A Biographical Profile of Professional Women Managers in Pakistan’s Private Sector

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop a biographic profile of women managers in the private sector in Pakistan. The profile would help identify (i) the types of women who had opted for managerial professions in the private sector, and (ii) any trends in their social, economic, or educational backgrounds that might have a bearing on the types of women likely to pursue a managerial career.Research for the survey included 152 organizations that had employed graduates from business educational institutions. Out of these 87 organizations reported women at managerial level. All the women managers at these organizations were asked to complete a questionnaire package comprising measures obtained from self-reporting questions on their social, economic, and educational backgrounds.The author developed a representative profile of the woman manager in Pakistan’s private sector based on the findings. The findings suggest that unlike their Western counterparts, Pakistani women managers do not pursue their careers at the cost of personal or family commitments. The profession remains the domain of upper-middle-class women. Women’s chances of obtaining a senior managerial position increase if they have been educated at schools or institutions at which the medium of instruction was English. This is significant because few Pakistani citizens have access to such institutions.