The purpose of this essay will be to discuss the family responsibilities that might affect the progression of women into senior management positions within organizations and businesses that are in the hospitality industry. The essay will look at the work-life balance initiatives that working women can be able to use to progress in their careers. Over the years, more and more women have joined the labour market electing to relegate the role of being a mother and homemaker to the back (ILO 2004).
More women have now joined the global work force with a growing number of this population taking up managerial positions within different organizations around the world. Industries such as the hospitality sector have recorded high numbers of women employees who have decided to balance between their work and families to achieve career progression (Davidson and Burke 2002).
Despite the number of women employees in management positions increasing by over 60 percent in the past decade, the general number of women in senior management positions has continued to remain small over time (Powell and Graves 2003).
A survey conducted by Fortune magazine in 1992 showed that women who were in senior management positions within organizations accounted for only 4.8 percent. The major reason that was given for this small number was that women in managerial positions were being stereotyped against by the society which still viewed the role of a woman as being that of a mother and homemaker (Witz 1997).
The general attitude of women as employees may have changed overtime but women are still perceived as less suited for managerial positions when compared to men.
According to organizational researchers, the differences that exist between male and female managers that make it difficult for women to gain senior managerial positions within organizations include the poor self confidence in women, the emotional instability of women, their lack of inconsistency and poor leadership capabilities. Such assumptions have made it difficult for women to gain managerial positions within organizations (Padevic and Reskin 2002).
According to a report released by People 1st on female workers within the hospitality industry, 310,000 female workers were reported to have left hospitality industry sectors such as leisure, travel and tourism sectors every year around the world. This meant that the hospitality industry lost £2.8 billion every year as a result of replacement recruitment programs and also additional training to ensure that the employees were conversant with their work duties.
The report highlighted five major barriers that prevented women from advancing to senior management roles within the hospitality industry which included the challenge of balancing between work and family, gender bias and inequality in the work place especially in the case of female head chefs and sous chefs, poor networking on the part of women, a lack of visible women in managerial positions within the hospitality industry and a dominant male culture for certain positions within the industry especially in the case of hospitality where most managers and head chefs have been predominantly male (Bracken 2010).
According to a study conducted by Ismail and Ibrahim (2008) of 78 women executives working for a Multinational oil company in Malaysia, the family responsibilities that prevented them from advancing to senior management positions within the company included taking care of the children and the home, adding nutritional content to their family meals, building a stronger bond with the children and husband, maintaining family ties within the household, ensuring that the children have emotional stability within the home, ensuring that there was a strong psychological foundation in the home setting where concern, understanding and encouragement from the female parent was deemed to be important to the children, ensure that the children were developing and growing intellectually, ensure that there was behavioural support in child care activities and ensuring that the work-family balance was properly maintained.
Such family responsibilities according to the study were identified to be the major reasons why many of the women in executive positions within the oil company were unable to advance to more senior managerial positions (Ismail and Ibrahim 2008).
Women executives who hold managerial positions in the hospitality and leisure industry face a lot of discrimination which makes it difficult for them to advance to more senior management positions within organizations (Wirth 2001). This discrimination is usually in the form of negative stereotyping where societal protagonists argue that women tend to place the needs of their families first before any work considerations.
Because they have a home and children to take care of, they lose time concentrating on their families which means that they allocate a small amount of time to their work duties making them unsuitable for managerial positions which require a lot of work time. Another form of negative stereotyping that prevents women from holding senior managerial positions is that women are very emotional and they are unable to separate their feelings from their work duties (Clements and Spinks 2009).
Their inability to separate their emotions from their work makes it difficult for them to hold managerial positions which require executives to be devoid of any emotions when they perform their work duties. Their inability to control emotional feelings also makes it difficult for them to take criticism or negative feedback well especially if it is related to their work performance.
They also lack aggressiveness which is necessary in most managerial positions especially when dealing with complex business transactions such as mergers and acquisitions. Such discrimination and negative stereotyping makes it difficult for many women who want managerial positions to achieve a breakthrough through in their work place as they are treated differently from their male colleagues (Thomson and Graham 2005).
Work-life balancing involves achieving a proper prioritization between work where career progression and ambition are involved and life where aspects such as pleasure, leisure and family are involved. The individual’s needs, experiences and life goals are usually considered when determining how the balance will be achieved between the aspects of work and life (Kodz et al 2002).
It should however be understood that work-life balance does not provide strategies that can be used to provide an equal balance in time units which are necessary in performing work and life activities. Work-life balance provides an opportunity for individuals to be able to manage the various aspects of the jobs and personal life that they deem to be important (Clutterbuck 2003).
In the hospitality industry, achieving a work-life balance is a complex exercise given the long and unsocial hours that most employees are required to work. The strict work rules also make it difficult for employees especially women to balance between their families and their work.
The high turnover rates that exist in the hospitality industry also make it difficult for female employees to manage their work-life balance activities effectively (Ross 2005). The poor job attitudes that exist among employees in the hospitality sector have contributed greatly to the high employee turnover rates that have been experienced by many businesses in the industry.
Poor job satisfaction has also contributed to high turnover rates in the hospitality industry especially among female employees who find the poor working conditions and poor pay in most hospitality businesses such as hotels and restaurants to be unbearable.
Such conditions have made it difficult for women workers to develop suitable work-life balance strategies and initiatives that would make it possible for them to achieve work-life balance (Deery and Jago 2009).
There are many strategies and initiatives that exist which can be used to help women achieve career progression within the hospitality industry. Many of these work-life balance initiatives have focused on the aspect of time flexibility and work scheduling which is important in achieving a work-life balance (Hyman and Summers 2004).
Such work-life initiatives include job sharing where job duties that are meant for one person are shared amongst two or more people (Doherty 2004). For example in the hospitality industry, hotels could incorporate job sharing in housekeeping, visitor entertainment and administrative activities for most of their female workers (Deery 2008).
Other work-life balance strategies that can be incorporated by businesses in the hospitality industry include parental leave where women employees are given off days to take care of their families, paid special leave time to take care of children or to study (Smith and Gardner 2007), working from home especially for women administrators that have children in need of constant care, telecommuting or part time work where the number of hours worked in a day are reduced from eight hours to four or five hours, flexible starting and finishing work hours (Wang and Walumbwa 2007), child care benefits such as baby day care facilities within the work place and the buying/controlling of time where employees are paid according to the number of hours they have worked (Roberts 2007).
Such initiatives, if properly utilised within the hospitality industry, will ensure that more women are able to achieve a work-life balance enabling them to take up senior managerial positions within the industry.
References
Bracken, M., (2010) Over 300,000 female workers leave the hospitality industry every year. Web.
Clements, P. and Spinks, T. (2009) The Equal Opportunities Handbook. London, UK: Kogan Page.
Clutterbuck, D. (2003) Managing work-life balance. London, UK: CIPD.
Davidson, M.J., and Burke, R.J. (2002) Women in Management. London, UK: Sage.
Deery, M. (2008) Talent management, work-life balance and retention strategies. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 20, No. 7, pp 23–28.
Deery, M. and Jago, L. (2009) A framework for work–life balance practices: addressing the needs of the tourism industry. Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 9, pp 97-108
Doherty, L. (2004) Work–life balance initiatives: Implications for women. Employee Relations, Vol. 26, No. 4, pp 433–452.
Hyman, J. and Summers, J. (2004) Lacking balance? Work-life employment practices in the modern economy. Personnel Review, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 418-429.
International Labour Office (ILO) (2004) Breaking through the glass ceiling. Geneva: ILO.
Ismail, M., and Ibrahim, M., (2008) Barriers to career progression faced by women: evidence from a Malaysian multinational oil company. Gender in Management: An International Journal, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp 51-66.
Kodz, J., Harper, S. and Dench, S. (2002) Work-life balance: Beyond the rhetoric. Brighton, UK: Institute for Employment Studies.
Padevic, L. and Reskin, B. (2002) Women and men at work. 2nd Edition. London, UK: Pineforge Press.
Powell, G.N., and Graves, L.M., (2003) Women and men in management, 3rd Edition. London UK: Sage Publications.
Roberts, K. (2007) Work–life balance: the sources of the contemporary problem and the portable outcomes. Employee Relations, Vol. 29, No. 4, pp 334–351.
Ross, G. (2005) Tourism industry employee work stress: a present and future crisis. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, Vol. 19, No. 2, Issue. 3, pp 133–147.
Thomson, P. and Graham, J. (2005) A woman’s place is in the boardroom. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Smith, J. and Gardner, D. (2007) Factors effecting employee use of work–life balance initiatives. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp 3–12.
Wang, P. and Walumbwa, F. (2007) Family-friendly programs, organizational commitment, and work withdrawal: The moderating role of transformational leadership. Personnel Psychology, Vol. 60, pp 397–427.
Wirth, L. (2001) Breaking through the glass ceiling: Women in management. Geneva: International Labour Office.
Witz, A. (1997) Women and work. In Robinson, V. & Richardson, D. (eds) (1997) Introducing women’s studies: Feminist theory and practice, 2nd Edition. Basingstoke: Macmillan.