El Mundo Rural en Colombia

While signalling that gender was not a salient category for informing their perceptions of the managerial role, nearly all the male managers stated that women should be encouraged into their particular industries, and that often they were better in management roles than men. They were described as more competent, detailed, and committed. Some male managers prided themselves in actively initiating the induction of women into their workplaces. However, they also held the view that recruitment should be solely based on merit and that there would be greater proportions of women in management if they were ‘good enough for the job’ (in MetalOrg), or ‘had the appropriate educational qualifications’ (in

ComputerOrg). These views, being open to women in the industry and supporting merit as the basis for recruitment, appeared to be used simultaneously by male managers to validate that lack of women in their industry, which is not of their making. Their initial views were often contradicted by statements that clearly indicated biases in the organisation against employing or promoting women, as illustrated in this excerpt from a senior male manager in MetalOrg, who had achieved his major career successes through the sales area:

I think women do a very good job in management. I think they're more focussed than men. They don't have to go out to all the boozy lunches and all that sort of stuff that men seem to bond about. They're more focussed on their job. They're more organised, much more organised than men. Personally I could answer to a person that I respected that was a woman, yes, definitely, definitely. Personally I think that women make good managers. However, in this industry, women don't make good sales people.

Male managers in both MetalOrg and ComputerOrg blamed their

customer’s stereotypic perceptions of women for limiting women’s roles within the organisation. They held the view that changing the status quo would be detrimental to upholding customer satisfaction, as a male manager in MetalOrg explained:

We’ve got a few girls here, drapery stuff sure, stationary, all the cardboard and packaging stuff that women can sell. But as far as getting down with someone in a glazier shop and putting a shower together, I don't think a woman would hold a lot of respect there. But a [customer] who's got his hands dirty with tools would look at it as though, what would you know about bloody putting a shower together, stupid woman.

Managers in ComputerOrg, linked the potential for placing women in non- traditional roles with being detrimental to the bottom line profit of the

organisation, while acknowledging the limits such views placed on the women themselves;

Some people, they then don’t get opportunities because they are women and they would probably like the opportunity. But that may not be successfully interpreted. It's not an easy situation because if our clients don't feel they're getting the best out of our people, because they don't respect our people for the fact that they're a woman, we could lose money on that.

Some male managers were aware that the management role itself had changed and required more humanistically orientated values and skills. However, descriptions of selection and promotion practices suggested that this awareness had little impact on employment and recruitment practices. Ironically some men described their concern for the women who were subjected to less tolerant and perilous male dominated environments ‘out there’;

I don't believe that there is an issue so much in employing men versus women. However, I believe that a lot of the companies we sell our product to have poor equality in their work places and many of the people that we have to relate to often don't relate very well to women. We then have difficulty sending women out on site, for example in the manufacturing environments, job costing environments. It's not so bad in the finance

environments because in the head office areas you have a far stronger presence of women, and very skilled people. But a workshop environment where you've got guys out in the field or out in the shed, you have to deal with all sorts of things. A lot of women in those environments, when you talk to them on the side, don't enjoy being out there.

These findings confirm those found by Sinclair (1998) that current management has a high stake in maintaining status quo. Aligned with the archetype she terms ‘heroic’, Australian leaders have a vested interest in

maintaining the perception of great degrees of difference between themselves and other positions in the hierarchy of the organisation, insurmountable demands of the position, and of themselves as irreplaceable. This does not augur well for developing organisational cultures that nurture women’s career paths.

Female managers explained men’s fears as a reaction to women’s disrupting the status quo, particularly in relation to attitudes and behaviours in the

workplace. Although this threat may be imagined and generalised across all women, it may be particularly salient for men in relation to women in

management. Men and women both acknowledged the necessity to be ‘tougher’ in order to break through the glass ceiling. Therefore, men may indeed perceive women in management as a powerful force, competing for their positions and threatening the very nature of the gendered relations in the sanctuary of upper echelons of the power hierarchy.

Unlike managers in other organisations participating in the study, managers at EducOrg had ‘resolved’ the gender problem. They believed that while people were promoted on the basis ability, EducOrg had achieved a good gender balance in their management structure. This had not always been the case however. Past efforts to achieve balance had proved beneficial for the organisation, with some male managers commenting that female managers made ‘better’ managers:

I don't see it as being any different as men in management. I suppose they've got to prove more, and they need to be seen to be more efficient, probably from a personal point of view because the pressure’s on them to slip up more. But I've always thought that in EducOrg particularly, a lot of people have been given a lot of opportunity. They've been more or less given carte blanche, and it's paid off. Whereas at other places maybe they're going to run up against the male hierarchy and the ego stuff, ……..you have to watch her because she's going to end up getting our jobs and stuff. I don't see that happening here. I think people at large get promoted on their ability. And I think that's the way it should be.