Women in management: A personal retrospective

Abstract

The status of women in employment in general and in management in particular has interested researchers in Australia since the mid-1970s, although interest in women's industrial and occupational employment segregation and pay inequality has an even longer history. However, this overview concentrates on developments in the ‘women in management’ field since the 1970s, primarily because of the concerted and concentrated efforts to raise the employment status of women since that time.The overview also concentrates on the Australian experience, in an attempt to determine if ‘the more things change the more they remain the same’ or if actual change and progress has been made. My credentials for undertaking this retrospective are that I have been researching in the women in management area since the early 1980s and have tracked the main changes, influences and dimensions since that time. Readers who are expecting a critique of the impact of feminism and other ideologies in the area will be disappointed. My research perspective is, and always has been, managerial and organizational. I will thus not be mentioning a whole raft of substantive thinkers and researchers from other perspectives who have contributed to this area over the years. To assist the process of review, I have divided developments into a number of eras to illustrate the progression of both policy and research over the various periods.