Understanding the Feminist Approach to Management Thinking - Essay Example

?Understanding the Feminist Approach to Management Thinking The chapter “Painting New (Feminist) Pictures of Human Resource Development (and) identifying Research Issues for Political Change” is an attempt by Christina Hughes to understand the value feminist analysis can add in the field of HRD. Hughes has raised a debate on how learning style of women is different from men, how easy or difficult it is for a woman to get access to learning and development and how Human Resource department can change its pedagogy in the benefit of women learning. This debate arose from the time when more and more women stated taking part in economic activities. Initially the feminist wave was that women can also work the way men do and become economically as productive as men are. However, the thought has now taken a new direction. Hughes mentions that most late-twentieth-century feminist are (rightly) resistant to the simplistic arguments, say of men with objectivist, distanced, positivistic, scientific methods and women with subjectivist, connected, interpretive, non-scientific methods. Few feminists would endorse a wholesale science-bashing that smacks more of ideological excess than of a genuine quest for knowledge. Nor would feminists unanimously opt for the essentialism that identifies quantitative methodologies as male, qualitative ones as female; and positivism as male, ‘interpretationism’ as female (Code, 1995 cited in Hughes, 2000, p. 51). Hughes supports the view of the new breed of feminists who have come way ahead of crude assumptions related to two genders and believe in understanding the minute similarities and differences among men and women. Though it has not got much attention of the HR departments as yet, this study can benefit HR the most as there the two genders are supposed to be treated as equal. Also since it is the responsibility of the HR department to train the human resources for the organisational need, a better understanding of the process of learning of the two can facilitate their training process to a great extent. Hughes rightly defines her purpose as to begin to delineate the ways in which the field of human resource development would be enriched through the incorporation of feminist perspectives (Hughes, 2000, p. 63) Even as the number of women in the managerial spheres of organisations has increased, the learning styles and working styles of men is still taken as a norm. Female managers are forced to confirm to men’s style of learning and working. Else they are assumed to be inefficient. Though the women’s way of working in cooperation with other colleagues can be extremely beneficial for the organisation, till date the independent working approach of men is considered to be a norm. The reason behind such an approach is that the top level management in most of the organisations is still dominated by men. Giving data from three developed countries, Fiona M. Wilson quotes that U.K. has only 18% of women in managerial positions, Germany has 25% while U.S. has only 5% of the senior managerial positions filled by women (Wilson, 2003, p. 17) Since several years, the society has groomed men and women in a way that they use two different modes of reasoning. Hughes rightly differentiates the two. She says that more men used the mastering, impersonal and individual modes and more women used the receiving, interpersonal and interindividual patterns of reasoning (Hughes, 2000, p. 55). Based on an interview study, Hughes quotes that the gendering pattern of mastering, impersonal and individual patterns was stronger than the receiving, interpersonal and interindividual patterns (Severeins et al., 1998 cited in Hughes, 2000, p. 56) Another strong belief was that men are more target-oriented than women and women are better in doing repetitive work. However, these generalizations do not always hold true. Women also look for more satisfying and challenging jobs as shown in a study on job satisfaction and employee attrition. Many women, like men, express the need for personally satisfying work and the failure to find it is often a reason for changing jobs (Wilson, 2003, p. 111). To understand how this change is happening, Wilson has a point in going back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. For ages women have been staying at home and taking care of the family. Her labour at home is considered as non-economical or unproductive i.e. doing nothing. Hence most of them have not developed the kind of self confidence, esteem, and self adequacy. That could be one of the reasons why she takes decisions in a relational manner, looks for more cooperation at work. Those who have become self sufficient have reached to the next level of hierarchical need i.e. self actualization which is similar to their male counterparts. Self actualization is the ultimate human goal. Self actualization is about self fulfillment (Wilson, 2003, p. 112). Men have found to underestimate the importance of intrinsic motivation for women (Wilson, 2003, p. 116). To prove this, Wilson puts forward the example of a survey done on university students. The students were asked to mention ten motivating factors for themselves as well as the opposite sex. The result showed that there was a significant difference between what women thought as motivators for them and what male students thought as motivators for the women. These students, who would later become managers, will continue to have the same perception and will continue to take decisions related to motivation of women employees on similar lines. Perception of men that women are less efficient is not the sole factor that impedes the growth of a woman. Hughes has rightly indicated that the higher is a person in hierarchical level, the more are the chances of getting trained for skill development and hence the more are the chances of his promotion. Since the percentage of women at higher levels of hierarchy is significantly less, they are less likely to get trained further and their chances of promotion are lesser. This is in spite of the fact that women have are doing better than men in formal education. Additionally many women take a career break to take up responsibilities of child-birth and child-rearing. This further adds to their non-committed image at work and hence reduced chances of training and growth. Mothers and wives that were previously working and now staying at home is a huge human capital that can be tapped through part time jobs. Though there are some industries in the process to tap this resource hub, part time work is still not given the kind of respect that a full time occupation. Regarding the industries that have scope for part time work, Wilson says that largest concentration of women working part time are in the service industry (education, retail, hotels and catering, medical and health services (Wilson, 2003, p. 15). Hughes also has a point when she says that childcare should also be considered as an economic activity. This definitely requires a fundamental change in the thought process of feminist writers as well as the masses. Additionally, if the organisations wish women to continue to work for them, they need to give facilities like flexible working hours, access to training and childcare arrangement. Indeed, the new picture of the modern human resource department needs to be painted, that brings men and women together in the centre and not marginalize half of the population. The new picture that includes the learning styles and working styles of both genders, where work is not categorized on the basis of gender and where there is sensitivity to the needs of women. Bibliography: Hughes, Christina., (2000), Painting New (Feminist) Pictures of Human Resource Development (and) Identifying Research Issues for Political Change, Management Learning, London, Thousand Oaks, CA, New Delhi: SAGE Publications. Wilson, Fiona M., (2003), Organizational Behaviour and Gender, Hants: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Gilligan, Carol., (1985), In a Different Voice: Women's Conceptions of Self and of Morality, Available through: Rutgers University Press. [Accessed 13 May 2011] Eisler, Riane., (1988), The Chalice and The Blade, New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Calas, Marta B., and Linda Smircich. (1997) Postmodern Management Theory. Great Britain: Dartmouth Publishing Company Limited. Read More