Factors influencing women leadership in the manufacturing industry in Cape Town

Abstract

Since the dawn of the women’s liberation movement different aspects of the life structures have been affected. Waves of confusion and contradicting studies have been propagated as the quest for leadership and control of power increasingly becomes heavily politicised in workplaces, homes, churches and in government. The generality of the female researcher attributes the absence of women from senior management positions to the deliberate effort by men. Much research has been conducted on trying to identify and develop a taxonomy of the leadership styles as gender based, which often accused by other authors as the cause for the absence of women in senior management positions. Interesting most senior company leaders are the founders of the organisations they head. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) indicates that less than 3% of the industries registered are headed by women, suggesting technical exclusion of women. Yet, though women have better opportunities of getting business loans to fund start-ups, extremely low numbers of women venture into their own enterprises. This brings in another argument that they technically exclude themselves by not owning those organisations that make it to the top. Women are few also in senior non-owner management positions for which men are blamed for keeping women out of. Using a descriptive research design, a mixed research methodology was conducted with the use of a structured and semi-structured questionnaire to collect research data. The data was captured on to an Excel Spread Sheet and illustrations drawn to assist in establishing the relationships of the variables. The findings do not point out to men as the “stumbling block” to these women’s failure to climb up the ladder, the blame is somewhat muted, and they seem to accept a degree of responsibility themselves. This research has influenced another research on this topic based on what expertise and competencies do the men who make it to the top have which are not found in women.