A Phenomenological Study of Women and Their Barriers to Promotion in Fortune 500 Companies

By

TABLE OF CONTENT

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW1

Historical Overview and Current Findings of Women's Rights1

Gender Wage Inequality in the Workplace3

Promotion to Leadership Position4

Women Gain in the Gender Wage Gap7

Corporate Skills9

Barriers to Success/ advancement10

Organizational Culture12

Tokenism13

Sex-Role Spillover16

Glass Ceiling16

Women ignored for senior level positions18

Challenges for women in leadership19

Real and perceived differences in leadership styles21

Lack of mentoring23

Benefits of gender diversity25

Succession planning necessity25

Women as succession leaders26

Value of women in organizations26

Summary27

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY28

Research Philosophy28

Research Design29

Research Method30

Questionnaire Design31

Data Collection32

Sampling33

Additional Online searches33

Literature selection criteria34

Time Schedule35

Reliability and Validity36

Ethical Concerns38

REFERENCES39

APPENDICES44

Questionnaire Survey44

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man.

--Margaret Mead

Historical Overview and Current Findings of Women's Rights

Throughout history, women have been repeatedly invisible, despite being instrumental in the economic, political, social and cultural development of societies. Reviewing the history of the birth of human rights, in the first instance, women were throughout their life under the protection of first their father and then their partner, basing such protection arguments that considered women as imbecilities, and fragile (Katz, Stern & Fader, 2005).

Thus, reviewing the historical events of this struggle, "the middle ages, always marked the lives of women, the presence of the Holy Inquisition and its legalization, was particularly cruel to them. During that period at least eight million women were burned alive, these crimes had their "legal basis" in the Malleus Maleficarum written in 1486, the document containing the sanctions to be imposed on anyone who infringes the divine commandments (Katz, Stern & Fader, 2005). At that time the principles of equality, liberty and fraternity were the foundation for the construction of a new form of government and society. In France 1793, Olympia Gauges, was executed for daring to proclaim equality of the sexes, and equal ownership rights, publishing and disseminating the "Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Citizen", which was based on the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (Katz, Stern & Fader, 2005). Its motto was that "If a woman can climb the gallows, she must have rights to mount the rostrum," and this for having published and disseminated the statement, Olympia paid with her life dying on the Guillotine. Awareness of women rights quickly rose from the early eighteenth century, with mass literacy of women. In England, Mary Wollstonecraft promoted the defense of the Rights of Women and wrote “A Vindication of the Rights of the Women”, in which she said that: "women are endowed with reason and, therefore, the dominance of men in society is arbitrary". It is in chronological order as they reached the worldwide celebration of International Women's Day, which began with the call of the Second International Conference of Socialist Women, held on 25 to 17 August 1910 in Copenhagen, and involved several dozen delegates from 18 countries (Katz, Stern & Fader, 2005). Today Human Rights have experienced a boost to expand the scope of those rights and guarantees to include social, economic and cultural rights. The result of this evolution has been the ...