Barriers to ascension to senior management positions in retailing

Abstract

Using a case study of retailing, this paper examines the continued under-representation of women in senior management positions. Via a questionnaire survey, it reveals that those factors retail managers (men and women) themselves attribute to the disproportionate number of women in senior positions. The findings revealed that the main factors were associated with women's ‘other’ role: the family. Thus, lack of child care facilities and high family commitments were regarded as especially problematic and the organisation of retailing with its long anti-social hours and lack of flexi-time at managerial levels contributed to these problems. Other factors were also regarded as important including company cultures that uphold patriarchal social systems. The paper demonstrates how women's primary position in the home and domestic domain and men's primary position in the economic domain have shaped the way retail organisations are organised and the roles that men and women are traditionally expected to adopt within them.