Summary
Gender discrimination at workplace has become a common issue in our society. With men and women equally fit to hold management roles, promotion criteria still haunts organizations. As a result, men get more promoted than women. This report illustrates why this trend persist and gives recommendations on how to deal with it.
Introduction
Why can’t men and women have same opportunities in terms of responsibilities, promotions and recognition at all levels of management? Although most organizations offer opportunities to men and women, representation for such opportunities reflect disparity with men being more recognized. This essay explains why men still get more job promotions in various organizations around the world today.
Why men succeed
Promotion plays a major role in motivating employees and ensuring that their abilities are fully utilized for the purpose of achieving set goals and objectives. As a result, companies have programs like mentorship which are aimed at propelling employees to higher management roles. However, these programs are not equally created as the mentor is supposed to sponsor the mentee to secure a promotion. Even though more women are being over-mentored in several multinational companies, they are under-sponsored as compared to their male counterparts who have influential sponsorship programs. As a result, men get promoted easily than women regardless of their qualifications (Ibarra, Carter and Silva 82).
Additionally, lack of sponsors discourages women from going for higher positions in their line of careers. This lack of enough organizational clout for women is considered as a disadvantage with research indicating that men have 15% higher chances of being promoted (Ibarra, Carter and Silva 82).
In other words, more efforts have been put in mentorship and support programs without having a thought of ensuring that women are also fully sponsored to secure higher management roles. Unlike women who are advised on how to understand themselves, choose their best operating styles and what to change as they move up the ladder, men are given promotion tricks on how to win their senior managers and get them promoted to the next level. In areas which are dominated by men, many CEOs view women as risky appointments that may lead to the suffering of the company. As a result, men are given more preference with women being hired from outside the organization. Nevertheless, a number of companies have developed other programs to sponsor women to critical management posts for promotion purposes (Ibarra, Carter and Silva 83).
Selection of mentors and sponsors further jeopardizes women’s efforts to rise to top positions in most organizations. Most men get mentors who focus on career advancement as compared to personal development advocated by mentors assigned to advice and support women. With regard to this disparity, it has been noted that more men get their own mentors compared to women who are assigned through a formal program of the organization (Ibarra, Carter and Silva 83). It therefore suffices to mention that men’s networks turn out to be more efficient in propelling them to higher positions.
Conclusion
It is evident that men still get more promotion opportunities than women in most organizations. This is mainly promoted by mentorship and sponsorship programs established by companies which favor more men than women employees. Strategies have to be implemented to eliminate this gender disparity in workplaces.
Recommendations
From the above analysis, it is clear that most mentorship and sponsorship programs initiated by organizations around the world favor men in several ways. In ensuring that qualified and potential women get promoted equally, sponsors should be selected and matched with high potential women to support them professionally. This ensures that women get mentored and sponsored by people who focus on career advancement as opposed to the traditional personal development approach (Ibarra, Carter and Silva 85).
Additionally, supervision of mentorship and sponsorship is vital in ensuring that the programs meet the demands and standards of the company. This can be achieved through training and evaluation of the overall progress. Sponsors also need skills in order to equip potential women employees with necessary promotion requirements. Lastly, sponsors need to be held responsible through accountability. There has to be a record of the mentorship and sponsorship programs in order for the company to ascertain their roles and influence (Ibarra, Carter and Silva 85).
Work Cited
Ibarra, Herminia., Carter Nancy, and Silva Christine. “Why men still get more promotions than women.” Harvard Business Review (2010): 80-85. Print.