Author: Oladapo Osituyo
Career Advancement and Under-representation of women in top management positions: an empirical assessment of selected Public Sector Organisations in Gauteng Province.
Background: Women are recognized for their possession of positive effects that improve corporate performance. Their advancement into senior executive positions has been rather very slow; with considerable progress in their pursuit to participate more and make their presence known in public existence. Literature shows only a few of them occupy key positions. South Africa today, is trying to meet up with the global needs of women through rapid transformation.
Method: Using selected South African public service organisations, a self-administered electronic questionnaire hosted on QuestionPro will be developed and a five point Likert type scale with end-points anchored by “strongly disagree” and “strongly agree” will be used. Data will be analysed using QuestionPro’s analytical tools and SPSS.
Results: This situation is global; women managers are still under-represented in the workplace. There is dearth of female career barriers in South Africa, with women still given a low, unequal amount of education by the government, and are not employed at equal rates with their male counterparts.
Conclusions / Implications: A major challenge envisaged is the low rate/ level of education given to the girls/women due to early pregnancy and incentives attached to this periods and successful child birth, which in turn discourages and prevents them from getting back to school to concentrate on their original plans for attending school; also, poor implementation of policies as well as women having to conform to pre-existing norms.