Do men make better managers then women - Essay Example

Do men make better managers then women? Even though the world gets more modernised and equalised than before, discrimination still remains in our society. To bring this dispute in depth, a real life example can be introduced. There was wage discrimination between genders. According to BBC (2013), although women are more engaged in works given than men, men got paid more than women. This is depicted from the following data researched by Higher Education Careers Services Unit (Hecsu). 44.4 per cent of the men’s income was higher than £24,000 whereas only 30 per cent of women’s income was reached over £24,000.

This essay starts by explaining why men earn more income than women. Women don’t even work because they don’t have any chances to get a job. Therefore, people can’t judge whether women could be good managers or not depending on this assumption. Secondly, it will give an example of women who are able to open their own businesses by themselves would be shown with a case of successful businesswoman named Martha. The final parts of essay will introduce concluding ideas about different perspectives on job criterion depending on characteristics between the genders.

Until middle of the18th century, before the start of industrial revolution, most of the occupations were relative to agriculture, livestock and fishing-related industries. (Lambert, 2013). Therefore, those types of jobs required relatively strong physical abilities than sophistications so it could be assumed as unsuitable for women but attractive for men. For that reason, most of men tended to be breadwinners who earned money for their living, and naturally women did housework and took care of their babies at home.

Thus, most of establishments and rulers were men, and they ignored women’s abilities since people have regarded women, as they were not able to work like men in workplaces. Hence, it was more and more difficult to earn money for women by themselves, and if women involve in working places, their working efficiency cannot be equal to or better than the men’s, so they have paid lower wages than men’s have. Eventually, doing housework gradually became stereotyped to women. This meant that men moved away from chores related with house.

For those reasons, there were almost never women managers in the world. Understandably, it was impossible to make a judgment that which gender possesses better management skills. However, as time passes, the types of jobs get extremely varied from physical production and supply focused works to social and ethical concerned works. This naturally gave more job opportunities to women resulting higher numbers of women involving in working environment. This phase allowed noticeable changes in notion of women managers positively.

Gender roles are changing every day due to technological changes and urbanization. According to the Baig (2013), changes in jobs structure might appear to have changed a lot but research shows that not much progress have been achieved when it come women leadership. Although significant changes have occurred to role of women in management, a lot is to be done if they have to compete on the same level as men in the same field. Although women presence in the labour market has increased from 30.3 million in 1970 to 72.

7 2006-2010, this represents only 37.97% and 47.21% respectively. Consideration the number the of women we have in the labour market, it consequently; follows that there should be many of them in management due to their increase in numbers and since they are more educated.In late 19th century, there was Martha Matilda Harper who firstly became the owner of her own franchise as a woman in the world (University of Rochester, 2000). Even though she had hardships in her early ages working as a servant in her aunt’s house since 7 years old, however, she never hesitated to grab any chances to success as businesswoman.

As her second job, she served under a doctor. By that time, the doctor conducted a study about physiology of hair, and unexpectedly he taught his own secret formula that helps shortening the phase of hair growth to Martha because Martha also interested in same field as the doctor’s interest. Thereafter, she went to Rochester for getting a new opportunity while not giving up to improve the quality of her own hair tonic. After many hardships gone through, Martha at last, successfully opened her first hair salon.

Moreover, she has invented the very first concept of a franchising system and a professional hair salon. She trained women workers and helped to manage their own hair salons. Therefore, she had more than 500 hair salons all over the world. This case highlights Martha’s successful provision of woman’s ability as a businesswoman. Furthermore, after taking this opportunity, more and more women have started entering the workforce. For that reason, nowadays, the cognition of women workers has completely been changed than before, so there exist reasonable numbers of women senior mangers in the world.

Although Martha certainly demonstrated women’s abilities of working in early 20th century, there were only 5 per cent or below of women-owned businesses until 1970. (Davidson, 2000) However, the numbers of women-owned businesses extremely increased from 5 per cent to 33 per cent in 1996. The reason behind was from the improvements in information technology industries and relatively higher education level of people changed the types of jobs from physical relevant labor to mental and services sector (ONS, 2004).

Therefore, every people can work in front of computers regardless of genders and physical abilities differences. Thus, there are significant number of successful women managers these days, so it is meaningless to vaguely choose which genders can make better mangers. Surely enough, the gap between number of men and women mangers has been decreasing gradually, and the proportion of women mangers in the UK is 34.8 percent in 2012 (ONS, 2013). Hence, the numbers abovementioned are evidences that women managers are also able to manage their own works as much as men managers.

Moreover, there are some kinds of works that women are definitely yet strictly better than men especially in lingerie, cosmetic and women’s accessories sectors because most of men rarely get interested in those parts. On the other hand, in the car racing, extreme sports and engineering fields, men are able to make better mangers than women. As a result, it is vague to specifically classify a so-called ‘good’ manager depending on genders. Player (2013) says that Unemployment and stereotypes cost many women their positions in management levels.

In the UK, a survey research showed that women make 42% of the workforce and 55% of graduates. However, they are still less likely to be associated with leadership positions. In the UK, they make up 22% of the MPs and 20% of the university professors. Although this number have grown through leaps and bounds it’s not yet enough considering the number of female graduates and their number in the work force are more compared to their male counterparts. The number should be commensurate to the statistics when it comes to women acquiring jobs management level jobs.

However due to our stereotypic nature as humans, we have we have never fully accepted the leadership role of women in the society. The issue of biasness is supported by Prime & Cater (2009) who say there exists biases of men being better leaders than women. The existence of books like Men Are from Mars, And Women Are from Venus has been instrumental in escalation of the genders differences. This is despite the fact that the study shows that men and women have equal ability when it comes to management styles like transformational, laissez faire etc.(26). Prime & Cater go on to say that Meta-Analytical research shows that the leadership of both men and women are not that different leading to conclusion that sex does not determine ones leadership qualities (2009, p. 26). This is why men and women should not be considered different on the basis of gender.

They should however be judged according to how they perform in their job. Research has shown that they are not that different. In fact, Fitch & Agrawal (2014), say that the study in the US shows that many people appreciate having a female to a male one because they are more engaging to their followers. The study shows that 41% of women leaders are more involved in work as compared to 35% of their male counterparts. This shows that when it comes to looking on to the issue affecting the organization, the woman is the best person for the job is a woman.

However, the same survey shows that one out of three of the people say they have a female boss showing that although employees prefers to have female leaders the businesses are not ready for female bosses.In conclusion, arising from this essay mentioned above, it is not true that women managers are not better than men managers or women have lack abilities for becoming good managers as stereotype and the simply recorded statistics depicts. Although a man works in the women-friendly workplaces, it is possible that he can stand out as best manager in between women.

A woman can show exceptional entrepreneurial skills in the business that has high proportion of the men managers, vice versa. Therefore, the yardstick of good businessman is not dependent on genders but rather a person’s own personality, interest or capability. The problem is that our society has not fully come to terms with the idea that a woman can provide the same leadership qualities that a man in a similar management role can offer. But with recent advancement in technology this is changing.

BibliographyBBC (2013) Graduate pay gap - women paid thousands less than men [online] Available at: [Accessed 05 October 2014].Marilyn, D (2000) Women in Management: Current Research Issues, Volume 2, SAGE, pp. 309.Office for National Statistics (2004) Changes in working trends over the past decade [online] Available at: [Accessed 01 October 2014].Office for National Statistics (2013) Full report - Women in the labour market [online] Available at: [Accessed 03 October 2014].Sally, P. (2010) Martha Matilda Harper and the American Dream [online] Available at: [Accessed 05 October 2014].Tim, L. (2013) Daily life in 18th century Britain [online] Available at: [Accessed 03 October 2014].Baig, M. (2013).

Women in the Workforce: What Changes Have We Made: available at [Accessed at 4th of Dec.]Player, A. (2013).Gender Equality: Why Women are Still Held Back. The Guardian. : Available at [Accessed at 4th of Dec.]Prime, J.L. & Carter, N.M. (2009). Women “ Take Care,” Men “ Take Charge” : Managers’ Stereotypic Perceptions of Women and Men Leaders. The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 12: 25–49, Fitch, K. & Agrawal, S. (2014).Why Women are Better Managers than Men. : Available at [Accessed at 4th of Dec.]