Conceptual Framework for Understanding the Position of Women in Management

This chapter presents an overview of the conceptual understanding of ‘women in management’ to develop the conceptual framework. The study has examined the three theoretical approaches in the field of women in management, namely gender-centred perspective, organisational perspective and gender-organisational-system perspective (Akpinar-Sposito, 2013). Further, it also adds a fourth dimension—work perspective. It identifies different variables and possible associations among them under four dimensions—Personal, Work, Organisational and Social. It touches upon personal factors vital for career growth which include personality, experience, skills and family responsibilities. It introduces the reader to organisational factors associated with career growth at the management level positions. It discusses mentoring and counselling, training and development opportunities and networking which are essential for career growth. It highlights the work factors which may change the workplace diversity compositions. These factors include the type of work, key assignments, department, average number of office hours in a week, average number of outdoor duty hours, work environment, nature of work and work pressures. It includes social factors like gender stereotypes, occupational segregation and patriarchy. (This chapter is based on two unpublished works of the authors. One is a doctoral thesis of Sanskruti Kadam, and another is a research report on women in management done by Samapti Guha sponsored by ICSSR, India).