CHALLENGES AND PARADOXES WOMEN FACE IN LEADERSHIP POSITIONS –

AN OVERVIEW
Lakshmi. B & Farina Meharin. M
I B.com (General)
Sri Kanyaka Parameswari Arts & Science for Women
ABSTRACT: Easing into the New Year, one big hope we have for 2017 is that women continue
to bridge the gender gap in terms of pay equality and access to leadership positions. So much of
the news was good for the past few years: women were better educated than ever, we continued
to claim coveted CEO roles at companies such as General Motors, IBM and PepsiCo, Inc., and
one study even reported that women were the primary breadwinners in a majority of households.
That sounds like progress. Yet, in order to clear a path for greater advancement and parity, we
need to address the difficult paradoxes that women leaders continue to face — these are the
uncomfortable realities and mixed messages that complicates the positive and progressive
situation. How many of us know that there are only around 15 percent of executives, 8 percent of
top earners, and only 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEO’s are women. It seems that there is a huge
gap between men and women leadership and closing it has been one of the challenges in the last
even 50 years. From all above indications it doesn’t seem to be working. Keeping this thing in
mind, this paper is an attempt to explore the various challenges and paradoxes which women
face in leadership positions and possible ways to convert those obstacles into opportunities.

INTRODUCTION: The concept of leadership comprises of three aspects; people, goals and
influence. Basically, leadership is an influential action which is used to achieve goals. Leadership
is an action which is people driven and the capability to inspire individuals helps to achieve the
set goals and objectives of an organization. Leadership can be seen as an efficient tool or a
process to motivate people. The motivation aims to attain particular goals by the action of those
people. The different styles of leadership derive from different methods and ways of motivating
people, different kind of aims and goals and the nature of the organizations. Hence, leaders are
the one who set the course of direction for others to move forward to future and motivate them to
attain the set goals by certain technique of functioning or acting. Great leaders are not the one
who simply lead and say where to go, they have to participate in it themselves as well. Leaders
need to performance based on their visions, as they are just judged by their action, not by what
they talk or say. Leaders should have authority and responsibility, and they must have vision for
the future and be confident to lead everyone there.

Female leadership is generally defined by the differences between femininity and masculinity.
The characteristics that are considered to influence problem solving, decision making and
achievements are compared often. The aim of this paper is to highlight the value and benefits of
feminine features in leadership today and the advantages diversity brings to organizations and
businesses nowadays. Women and men are different biologically from each other, and usually
their family background, culture and society shape and strengthen gender roles. The traditional
responsibility and role of a men is to support their family and the part of a women in the society
is to take care of children and home. Traditionally, men are thought to be more aggressive and
women are perceived to be nurturing in nature. Different stereotypes of women and men's
characteristics and the roles they play in the society still exist strongly. However, each and
everyone has their own individual characteristics, strengths and weaknesses and that is the reason
why stereotyping should be avoided.

WOMEN’S UNIQUE LEADERSHIP CHARACTERISTICS

 Capability to network with colleagues.

 Skill to observe and understand situations.
 Strong sense of loyalty, dedication and commitment to their organizations.
 Skill to multitask.
 Cooperative work style—solicit input from others, with respect for ideas.
 Crisis management abilities.
 Readiness to share information.
 Thoughtfulness in relationships (e.g., compassionate, empathetic, understanding).
 Working in a gender-neutral manner.

CHALLENGES FOR WOMEN LEADERS

1. Mental Harassment: It is an olden convention that women are less talented and inefficient in
working when compared to that of men. The approach that women are unfit for certain jobs holds
back women. Despite of the constitutional provisions, gender bias creates hindrances in their
recruitment. In addition to this, the same discriminatory attitude is the causal variable for unequal
salaries for the same job. The true gender equality has not been attained even after 72 years of
independence. Working in such circumstances inevitably puts stress and strain on women to a
greater extent as compared to that of men, thus making them less enthusiastic in their career.
2. Sexual Harassment: Today, majority of the working women are exposed to sexual harassment
irrespective of their background, personal characteristics, status and the types of their
employment. They tackle sexual harassment on way when they commute, at working places,
educational institutions like college, schools and hospitals, at home and the worst part is even in
police stations when they go to file complaints. It is contemptible that the law protectors are
violating and outraging modesty of women. Most of the women tend to be crowded in the poor
service jobs whereas men are in an immediate supervisory position, which in turn gives them
chance to exploit their immediate subordinate women.

3. Discrimination at Workplace: Indian women are still facing blatant discrimination at their
workplaces. They are often deprived of growth opportunities and promotions at work places but
this does not apply to all working women, there are always few exceptions. A majority of
working class women continue to be deprived of their right to equal pay, under the Equal
Remuneration Act, 1976 and are paid less in comparison to their male colleagues. This is usually
the scenario in factories and labor-oriented industries.

4. Lack of Family Support: Lack of proper family support is another crucial issue that working
women suffers all the time. At times, the family does not support women to leave the household
duties and work and go to office. They also resist for women working late in office which also
seriously hampers the performance of the women and this also affects their promotion and
progression in their career.

5. Insufficient Maternity Leaves: Insufficient and inadequate maternity leave is another major
problem that is faced by a working mother. This not only has a negative impact on the
performance of women employees at work, but is also detrimental to their personal lives.

6. Work Life Balance Related Stress: Work and family acts as two sides of a coin and both are
vital in a women’s lives. Balancing between work and family roles has become a key personal
and family problem for many societies. There are multiple facets in working mother’s lives that
subject to stresses. Women deal with home and family issues at the same time as well as job
stress on a daily basis. World Health Organization’s (WHO) definition Occupational or work-
related stress “is the response people may have when presented with work demands and
pressures that are not matched to their knowledge and abilities and which challenge their ability
to cope.” Reasons of occupational stress imbalance between family and work leads to
occupational stress.

PARADOXES WOMEN LEADERS FACE

1. The Pay Paradox. According to the latest statistical figures, women are far better educated
than ever, earning almost 65 percent of all college degrees. Yet, women are paid 25% less than
men on average. Some of the gap can be attributed to choice of career: more number of women
than men choose to go into teaching and social work, for instance, which pay less relative to
“male” professions such as banking, finance and technology. But career choice is not the only
attribute which fully explain The Pay Paradox. An analysis of full-time workers 10 years out of
college, for example, found a 13 percent difference in earnings that was entirely unexplained by
choice of profession. The bottom line is that improvement in wage equity has hit a wall.

2. The Double-Bind Paradox. Women must project solemnness in order to advance at work, yet
they also need to retain their “feminine positive mystique” in order to be liked. Perhaps
surprisingly, of all the stereotypes that women encounter, this is the one that most women tell us
about in coaching circumstances. Research by Catalyst confirms that gender stereotypes indeed
make it difficult for female leaders to feel comfortable taking a challenging and commanding
stance because they are perceived as either competent or liked — but hardly both. As Forbes
recently noted, “research show that assertive and positive women are more likely to be perceived
as aggressive and rough; that women usually do not ask for what they deserve but when they do,
they risk being stamped as domineering or, worse even, “ambitious.” These are the double-bind
dilemmas that we as a society need to banish before women can contribute fully within
organizations.

3. The Promotion Paradox. Only 4 percent of the CEOs in Fortune’s top 1,000 companies are
female and less than 20 percent of Congress is women. Even poorer progress has been relatively
flat over the past several years. This is a sticky wicket because there are a dozen different ways
to explain this sad condition and each one rings true to some degree: Women are less determinant
and aggressive than male in stepping up to demand for the big jobs they want. Men at the
hierarchy are more likely to pull other men up by their collars to join them. Women have only
limited leadership role models and they arguably have greater demands outside of work
competing for their attention. Regardless of whether the extenuating factor is discrimination, the
leadership pipeline, society, or something overall different, the extreme disparity of women
versus men at the highest levels provides energy for many of us to push harder. Unfortunately, it
also makes many of us to wonder if the struggle for career parity is truly worth a while. The
effect is that the group of qualified female candidates for top jobs gets lesser when the best
women leave to raise families or pursue part-time work or some other endeavors.

4. The Networking Paradox. Women are perfect relationship builders, yet we never use our
contacts to get ourselves promoted. The women say that the time they spent networking with
each other makes them feeling renewed. It gives them the energy and power to face the day, the
forthcoming meeting, or the succeeding crisis. Social exchange not only grounds women but it
also permits them to share information, ideas and solutions to the common problems they
generally face. Yet, our strong social networks also represent a remarkable, untapped
opportunity. Usually men network in a much more transactional way — they exchange business
data and establish a quid pro quo of career favors. They actively seek out supporters and they ask
for jobs. For women, networking is all about social. Women are not as efficient as men at using
our strong networks to advance their careers. Women spend more time networking with each
other, yet women fail to ask for favors. In short, women hesitate to trade on our relationships
because it feels crass.

5. The Startup Paradox. Women make great businesspersons, yet we have a harder time getting
Venture capital backing. A study by Dow Jones Venture Source shows that women launch nearly
50% of all startups and the most successful startups have more female in senior positions than
unsuccessful ones. Yet, despite these results, less than 10 percent of executives at the 20,000+
companies in the Dow Jones study were female. This conveys us that the gender gap is even
more noticeable in venture-funded start-ups than in corporate America. This points to the
shortage of women pursuing careers in technology and science, as well as the need for venture
firms to wake up and recognize the leadership potential of female entrepreneurs.

CONCLUSION: These paradoxes are crucial to address for a great many reasons — fairness
and just being the most obvious. But even beyond creating a fair and just system that allows
more and more women into the leadership pipeline, the practical problem generated by mixed
messages is that it robs women of confidence and squashes their dream and desire to jump into
the fray and become leaders. The world needs the best competent women to step up to the plate,
and women need to be capable to weave their way through these most difficult of challenges.
First, they remain true and genuine to their own leadership style. The skills that many women
bring to business naturally — a collaborative style, a talent for listening, skill to do multiple task
and a natural ability to manage interpersonal relationships — are some of the traits that all
leaders need now and in the future. Women actually do not need to imitate men in order to be
successive, persuasive and authoritative, they simply need to be authentic and natural. Second,
we need to coach women to have their own definition of success. These paradoxes and others
indeed mean different things to different people. Industries too exhibit an imbalance with more
women in retail or nursing leadership roles and less in construction, engineering or banking.
Remember how far we have come from the 1950s notion that women are meant to be married,
have children and stay at home. But we are still in the midway and have a long way to go to
ensure the best talent makes it into leadership positions.

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