such as teaching or the social services, women do not necessarily hold a
proportionate number of senior management positions. In the United Kingdom,
for instance, latest figures for full-time teachers in secondary schools show
that, although women make up 54% of all teaching posts, they hold only 30%
of head teachers’ positions (UK Department for Education and Skills (2002)
statistics for 2000). This would suggest either that women are less able or less
willing or that they encounter more obstacles than men in their career pro-
gression within organisations. Given that women nowadays enter employment
with the same level of educational attainment as men, especially in gender-typed
occupations, the literature on male/female differences in motivation/commit-
ment attitudes to work and male/female managerial/leadership styles, together
with issues of perception of male/female attributes and the impact of organisa-
tional systems, may provide some clues to more deeply rooted causes of the
‘glass ceiling’ phenomenon.
Motivation/commitmentThe effect of sex role identityand gender-relatedbehaviour features prominently
in discussions relating to women’s motivation to succeed in the workforce.
Powell (1988) argues that early socialisation from parents, schools, the media
and peer groups contributes to the development of a sex role identity which
will affect occupational aspirations and expectations. Aspirations will be con-
strained both by a need to restrict career hopes to ‘sex-appropriate’ activities
and by the strength of occupational segregation in a given sector. Expectations
are viewed in highly sex-typed terms for females.
Vinkenburg et al. (2000) summarise research into differences in manager-
ial motivation. They report gender differences in achievement motivation,
with fear of success and competitiveness in women often being found (Gattiker
and Larwood, 1990; Ruf and Chusmir, 1991). Female managers were, however,
more likely to be ‘career-primary oriented’ as opposed to ‘career-family
oriented’ (Burke and McKeen, 1993); in other words they put their career first.
In this respect female managers’ needs for achievement and need for power
generally do not differ from men’s (Chusmir, 1985; Stevens and Brenner, 1990;
Ferrario, 1994).
Managerial commitment is subdivided into commitment to the organi-
sation (affective commitment), team commitment and career commitment (Blau
et al., 1993; Aryee et al., 1994; Becker et al., 1996). Results from studies show
few gender differences in commitment, with some reporting less commitment,
some the same and some more (Rosin and Korabik, 1991; Giacobbe and
Wheeler, 1992; Aven et al., 1993; Burke and McKeen, 1993; Ellemers et al., 1996;
Schneer and Reitman, 1996).
Singh and Vinnicombe (2000), however, indicate that women and men
have differences in the nature of their commitment at work. In a sample of
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