Women and Men in Management

If you were to choose a dozen books as a foundation library about women in the workplace, this book should be amongst them. It has two great strengths. One is its clarity and accessibility. This book is so well written and its style is so clear and unpretentious, that it could easily be given to someone with no previous academic knowledge to read about one of the topics.

For example, imagine that you know someone who would benefit from finding out more about the effect of gender stereotypes and could persuade this hypothetical person to read the book’s chapter on gender differences. Reading the Gender Roles chapter would enable the complex landscape of distinctions, definitions and differences to be sketched out. The reader would have a new intellectual map for further thinking and reading about gender stereotypes as well as guiding workplace practice. And all without the weariness that comes from toiling through dense thickets of impenetrable prose. Better still, as well as being readable, the authors link their points to familiar knowledge. In the case of the Gender Differences chapter, they use the example of the extreme and exaggerated femininity of a Barbie doll to illustrate the way that society creates stereotypes.

The second strength of the book would, on the face of it, seem hard to combine with a clear writing style. Yet, along with clarity, the book also has a strong focus on in‐depth knowledge gained from research findings. Each chapter makes its points by linking them to the work of researchers. So the Gender Differences chapter begins with Barbie, quoting from Mary Rogers’ (1999) book on Barbie culture, then goes on to highlight research evidence about the differences between men’s and women’s attitudes towards gender roles. (Men’s attitudes are less egalitarian than women’s.)

The chapter moves to research on sex differences, the findings of research into differences between girls and boys in terms of verbal abilities, visual‐spatial abilities and mathematical abilities, explaining the results of studies which use meta‐analysis to synthesise findings from several different studies. The focus then shifts to moral judgments, explaining the work of Carol Gilligan. This section is one of many where the authors make a researcher’s findings quite transparent to those reading about the work for the first time, without oversimplifying the research results. Powell and Graves say of Gilligan:

She distinguished between males’ and females’ approaches to morality. Men tend to use a justice orientation, which is concerned with principles of equality and fairness. In contrast, females tend to use a care orientation, which is concerned with maintaining relationships, being sensitive to the needs of others, and avoiding harm to others. Thus, when asked whether it is right for a man to steal a drug he cannot afford to keep his wife from dying, boys tend to answer no, citing principles of justice, and girls tend to answer yes, citing human compassion (Powell and Graves, 2003, p. 42).

From moral judgments, the chapter moves on to consider social behaviour, then gender stereotypes, sexism, gender identity and gender role socialisation. The chapter ends with a practical section on ways of influencing gender stereotypes and roles, so that, after a guided tour through the research findings, readers can make links between the research findings and how they might use them as a basis for acting in their everyday lives. Throughout the book, each chapter ends with a practical section linking the research findings to what can be done to react to and improve the situation the research describes. Obviously the practical suggestions are quite broad ones. These sections are written in an engaging, conversational way, which helps draw readers into the project alongside the authors, as they think about what their own response could be to concerns such as the effect of gender stereotyping on women and men in management.

Talking about the authors’ tone of voice throughout the book leads me to the next stand‐out feature of Women and Men in Management. The authors write in a very balanced way and as you read there is no feeling that they are trying to prove a particular perspective. It is a book that you trust to set the information before you and, even while much time is spent going over familiar territory, the authors often help you to see features of the information more clearly or to recognise new aspects of the terrain. For example, it had not occurred to me previously that gender stereotypes had remained so stable over time and across cultures. So it is a book that helps you to integrate information you may already know in part and leads you to muse on how much more there is to know.

And if you do want to know more, the book’s thorough, comprehensive referencing is a wonderful resource. Each chapter is followed by a list of full and extensive footnotes which can take you further into the topic. The first three chapters lay the foundation for understanding sex and gender, The chapters that follow cover employment decisions, working in teams, leadership, sex in the workplace, careers and, finally, promoting diversity. Because there are just two authors, this book has strengths in terms of its integration between chapters and its unified presentation and style that an edited book with chapters by separate authors cannot hope to achieve. This unity makes it very satisfying to read.

Nevertheless and perhaps inevitably, some areas and issues are covered better than others. Sexual harassment was dealt with in a very calm, practical way with interesting statistics on the cost in terms of productivity. Sex and gender are covered extremely well. A framework is established which makes sense of the research activity in the area; an impressive feat, as so much has been written that many writers would have been defeated by the thought of structuring a framework which would not collapse under the sheer mass of research findings. Fortunately Powell and Graves are adept at being selective.

They are also quite relaxed about balancing the research by reminding us of points that can be lost in the mass of studies about particular aspects of gender, such as work/family responsibilities. The authors remind us that single people without partners have families and family responsibilities too. The Working in Teams chapter gave interesting insights, as this is an area which has not been dealt with often, but the Diversity chapter was less impressive. The book did show an understandable US bias here and the treatment of the topic could have been much more international and less superficial.

However, these are petty criticisms of a book which succeeds in being so many things to so many people: students, teachers and practitioners. The former 2nd edition of this book was published in 1993. After this length of time since publication books become difficult to source. This 3rd edition will have made the book much more readily available and the updating and integrating of recent research have made the book even more valuable. Take it from me – if you have any interest at all in gender and work, your bookshelf needs this book.