Women in positions of power are women who hold an occupation that gives them great authority, influence, and/or responsibility in government or in businesses. Historically, power has been distributed unequally. Power and powerful positions have most often been associated with men as opposed to women.Hartsock, N. (1990). Foucault on power: a theory for women?. Feminism/postmodernism, 162. As gender equality increases, men still hold more power, including in politics and athletics.Cockburn, C. (1991). In the way of women: Men's resistance to sex equality in organizations (No. 18). Cornell University Press.
Accurate and proportional representation of women in social systems has been shown to be important to the long-lasting success of the human race and existence.Reynolds, A. (1999). Women in the Legislatures and Executives of the World. World Politics, 51(4), 547-573.
Position of power Occupational power refers to power over coworkers in the field. Positions of power can exist in almost any setting (such as librarianship, where the concept of power is discussed in the broader health literature and the occupational therapy literature from three perspectives), from small scale, unofficial groups or clubs all the way to the obvious leaders of nations or CEOs of companies These more official situations are found in many areas, such as government, industry and business, science and academia, the media, the Non Governmental Organizations, and many other sectors in the society.
Gender as a factor Positions of power and gender are very intertwined. As one study pointed out, "Power differences frequently underlie what appear to be gender differences in knowledge, behavior; attitude as society is currently configured, power and gender are never independent".Yoder, J. D., & Kahn, A. S. (1992). Toward a feminist understanding of women and power. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 16(4), 381-388. As such, gender relates to power in the different ways power is acquired, used, and manifested. A 1988 journal article summarizes this relation between gender and power: "the idea that women and men differ in power motivation is reinforced by history and culture. In the history of the west, certainly, women have had less access to most forms of power than have men. Many people believe that men are interested in power and getting power while women are not. Others hold that men and women differ in the ways that they establish, maintain and express power".Winter, D. G., & Barenbaum, N. B. (1985). Responsibility and the power motive in women and men. Journal of Personality, 53(2), 335-355. Additionally, studies have shown that increasing women's participation in leadership positions decreases corruption, as "women are less involved in bribery, and are less likely to condone bribe taking".Swamy, A., Knack, S., Lee, Y., & Azfar, O. (2003). Gender and corruption. Democracy, Governance and Growth, edited by Stephen Knack, 191-224. A study on gender and corruption from 2000 also found that "cross-country data show that corruption is less severe where women hold a larger share of parliamentary seats and senior positions in the government bureaucracy, and comprise a larger share of the labor force".
Other factors In addition to the male-female split in the distribution of positions of power, many other factors play a role in who has power. Race, class, sexuality, age, and other factors all play a significant part in who is in control.Zweigenhaft, R. L., & Domhoff, G. W. (1998). Diversity in the power elite: Have women and minorities reached the top? (Vol. 670). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Acker, J. (2006). Inequality regimes gender, class, and race in organizations. Gender & Society, 20(4), 441-464. These factors play in especially when coupled with the gender difference: research from the Journal of the National Association of Social Workers has found that the "double burden of racism and sexism exacts a toll on their mental health and restricts their opportunities".Gutierrez, L. M. (1990). Working with women of color: An empowerment perspective. Social work, 35(2), 149-153. Additionally, according to another study, "the degree to which a system successfully includes women can indicate a propensity for the system to include other disenfranchised minorities".
Traditional roles and stereotypes
Traditional roles for men and women in most cultures have relegated women to working in the home primarily. This traditional role of fostering and nurturing others ensued from various sources, but the results are a decrease in the value of work done by women and a decreased ability to work outside the home.Miller, J. B. (1982). Women and power (Vol. 1). Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies, Wellesley College.Pleck, J. H. (1977). The work-family role system. Social problems, 417-427. This is paired with the societal expectation of the woman to take care of the home and family and with that the lack of male support in the caretaking of the home. This all leads to the expectation that women have responsibilities in the home and often plays a part in occupational sexism.
Other traditional views of women relegate them to certain occupations. The view of women as caretakers of the family extends beyond the familial unit to others. Women have traditionally been seen as caretakers of both people and other beings and things. However, this caretaker occupation has most often been a subordinate one, under the direction of a superior, usually a man.Lorber, J. (1984). Women physicians: Careers, status, and power (Vol. 281). New York: Tavistock Publications. The example of the vastly female-dominated nurse occupation, 95% women as of the 2000s,Evans, J., & Frank, B. (2003). Contradictions and tensions: Exploring relations of masculinities in the numerically female-dominated nursing profession. The Journal of Men's Studies, 11(3), 277-292. reflects this, as it is the doctors that ultimately are in charge and have the power in the nurse-doctor relationship.
Traditional stereotypes of women make them out to be much more emotional and irrational than men, and thus, less suited for many important jobs.Barrett, L. F., Robin, L., Pietromonaco, P. R., & Eyssell, K. M. (1998). Are women the “more emotional” sex? Evidence from emotional experiences in social context. Cognition & Emotion, 12(4), 555-578.Goldenberg, J. L., & Roberts, T. A. (2013). Throughout the history of the sexes, women have been perceived as inferior to men, but also have been elevated to the status of goddesses on earth. We suggest that these para-doxical biases often associated with women can be linked to an existential need to distance humanity from the natural world. The sources of discrimination against women are most commonly associated with their biological nature. For example, women are devalued for being more emotionally expressive than men and physically weaker, and .... Handbook of experimental existential psychology, 71. However, it has been found that men and women don't differ in terms of rationality, and only in emotional expression, not actual emotions One survey based in South Africa found that "over 30 per cent ... are of the opinion that women are too emotional to be able to handle high level leadership positions";9. Gouws, A., & Kotzé, H. (2007). Women in leadership positions in South Africa: The role of values. Politikon, 34(2), 165-185. evidently, stereotypes persist and still take effect.
Studies show that "it is common for stereotypical ideas about women's abilities to perform well in leadership positions to inform people's perceptions about women leaders".
Government
For many years and in most regions of the globe, politics had not allowed women to play a significant role in government. Even in the early 1900s, politics were viewed almost exclusively as the domain of men.Paxton, P., & Hughes, M. M. (2007). Women, politics, and power: A global perspective. Pine Forge Press. However, women's movements and culture-changing events such as World War II gradually increased women's rights and roles in politics. Many factors go into the degree of female participation in governments across the world. One 1999 study found: "[the] electoral system structure, left party government, the timing of women's suffrage, the share of women in professional occupations, and cultural attitudes toward the role of women in politics each play a role in accounting for variation in the degree of gender inequality in political representation around the world”.Kenworthy, L., & Malami, M. (1999). Gender inequality in political representation: A worldwide comparative analysis. Social Forces, 78(1), 235-268. Even still, there are many other factors that play a serious role in female participation in government. There is a significant “perceived liability” to a party of having a female candidate for office, according to a 2005 study.Kunovich, S., & Paxton, P. (2005). Pathways to Power: The Role of Political Parties in Women’s National Political Representation1. American Journal of Sociology, 111(2), 505-552. Even today, no country in the world has 50% or higher female participation in a national legislature, and 73% of countries have less than 20% female participation.
There are multiple levels of power positions in the government from the local level to the national level. Accordingly, there are different degrees to which women partake in these different levels. For example, studies have found in India that "large scale membership of women in local councils" can be more effective in exerting influence, such as over crime rates, than "their presence in higher level leadership positions".Iyer, L., Mani, A., Mishra, P., & Topalova, P. (2011). The power of political voice: Women’s political representation and crime in India. Harvard Business School BGIE Unit Working Paper, (11-092). However, it is important to have women at all levels of government to ensure the representation as well as enacting of women's interests.
Voting Women were deprived of exercising political power in every country until granted the right to vote. After earning the right to vote, it often took decades for women to turn out to the polls in numbers proportional to their male counterparts.Pintor, R. L., & Gratschew, M. (2002). Voter turnout since 1945: a global report. In the U.S. today, women are statistically more likely to vote than men, a pattern that occurs in certain countries, such as Scandinavian countries, while the opposite occurs in others, such as India. Scandinavian countries are also some of the countries with the greatest female representation in government positions. Exercising the right to vote is a reflection of the power women feel they have in their political systems.
Today, women are enfranchised in all countries with a legislature other than Saudi Arabia. A 2006 study demonstrated that “although women have the legal right to vote and stand for elections in almost every country of the world, cultural barriers to women’s use of their political rights, including family resistance and illiteracy, remain”.
Quotas Many countries have instituted quotas dictating a minimum number of women to be given elected positions in governments. In general, the quota system has acted as a fast-track to incorporating greater female representation into the governing systems. Several countries, such as Rwanda, which have established quota systems successfully have even recently surpassed traditionally highly gender representative countries based on the quota requirements. However, there are still flaws to quota systems and there is some controversy over the effectiveness of representation, as some studies have found actual policy change to be limited.
International organizations