Then comes the higher level management. It is no small wonder that most of the people there are men. It is not to do with bias nor preference. It is simply that many women do not seek these positions in comparison to men OR once they are in these positions, drop out.
I disagree. While I'm sure that the numbers are nowhere near 50/50, there is a lifetime of cultural bias working against every level of a woman applying for or being selected in certain positions. I'm also fairly sure that while it's not always conscious, I do think that there is a preference. It is a sausage fest but not just in the way you describe.
As an example of the bias, consider the number of female Nobel Prize laureates in literature. I think the number of female published authors during the last century probably is roughly equal to the number of male published authors. It should then stand to reason that, if selected with some degree of objectivity, the number of female laureates during the same period should hint at similar proportions, provided that men aren't inherently better writers.
What do you suppose are the real numbers?
What the real numbers of nobel laureate females in management? I have no idea? I would suspect you may be right and they may not be 50/50
In my department, I mentioned that the females and males are approximately 50/50 split. Top 10 in any given month are heavily weighted to the men to maybe 8/2 or 9/1 or even 10/0. Why is that? They get the same encouragement and training and are selling the same products?
Now we could jump to blaming the society and talking of cultural bias or we could try to justify the results with pseudo-psychology and talk of the mental make up of women OR we could say what I say "The reason that the men in my department achieve better sales is because they generally work harder, more competitively and have more riding on their results on a personal and subjective level. They will do overtime any time they can get it. They will try to one up the guy next to them.
The women generally don't. They usually have no admin and do not make the same volume of errors the guys make. They do not place themselves under anywhere near the same amount of pressure and rarely do they cajole the person near them about their sales or whatever.
Now I do not suspect that precisely the same environment in sales as in management with exactly the same fundamental drives nor that the ladies in my workplace are representative of the females in management in any organisation. If this were representative though to what maybe happening then the 9/1 kind of statistics do not quite seem so alarming or worrying or the fault of men.
It would seem it is choice based. People have a right to make whatever choices they wish but if they make choices it should be acknowledged that they are choices.
If women collectively do not want to become Engineers for example, or I.T. or construction (Yes there are a small few who do and no doubt do very well) then is it their choice not to choose? Can we be generous enough to grant that they had the same choice as the men who chose to take it up? Can we not put down their choices to eternally "victimly" out of their control?
