Cultural Constraints on Women Leaders

Josie
Posting #3
Topic: Civil Rights
Title of Article: Cultural Constraints on Women Leaders
Author: Chrystia Freeland
Publication Name: New York Times
Date of Publication: March 30, 2012

This article discussed the challenges women face in trying to gain equal rights and equal leadership, including the cultural barriers that women face. It focuses on a study that two professors at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto did trying to answer the question, "Why aren't there more female leaders?". Soo Min TOh and Geoffrey divided cultures into two types, "tight" cultures and "loose" cultures. According to them the "tight" cultures have clear and ridged rules on how people should behave and they tend to be more strict on women's rights and take a stronger stand against them. "Looser" cultures, in contrast, do not have clear norms and are more tolerant and open to deviation from the rules. However wonderful the looser culture sounds, they still tend to lean towards masculine leadership, but the tighter cultures that do understand make the decision to support female leaders are very good at executing it. For example, Norway, which is considered a tight culture, is high ranking in the world for egalitarianism and has very ambitious equal opportunity legislation. They legally require firms to reach 40% women board representation by 2017. Loose societies do encourage women to start working, but they encourage them to join the work force and start small businesses, not working in large corporations. Most technology start-ups (ex: Google, Apple and Facebook) were not founded by women, in-fact none of them were. There is a complete absence of women leadership. The article brings up the point that some people believe that women themselves might prefer the leadership of men because they, possibly subconsciously, believe that being male is more leaderlike. This is where it is important for women to stay motivated and empowered. Hilary Clinton at the Women in the World conference said "It doesn't matter what country they're in or what religion they claim. They want to control women."