Study On The Influence Factors To The Obstruction Of Female Managers' Career Development

Thanks to social progress and prevalence of ideological equality and freedom, women have now enjoyed a basically equal status with men for career development. More and more organizational management posts are occupied by females. Female managers still encounter particular difficulties on the way from medium to higher level management posts. A report on the Wall Street Daily in 1986 used the phrase "glass ceiling" to describe the intangible obstacles that obstruct women on their way up to higher management posts in enterprises. Although the phrase "glass ceiling" has been used for over 20 years, the situations of women barred under the "glass ceiling" has not bee improved very much. Statistics and studies in China indicate that women occupy much fewer high management posts than men do. Female managers' career development is still the focus of studies of quite a lot of sciences and researchers.A great deal of studies haven been done by scholars of different disciplines in different societies around the world over the in-depth backgrounds of discriminations against women with employment, occupational selection, remuneration and promotion. Interpretations have been given in terms of sociology, psychology, economics, management theories and organizational behaviorism. The following four levels of factors could be discerned that are found to be influential upon women: 1) the social stereotype of sex-related role and the social policies; 2)physiological and psychological pressures upon women caused by work and family conflicts; 3)organizational institutions and cultures, and the recognition and evaluation of female managers' competence and performance; 4) women's personal desires, incentives, ability and their own understanding of values in relation to career and family.Based on analysis of responses to designed questionnaires, this paper constitutes an empirical study of the above-mentioned four levels of factors and their relevance to the obstruction of female managers' career development. As the respondents to the questionnaires are different in personal backgrounds, this paper also makes a difference analysis of and comparative study on those respondents in terms of gender, age, occupation, educational experience, organizational affiliation with a view to explore where there exists a difference of understanding of the "glass ceiling" among those categorized groups.This paper conducts a statistical analysis of the data of 110 managers who hold certain management posts using the software system of the Statistical Software Package for Social Sciences. The analysis results in the following conclusions.Female managers' personal factors such as personal desires, incentives and etc do not constitute obstructions of their career development. Social stereotype and social policies have shown the strongest influence at all the three levels of society, family and organization. They also exert certain effect upon family conceptions and organizational culture. There is no obvious difference between obstructive effect of family factors and that of organizations. Results from sex-based analysis suggests that the stereotype of sex role has been deeply rooted in men to such a extent that they are totally ignorant of the obstructions against female managers' development in both families and organizations. Although men do not purposely hold much discrimination against women, they still cherish a general impression that men are superior to women. Results from organizational analysis indicates that, in state-owned enterprises and institutions where bureaucracy prevails, top positions are always given to seniorities and female managers' competence and values are underestimated. In "other" enterprises included foreign-invested companies where organizational structure and culture is featured by team spirit, humanity and democracy, female managers' personal values are recognized but at the expense of their occupational security. Influence of marriage and children is caused mainly by load of family responsibilities, location of employment, informal relations network and etc.This empirical study and analysis suggests that female managers acquire both high desire and competence for career success. It is now necessary for the society and organizations to provide substantial support and create favorable environment for female managers to realize their potentialities and to provide better service for their organizations.