2.

1
Introduction .................................................................................................................
........

Humans are the most valuable resource and the contribution by the human assets towards the
growth and success of an organization is monumental. For this reason companies strive to
acquire and retain capable and motivated employees (Opatha, 2009). The Human Resource
Department is required to handle selection, hiring, training and performance evaluations.
Organizations also need to provide opportunities for career development. Knowledge, skills and
attitudes of employees should be nurtured to attain the best benefits from them to achieve the
goals of the organization. Successful career advancement would be beneficial for both the
individual as well as the organization. Companies need to be actively promoting an equal
opportunity workplace to cultivate strong work ethics among employees, increase efficiency and
eliminate barriers of career advancement. Women and minorities tend to face more barriers
where career advancement is concerned.

Empowerment

2.2 Women and Career

Progression ..........................................................................................

14 2.4 Perceptions of Management towards Womens Career

Progression ..................................

17 2.5 Policies and Practices Affecting Womens Career

Progression ..........................................

19 2.6 Impacts of Balancing Work and Family Responsibility on Women's Working

Lives .......

21 2.7 Factors Affecting career development of

women ...............................................................

24 2.8 Career progression among Kenyan

Women........................................................................

32 2.9 Conceptual
framework ........................................................................................................
34 2.10 Chapter Summary and Research
gaps ...............................................................................

36 2.3 Theoretical
Framework .......................................................................................................

Literature Review

The 1995 United Nations conference known as The Beijing Platform for Action identified
womens role in the economy as a critical area of concern. The conference aimed to promote
equal access to employment for women with improved resources and work conditions. This set a
precedence encouraging more employers hiring women and more women over age 25 increasing
their partnership in the workforce. Restrictions and inequality for women in the workplace has
caused a growth in the establishment of female entrepreneurs.

The aims of gender equality in the workplace include providing equal pay for equal work,
elimination of barriers for women to gain employment with access to all occupations and
corresponding training and education opportunities as well as the elimination of discrimination
on the basis of gender, race or identity. Achieving gender equality in the workplace goes beyond
being the right thing to do, creating a fair work environment can drastically improve productivity
and the organizational profit (Wgea.gov.au, 2016). Advantages organizations gain by
implementing an equal opportunity workplace include attracting top talent, reduce employee
turnover rates and overall increase in performance. With access to the entirety of the available
talent pool, employers can recruit the best suited candidates for the unfilled positions. More
women gaining access to education has led to increase in educated women in every level of
education across various fields of study. An organization that fosters an equal opportunity
organization culture would be more appealing to both men and women, resulting in the less
likelihood of losing valuable employees to competitors decreasing the employee turnover rates.
This also leads to a general decrease in organizational recruitment expenditure.

Connect gender equality to career progress

A diverse workplace promotes comprehensive decision making as it brings together varied

perspectives and experiences. For example if an organization is developing a product targeted at
young adult women having the perspectives of a young adult female could greatly aid in the
design and marketing of said product. The World Economic Forum suggests a strong correlation
between a countrys competitiveness and their utilization of the female talent. Over time
educating and empowering women leads to efficient use of the countrys human resource,
enhancing productivity and resulting in economic growth.

Men are much more likely to participate in the labour force than women and according to
surveys conducted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) the labour force participation
rate for men and women in 2015 were 77% and 50% respectively (Ilo.org, 2011) . The labour
force participation rate for women globally was at 52% from 1995 to 2006 but there has been a
drop of 2% since then. The labour force participation rate for women showed notable increases
in South America and the Caribbean as well as in Southern Europe even though the rate was
below 50%. The rate was 30% or lower in Northern Africa, Western Asia and South Asia,
especially in China and India where in the last two decades the womens participation rate
showed a decrease of 8% in both countries. Eastern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are among the
regions with the highest participation rates showing up to 65% yet still lower than that of the
mens. The rate for men varies less widely that than of women.

Equality in a workplace is accomplished when all employees regardless of their gender have
access to the same resources, rewards and opportunities (Keenawinna and Sajeevanie, 2015).
While countries like Germany and Australia have made significant progress towards equal
opportunity work environments, women continue to earn considerably less and face less career
advancement opportunities than men.

While gender equality does focus on womens rights more broadly as women are the
demographic most likely to be discriminated against, to achieve true gender equality issues faced
by men need to be acknowledged as well. In particular, men receive less access to family friendly
policies such as paternity leave.

The wage gap while still a significant issue in many countries but most developed countries have
taken steps to narrow the wage gap and provide work environments that foster a good working
relationship for both men and women by implementing benefits such as maternity leave and the
ability to work from home. According to the United Census Bureau shows that women make
only 79 cents to every dollar a man earns.
Discrimination faced by women range from inappropriate comments by colleagues to sexual
harassment (Heilman and Eagly, 2008). Regardless of the state of economic progress of a
country and female-led achievements throughout history, women are still considered to be
inferior to men by large groups of people. While progressive thinking is allowing more women
into the workforce, unless social attitudes evolve and acceptance becomes the norm gender
equality is tough to achieve. Women also have the added social pressures to get married and raise
families more than men. This results in either women having to juggle professional and personal
matters or women making a choice between having a career or a family.

In the context of Sri Lanka especially, while a culturally conservative and patriarchal society
recent strides in rectifying discriminatory practices have been taken in to effect, such as the right
to transfer a mothers citizenship to her child, better custody laws and protection against
domestic violence, improving the quality of life for women even though more there is more to be
done. Data indicates that between 1996 and 2003 there has been a steady decline in women
married before the age of 16, largely due to an increase in women enrolling in higher education
(Asian Development Bank, 2015). The civil war also has led to a rise in female-headed
households in the Northern and Eastern provinces in particular, meaning more women have
joined the workforce challenging customarily male-dominated fields. However as with the rest of
the world, women face numerous legal, social and administrative barriers including
discriminatory provisions in the nations law regarding pensions and social security. In the
aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, women were disentitled to property due to a provision that it was
a male head of the household that held the authority to sign official documentation
(Genderindex.org, 2014).

While violence against women seems like an unrelated issue when considering gender equality
in the workplace, it is important to assess the general social standing of women in society and the
rates of discrimination and harassment women face on a daily basis. While the Sri Lankan law
criminalizes domestic violence, sexual assault and sexual harassment, the provisions are vague at
best (Genderindex.org, 2014). The larger issue is the cultural attitude towards violence against
women which leads to women not reporting incidents, leading to limited data to assess the true
extent to which gender based violence is committed and the effect it has upon women seeking
education or employment. A startling fact is that there are no reliable data to assess the extent of
the prevalence and the culture of acceptance that is prevalent in society (Herath, 2015).

Women in Sri Lanka, however have relatively equal access to educational institutions, healthcare
system, public property as well as access to bank loans and other forms of credit. Women were
more likely to obtain loans, 19.4% in comparison to the 15.9% loans obtained by men in 2011
(Data.worldbank.org, 2014). This is ideal for female entrepreneurs and female-headed
businesses.

Women also granted the same rights as men to participate in the political landscape. Women have
the right to vote and have the right to be elected and hold public office. Sri Lanka is the first
country in the world to elect a female Prime Minister, Sirima Bandaranaike in 1960 and has also
had a female president subsequently (Guide2womenleaders.com, 2016). In its 68 years history Sri
Lanka has had two female head of states, a feat some developed countries such as USA are yet to
achieve. Nevertheless, women are still underrepresented in decision making roles in both
parliament and local authorities meaning laws that could aid women are not being drafted. The
Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) notes
that political parties lack confidence in female candidates being elected and hence abstain from
investing in them.

The Sri Lankan constitution of 1978, regarding workplace rights stipulates men and women have
equal right to work, wages and benefits. These provisions also give workers rights to minimum
wage, reasonable working hours, annual leave and public holidays. Section 18 of the Shops and
Office Employees Act 1954 provides maternity benefits such as three months paid maternity
leave and protection against dismissal (Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri
Lanka, 1978). Adherence of the law is mostly left to self-regulation and inconsistent enforcement
of the laws result in women undergoing difficulty in the workplace. However these rights do not
extend to employees of the private sector where large numbers of women are employed.

While Sri Lankan society has significantly improved its perception of women
receiving higher education as well as being engaged in formal employment, there is
always room for improvement (find source). The labour force participation rate in
2015 for women is 35.9 in contrast to the mens rate of 74.7 despite having a larger
population. Economically active population comprises of all persons aged 15 years
and above of any gender who available to be part of the labour force during the
reference period.

Gender Economically Active Economically Inactive

Population Percentage (%) Population Percentage (%)

Male 5,255,593 64 1,781,352 25.2

Female 2,958,880 36 5,286,121 74.8

Total 8,214,473 100 7,067,473 100

Conceptual Framework

Independent Variables Dependant Variable

Factors that affect work-life

balance

Career progression of women at

PwC

Management practices/ Corporate

culture

The dependant variable of the conceptual framework is the career progression of

women at PwC. Two independent variable are being employed to describe the state
of the career advancement of female employees at PwC. These two independent
variables are factors that affect work-life balance and management practices.
Factors that could affect an employees ability to fulfill work obligations include
social and cultural opinions, family factors and the employees manage their
schedule. Identifying the external factors that may affect a female employees
chances of progressing in their career would aid in determining which factors are
deterrents and the degree to which they affect the progression.

Work-life balance is derived from work-family balance defined as the degree to

which demands of employment and family are fulfilled by an individual (Opatha,
2010). The term life is utilized instead of family to include factors that affect
employee performance outside of family and dependants. The data gathering from
the target audience aims to determine outline the similarities and differences
between the experience of female employees at work with or without dependants.
To further elaborate factors affecting work-life balance the workload assigned to
employees, hours worked and interference from family and social obligations need
to be considered. Working past standard allocated work hours, working on
weekends, the relative personal anxiety level caused by that and sources of
motivation are other factors that can affect work-life balance.

Another variable that could affect long-term career progression is receiving further
education and training to expand knowledge and improve skills necessary for
efficient working. Analyzing the current state of the effects of factors that affect
work-life balance could aid in determining areas of improvement and aid with
drawing solutions.

The management practices focused on is the corporate culture in everyday practice

in the organization rather than policies and regulations. The reason for selecting this
independent variable and the related factors is to assess how an employee,
especially a female employee, fares under real-life organization culture in effect.
While human resource rules and regulations vary from organization to organization,
most globalized organizations such as PwC UK set short-term and long term
diversity targets for new hires, senior management positions as well as partner
admissions. This is part of their corporate sustainability goals to reach 50% new
hires be female and 30% of senior management and partners be female by July
2017 (PwC UK, 2017). However unless these policies are strictly adhered to the
results may not reflect the goal set to achieve. Corporate culture varies from region
to region because of local customs, beliefs, values and traditions. Even under the
same parent company, social norms may differ in regional branches leading to
corporate culture being different.