do move beyond this barrier and into positions of power more often than in India (Harris & Moran, 2004). Although the workforce in India is constantly increasing in its percentage of female workers, it is important to note that the vast majority of these positions are lower-level, service oriented jobs such as human resources, information technology, etc. Compared to worldwide values, women in India hold an estimated one third to one half less administrative positions than global averages (only 3 to 5.8% as compared to 10%) (Budhwar et al, 2005). Perhaps these differences are influenced by India’s moderate to high power distance culture (Gupta, 2004), which may combine with its patriarchal views to produce a culture in which it is more difficult to assume those coveted high level positions in management.

Gender stereotypes certainly do pervade corporate culture in both the United States and India. While a higher percentage of men may be more likely to be accepting of women in managerial positions in the United States due to the nation’s slightly less patriarchal culture and lower power distance nature, there are still many men that endorse stereotypes of women that are damaging to their advancement in management. For example, Harris and Moran (2004) contest that it is a global stereotype that:

“Women are seen as more “human” and therefore better suited for a specific type of job, such as human resources, communications, public relations, and marketing. Management, especially in the areas of finance and information services, continues to often be seen as a job better suited for men (238).”

Lastly, women in both India and the United States face problems due to lack of resources, although more women typically have the opportunity to pursue a higher level education in the United States, which helps to breakdown the barriers of education and, possibly, financial troubles. While women in the United States do enjoy these benefits, many women still find that it is very difficult to advance due to their exclusion from the informal, “old boys’ network” that still exists in many corporations, through which many advancement opportunities often arise (Harris and Moran, 2004). Both the United States and India are considered to be in the middle range for gender egalitarianism (Gupta, 2004), which may explain why women are still barred from enjoying all of the resources so readily available to men, especially those that cannot be controlled for with equal rights legislation, such as informal networks.