WOMEN ARE BETTER MANAGERS THAN MEN Class Assignment in Human Organizational Behavior Submitted by: Corazon R.

Valdez

Several studies confirm the statement. of management.

A few substantiate the claim

with

data on profitability to measure the impact of women in the upper echelons A professor at Pepperdine University (Roy Adler), did a study in 2001 and concluded that companies who favored more women did better financially. He looked at 200 Fortune 500 companies from 1990-1998, and discovered that the 25 best firms for women outperformed the industry medians on three measures: 34 percent higher profits; 18 percent higher assets; and 69 percent higher stockholders' equity. In 2007, Catalyst published a similar study (2001-2004 data from Fortune 500 companies) with the top quartile having the most women on their boards, and the bottom quartile the least. Their profitability were compared on several parameters: For return on equity, the top quartile yielded 13.9 percent, compared with 9.1 for the bottom; for return on sales, the top quartile achieved 13.7 percent, versus 9.7; for return on invested capital, the top quartile reached 7.7 percent, as opposed to 4.7. A significant difference in the parameters given, made Harvey Wagner, a business professor at the University of North Carolina who helped conduct the study conclude that "If you take a company in 2009, and it has no women on its board, you've got a troubled company". Johanna Krotz in her article Do women make better managers?, cited their anatomical difference as proof of why women are considered better managers. Science has indeed identified more nerve cells in certain areas of the womens brain and a larger corpus collusum, that connects the left and right hemispheres. This physiological variation makes women faster at transferring data between the computational, verbal left half and the intuitive, visual right half. Men are on the other hand, left-brain oriented,

making them better at solving abstract equations and problems. The facility of the connection make women more flexible and better at multitasking. This flexibility allows women managers to take on a more consensus or team-building approach as opposed to the men's command-and-control style. An influential study, conducted by the management consultant Advanced Teamware (since merged with ConsultingTools), analyzed database of more than 6,000 managers in 1996. The study demonstrated that women performed well in both right- and left-brain skill areas. They received higher evaluations than men in 28 of the 31 individual behaviors, representing 90% of items. According to Debra Burrell, a psychological social worker and regional training director of the Mars-Venus Institute in New York: women managers tend to have more of a desire to build than a desire to win. They are better at exploring compromises and soliciting other people's opinions. This is as opposed to men who think that asking other people for advice, will be interpreted as a weakness on their part, because they are unsure, or that they dont have the right answers.
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As a consequence of this leadership style, women encourage openness and are more accessible. Because of their openness, women are better at defining job expectations and providing feedback. They are more tolerant of differences, and are better skilled at managing diversity.

Terri Levine, a career coach based in North Wales, Pennsylvania, who gives professional advise to entrepreneurs has this observation to say: women ask questions, men tend to give answers. They also tend to delegate more readily and express appreciation more readily. empowering their staff. They are eventually better at That in the long run translates into cost-effective

staffing because of lower turnover, and more effective recruiting.

If women have the managerial edge how come there are still very few women running Fortune 500 companies? In the corporate VP ranks, there are roughly three men to every woman. Fisher in 1992 reported a survey in Fortune noting a slight increase to 4.8 percent for women in top managerial positions from 2.9 percent in 1986. Herminia Ibarra and Morten T. Hansen who wrote the article Women CEOs: Why So Few? in December 2009 even estimated this number to be smaller. In their article, of the 2,000 of the world's top performing companies, they found only 29 (1.5%) had women CEOs, an even smaller percentage than on the Fortune 500 Global list of 2.6%. Crystal L. Owen and William D. Todor offered an answer in their article: Attitudes toward women as managers: still the same - few women hold executive positions. managerial positions. In a study by Heilman et al. in 1989, male managers were asked to characterize both male and female managers. Female managers were characterized as less self-confident, less emotionally stable, less analytical, less consistent, and having poorer leadership abilities than their male counterparts. According to Ann Carol Brown, consultant to several Fortune 500 companies: "The biggest hurdle is a matter of comfort not competence". She notes that at the senior-management levels, competence is assumed. Its the personjob fit that matters. How does a group of men feel a woman is going to fit? What theyre after is someone who fits the group, who gets along well, and whom they can trust. And thats very seldom not one of the boys. Judy Rosener wrote the same sentiments in her article entitled Women on Corporate Boards Makes Good Business Sense. She notes the subtle comfort There is a persistent negative stereotype about women as managers. They are seen as less able than men for

issue that cant be ignored for senior executive women working for men in client companies. The bias is men still prefer working with men. They feel such discomfort and confusion working with women in other than traditional support roles they are used to. Even our own culture nurtures the same discrimination. Enriquez (1978, 1994) who fathered Sikolohiyang Pilipino unfolded the concept of kapwa or shared identity in his writings. He categorized kapwa into two groups according to the level of interaction that is accorded. One group is ibangtao, (the women in this instance) where the interaction can range from civility, to interaction, to joining, to in-conformity with, and to being along with. As opposed to the other group which is hindi-ibang-tao (in this instance, one of the boys). The latter is expected to be accorded

acceptance, or involvement, or the highest level of one being with. The WAMS (Women as Managers Scale) study done by Peters et al. in 1974 assessed stereotypes toward women in the role of manager. Results reveal the potential for discrimination to remain against women until after all of the "old boys" retire. The preconceptions about how men and women differ in their managerial ability, will continue until a concerted effort to educate and train is addressed to dispel wrong notions and assumptions. Not until after this is given enough attention will women ever realize their full potential in the top level managerial posts, even if they are proven equally competent, if not better than their male counterparts, as more research data give evidence to this possibility.