Abstract
This article seeks to understand under-representation of women in the top managerial positions in Sri Lanka’s public banking sector and how HRM practices at the workplace impact their careers. The narratives of women bank managers show that they possess skills, confidence and a desire to climb up the career ladder. However, women’s ambitions for managerial positions and promotion to decision-making levels are implicitly limited by the state bureaucracy. Organizations need to establish and maintain better human resource practices and organizational culture for gender equality as well as organizational effectiveness. The article offers policy implications and avenues for future research. It is based on a study of 15 women managers working in the public banking sector. In-depth, semi-structured interviews with these key respondents formed the core research technique.
Introduction
Women have more freedom to take up outside work in the modern societies but they are placed in subordinate positions to men in both public and private spheres. Several scholars argue that women are at a disadvantaged position at the workplace (Holton & Dent, 2016). Governments have been encouraging women into employment but their participation has been still low, especially in the top managerial positions. For example, in the USA, only about 4 per cent of the top positions are occupied by women in Standard and Poor’s 500 companies, and the number is similarly low in the UK. Research shows women’s representation in the labour markets is high in temporary and part-time jobs (Casey & Alach, 2004). According to the International Labour Organization (ILO, 1998) World of Work report, working mothers with younger children (aged under 15) face more obstacles in employment than mothers with older children (over 15). Therefore, childcare and family responsibilities reshape and limit women’s career progression compared to their male counterparts.
Even though women gain high qualifications, they continue to play subordinate role to men. For example, research on managerial and professional women in a Turkish bank showed that women were badly affected by recruitment, selection, promotion and performance appraisal as the bank had a male-dominated environment (Holton & Dent, 2016). Similarly, some women faced problems like bad reputation at the workplace as they were slow to gain promotion (Watts, 2009). Also, Michie and Nelson (2006) discussed that some women were badly distressed by discouraging experiences which led to minimizing their self-efficacy and interest in the job.
Jackson and Hayday (1997) in their research show that the female accountants believe that the “old boys’ network” made it easy for males to make career choices and to look for people similar to them. Although, equal opportunity policies and actions are associated with recruitment plans, women still remain at a lower level with less decision-making power (Watts, 2009). Forster (2000) suggested such a situation is inevitable in any male-driven environment because the culture itself is deeply ingrained with male views of leadership, performance and promotions. Studies have acknowledged that men have more gender-traditional attitudes than women and therefore, family-friendly initiatives are difficult to implement in such male-driven cultures because dominant organizational culture and traditional understanding always resist adapting the contemporary changes.
A range of studies (Burke, Koyuncu, & Fiksenbaum, 2008; Forster, 2000) conducted in the past mention that due to the prevailing gender ideology of men at the workplace, women require additional help from the top but they are under-represented in the top jobs and positive role models remain very few. Furthermore, they need to show a track record of achievements, aspiration to be successful, ability to manage, willingness to take career responsibilities and ability to be tough, decisive and demanding. As Burke et al. (2008) point out that to achieve a successful career, women need to have more assets than the men and they also suggest that it is a necessary requirement to overcome negative gender stereotyping of women such as considering them as risk averse, fearful and submissive in behaviour. Sanders revealed that female attractiveness is an important indicator in the selection process for some type of women’s occupations.
Aycan (2004) reported that apart from the family and organizational support, female professionals need to have self-confidence and determination to make their own career choices. Further, Guerrier and Wilson added that women have to change their behaviour with regards to the work culture. This is mainly because of the male attitude, biases, perceptions and behaviour regarding their women colleagues. Therefore, domestic responsibility is not the only barrier for women professionals to get into higher jobs. The male attitude of “think manager—think male” for the management positions severely limits women’s access to the most senior levels. Kanter recognized that hierarchical organization contains “masculine ethics”; further, she saw that although organizations are “gender-neutral machines, masculine principles were dominating their authority structures” (1977, p. 46). In addition, researchers have acknowledged the problem of long working hours, a lack of a positive view of work flexibility and the “presenteeism” which is a popular culture in the male-dominated environment. Also, researchers have pointed out that the policy on work hours always leads to gender inequality because women are less able to compete with the labour market changes.
Going further, Ansari (2016) highlighted that the femininity norm of “self-restraint” culminating in the form of restricted networking in the workplaces entails a loss of visibility for women together with constraining their chances of gathering human and social capital with a limited access to the key resources, which ultimately serves to raise the issue of their credibility as a useful human resource and impedes their chances of progressing towards the desired level in their career (p. 539). All these studies expose how women have been badly limited by the consequences of workplace practices together with the gender role assumptions about women as the secondary earners. However, most of these empirical studies are based on the experiences of the Western developed countries and thus, the results evidently have a Western focus. There is a need for research to explore the issues raised in the context of Sri Lanka.
Against this backgrounds, this article attempts to explore why women are under-represented in the top positions and how HRM practices at the workplace impact their career decisions. Remaining part of the article is structured as follows: The second section looks at different theoretical concepts of social and cultural constraints and opportunities in the context of women employment. The article then goes on to explain the case study method employed in the study in the third section. The fourth section presents key respondents’ life stories to further explore the research questions. The article concludes with the fifth section.
Research Design and Method
Sri Lanka—Case Study
Over the past two decades, the growing share of the services sector in the GDP has been one of the salient and notable trends in the Sri Lankan economy, overshadowing the traditional agriculture export based economy. According to the Sri Lanka Census and Statistics Department, this sector has been the highest contributor to GDP accounting for 51 per cent share in 2012. Esping-Andersen argues,
The service economy is everywhere associated with the evolution of two gendered labour markets. Except for the routine administrative and sales jobs, the traditional Fordist economy remains predominately male. The evolving services are becoming a women’s labour market.
As Esping-Andersen (2009) argued that this particular trend has further favoured women’s entry into the formal labour market in Sri Lanka as elsewhere, in part because of a “caring” image of women (Kodagoda, 2011, 2018). In turn, this development seems to have fed back into the cultural system where women became both more culturally valued as workers and more assertive in this role.
The public sector is a major employer of women in Sri Lanka since as many as 16 per cent of all the employed women work in this sector, compared to just 12 per cent of the men. In Sri Lanka, as in the Western Europe, the professions of doctor, nurse and teacher is seen as suitable and secure “caring” roles for women, while banking is seen as a professional extension of the more male “provider” role. The banking sector is of growing economic importance in Sri Lanka. This sector is characterized by advanced technologies and, in effect, creates male-oriented jobs at the managerial levels (cf. Watts, 2009). Therefore, at the same time, there is a high level of vertical segregation where males dominate the higher level jobs; for example, in banks, by 2005, women represented just 1.2 per cent of the staff at the top corporate management level but at the junior executive level, they constituted 81.5 per cent.
Gender is not an important dimension of inequality in education in Sri Lanka, as women have both good access to and success in higher education. The Sri Lankan constitution also guarantees the fundamental right of gender equal access to education and employment. Sri Lanka has identified and partially implemented gender equality measures. It is one of the first developing nations to understand the importance of investing in human resources, female as well as male and promoting gender equality (Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, 1981 and United Nations General Assembly, 1981). However, the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2017 shows that Sri Lanka has been slipping from its privileged position in the top 20 (in 2010) to present ranking of 109th out of 144 countries (World Economic Forum, 2017). While gender-neutral and anti-discrimination values are rhetorically promoted, at the same time, women are still subject to discrimination by established human resource practices at the workplaces (Kodagoda, 2014; Kodagoda & Samaratunge, 2016). Therefore, this article examines why managerial women are under-represented at the workplace and what factors impact their career development.
Sampling and Analytical Strategy
At the initial stage of sampling, decisions were made about the composition of interviewees by case study sector and work positions. This research used a predetermined purposive sample. The core sample consisted of 15 women managers belonging to the public banking sector. All the sample mothers had bachelor’s degrees in either social sciences or management areas and were registered by the Institute of Bankers in Sri Lanka. They did not have expert knowledge before taking up banking employment, and acquired knowledge and training while on the job. All respondents were married and living with their husbands. The sub-samples were taken according to age and ethnicity. The age of mother and their children is an important variable to explore working mothers’ behaviour at the workplace. Therefore, the mothers’ and children’s age ranged from 30 to 54 years and 1 to 23 years, respectively. The final core sample of mothers consisted of 12 Sinhalese, 2 Tamil and 1 Muslim mother. Please see Table 1 for more details. As a supplementary to the above sample, a structured interview guide was used for the two top-level banking sector managers, a female regional manager and a male director of human resources to gather more information on mothers’ workplace. The total sampled respondents were 17.
Respondents’ Profile
The most appropriate design for the research was an intensive, qualitative-based investigation to produce deeper understanding of the processes involved in mothers’ behaviour at the workplace and domestic unpaid work. In-depth, semi-structured interviews with the key respondents were the core research technique employed. Finally, thematic analysis was used to analyse mothers’ narratives about life at the workplace. After close scrutiny of the transcribed data, the first interviewee data was chosen for initial coding. By linking and refining coded categories, two-dimensional categories were derived that encompassed the interviewees’ experiences of workplace practices and family responsibilities. The derived categories were recruitment, promotion, performance appraisal and career development.
Bank Branch Managers’ Experiences at Their Workplaces
The interview data collected revealed that women managers in the banking sector suffered from imbalances in both workplace and home domains due to human resource practices in their organizations. This situation can be understood by exploring management practices around recruitment, promotion, performance appraisal and career development, which were derived using the thematic analysis.
Recruitment and Promotion Procedures
Female bank managers in the sample were particularly badly affected by recruitment procedures as they were expected to show even more flexible arrangements than their male counterparts did to take up the employment, especially when mothers applied for bank manager positions as this remains a particularly competitive employment sector. For example, BMS 1 recalled her interview experience as follows:
I can remember what I faced at my bank manager interview. Other than my workplace records [leave, education and further studies], the interview board asked me about my home environment. If I had said that my husband is not supporting me running the household duties, definitely I know I would not be able to get my promotion….
In this way, women’s recruitment for management level is implicitly or explicitly reduced by the top-level personnel. This was very clearly highlighted by the male director of human resources in his comments about new recruitments of bank management trainees. As he candidly explained:
We know that it is illegal, also unethical, but we decided to reduce female recruitment for many reasons because when young women are recruited, they do not like to go far away from the city and are also reluctant to work longer hours, and another big problem is maternity leave….
Male-dominant Values and Performance Appraisal
Women bank managers in this sample, especially mothers, always suffered from the annual performance appraisal, which sets high and gendered targets. As BMS 2 stated:
The targets were male-oriented and sometimes we [women managers] do voluntary work which is unpaid in order to reach set targets.
She continued “Due to a lack of women’s participation at the decision-making levels, almost all the appraisals are carried out by men”. Consequently, female bank managers often faced discriminatory treatment from male appraisers. As BMS 4 observed:
Even at appraisal, these male appraisers do not take the time to listen to us—awful assessments.
In effect, these organizations serve to promote gendered behaviour, such as the practices of male-driven behaviour in the banking sector in Sri Lanka. BMS 2 explained how male-dominant values are practised in the bank:
They [men] do not like to see us [women] in the top levels, they always expect us to be innocent and show a sort of submissive behaviour as expected in domestic life.
This was confirmed by BMT 3:
When we achieve a high level of targets or challenging work, they always try to laugh at us. Men often try to devalue our work, saying, “Look at women’s work!”
As there is a lack of women’s participation at the decision-making stage, both sets of professional mothers were less likely to gain benefits from the organization. For example, there was a shortage of positive role models for their career guidance. Although, there were a few women senior managers at the upper level, they were neither ready to listen to women’s difficulties nor to act as their mentors. The respondents believed that a lack of support from women at the senior positions was one of the reasons for their stagnation in the same post. BMS 4 described her experience:
These top-level women have forgotten their past, I hate them. For them, we should not mix work and family together. I know childcare is our own problem but … As I know, only one top-level woman supports us as a mother. That is one of the difficulties in advancing our careers.
Continued the same idea by another mother, BMM 10
I want to go higher … but there are no strong female top-level role models to follow … which are really important. I know I do not get promotions on time.
In contrast, a regional manager (female) viewed this differently, explaining:
I do not believe there is discrimination against females. But high commitment to work is necessary to go further.
Socio-cultural Constraints and Career Advancement
Although sex segregation in the labour market has been narrowing down with the mitigation of cultural barriers to women’s employment, social norms about motherhood continue to remain highly visible in this sector. It is hard for women to do well on the career ladder in such a male-dominated environment, especially for mothers in the child bearing and rearing stages as sampled mothers gave preference to their children’s needs rather over their own career advancement. The absence of concept of parental and fathers’ leave reinforces the notion that women are less effective in paid work environment. Almost all the bank managers in the study sample agreed that the banking sector remains as a male-dominated organization. For example, BMS 2, with 25 years of experience in banking and as a mother, explained how difficult it was to get promotion in this culturally constrained environment:
I totally agree. Banking is a male-dominated organization. I work every day, eight to six, plus Saturdays. I have already passed the banking exams. Five times I applied for my next promotion but still I am a bank manager.
She strongly pointed out how men had acquired their positions earlier than her:
We were in the same group at university and we joined as management trainees at the same time, but most of the men got their promotion at the correct time. It is unethical to say this, but it is because … I am a woman and I am a mother!
Further, she added, “I know … if I take this matter to the top, there would not be any change of their decision.”
In addition, while these professional mothers speak overtly about the more egalitarian gender equality roles they have negotiated in their homes, covertly there is an influential male power exercised by husbands in the decision-making process, particularly on family matters. Thus, this is good evidence that although family patterns and labour market behaviour is changing, their practicability for women is very limited, especially for mothers positioned as carers and domestic workers. A similar story was recounted by BMS 5:
My husband is a banker, we were in the same group but he got his promotions earlier than me. He has continued his career without constraints. It is well-known fact that banks are male oriented and promotion evaluation is on male values.
Another situation which is common in the male-dominated hierarchical organization is that women are excluded from the more important workplace networks. These networks have a key role in top-level decisions, such as promotions. The promotion criterion in the bank is male driven and candidates are evaluated on male values. Due to these gendered constraints, women—especially mothers—faced more unavoidable difficulties than men, even if the men were fathers with the working mothers. This bureaucratic organization also provides a series of positions which are difficult for women to take up.
For example, obtaining a “bank manager” position is one of the hardest challenges for mothers, particularly those with younger children in their households. In effect, a career-oriented mother has to sacrifice her family responsibilities for career progression or vice versa. BMS 1 explained the main requirements to obtain a “bank manager” position:
One of the main requirements is leave and punctuality. The ability to work longer hours and high work commitment are important. And flexibility is essential. Also there is a need to show that you are interested in doing banking studies.
These main requirements obviously restrict mothers’ ability to apply for higher-level positions while occupied with family responsibilities. A top-level 35 years’ experience professional woman described her experiences as follows:
I started my career from the lower level, now I am at the decision-making level. To get this, I sacrificed many things … even my family. I am glad to say that today there is a good trend of women officers taking bank manager position. Last time there were many applications from the women officers.
Therefore, these gendered judgements adversely affect mothers’ careers and, as a result, they are less likely to apply for a promotion at the workplace. It is not a surprise that banking mothers stay in the same position for a long time. As the woman regional manager put it:
Only a few women can climb this ladder.
According to the sample mothers, what is obvious is that gender stereotypes are implicitly adopted in the hierarchical organizations in the state sector. As to stereotyped gender norms, women in Sri Lanka are presumed to play a submissive role in the home and at the workplace. However, these social norms have been changing at different levels, for example, these mothers did not show any kind of timid or submissive behaviour but rather had straightforward leadership qualities at the workplace. Accordingly, bank managers had adjusted their personal interests to a male-driven environment or, if not, would not have been stable in their position for a long period. As BMS 14 explained:
I like my job. But very clearly I can say to you this job [bank manager position] has changed my life pattern, I have a very strong personality. Sometimes I feel I am like a man.
In this way, professional experience in a male-dominated environment has led women to change their own gender identity. From being a “passive woman” to being an “active man”, in effect, women bank managers changed their gender role from a submissive or timid to being dominant and taking up a leadership role.
The narratives from the samples of women managers show that they possess self-confidence and a desire to climb up the career ladder. Women’s ambitions for managerial positions and promotion to decision-making levels are implicitly limited by the state bureaucracy; a good example is the HR director’s (banking sector) view on women management trainee recruitment. It is also evident that due to these inevitable and invisible barriers, the mothers in this sample, except the young mother BMT 3, are reluctant to make any attempt to face this challenge and simply accept that this is not their time but their children’s. For example, BMS 4 said that: “I believe we should think of our son’s future than our own career”. Therefore, this severely slows down women’s upward movements in the career hierarchy.
Conclusion
This article discussed why women are under-represented in the top positions in the banking sector and how HRM practices together with gendered norms in the banking sector impact their career development. Using the life stories of banking women, varying levels and types of HRM practices and constraints were identified. Although, the expansion of women’s education was an influential factor in their access to the labour market, recruitment and career development were limited and top jobs were always held by men, as in the industrialized countries.
Another interesting contribution of this research is that although women show a strong and smart personality at their workplaces, lack of support not only from the top-level male officers but also from females affected career progression of the sampled mothers badly. However, this needs further attention, therefore, the research on intra-gender discriminations and differentiations are crucial. Further research could be conducted on a cross-cultural basis and would need to apply a broader wider and combined research approach.
Organizational structure and culture underestimates the importance of workplace facilities particularly for women in this research. Due to the state bureaucracy, mothers struggle for work–life balance while they stagnate at the same position for long positions even after being urged to enter or re-enter (after the maternal break) the labour market. This is a result of workplaces still continuing to maintain men’s standards with “men as workers” as usual practice and ignore the recent labour market changes which have created “women and mothers as workers”. Moreover, organizational effectiveness mainly depends on human capital, therefore, it is an organization’s responsibility to establish and maintain better human resource practices and organizational culture, such as family-friendly initiatives for their employees to have a satisfying life. If not, many or perhaps most of their employees will have negative experiences especially given the rising levels of women’s employment.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am very much grateful to the editors of the journal and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.