Introduction

Until recently, women were restricted to doing household chores such as cooking, stitching and
cleaning and men as the breadwinners of the family. The women are given the status of the home maker.
Even though, in today’s world many women across the globe work outside the home, there are less women
employed at managerial levels as compared to men. Majority of them work as clerks and secretaries in
organizations. They are provided with fewer, high status job opportunities and incentives as they have a
low-profile image. They are stereotyped as having lack of job commitment, few career ambitions, and high
turnover.

Female workers face problems such as gender discrimination in terms of occupational segregation,
work pay and treatment at the hands of coworkers. Employers prefer hiring men for high skilled managerial
jobs over women. Therefore, career progression as well as occupational mobility is very rare for female
employees. They are concentrated in routine, low-paid occupations owing to the gender stereotypes that
exist in society. They do not receive increases in pay due to lack of support from powerful senior colleagues
who resist proclaiming the women’s value to the organization. Hence, women progress into middle
management positions but are unable to move beyond them.

Background of Selected Study

In the field of human resource management, one of the most insightful and informative study is
“Are Women in Management Victims of the Phantom of the Male Norm?” conducted by Yvonne Due
Billing. This academic paper is regarding the difficulties faced by women due to gender biasness in
managerial and executive positions in organizations. According to Berthoin and Izraeli (1993), the most
common obstacle faced by female managers is the stereotype that links management.

Professor Billing is currently working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology in

the University of Copenhagen, which is a renowned institution of research and education in Denmark. The
views and findings of the paper by Professor Billing (2009) are important due to her research background
in knowledge production, ethics, justice, meanings and understandings of gender and organizations as well
as leadership (UCPH, n.d.). This will help to establish a clear relation between women in management and
stereotyping in the workplace environment by proposing theoretical concepts to justify her statements.

Summary of Selected Study

The research firstly explains how and why the male norm prevails in the management sector of the
organization by presenting examples of experiences of women at managerial levels. The examples also
highlighted what challenges the women faced in becoming and being managers. Next, the author discussed
the concept of congruence that provides a perceived match between people and their jobs particularly that
there is congruence between men and managerial jobs. Hence, the reason why there is less employment for
women in top management jobs as opposed to men.

Professor Billing’s study was based on first-hand, qualitative interviews with twenty Danish and
Swedish women working as managers, aged between 35 - 60 years. The interviewees of the study, were
from three different organization- IT, the finance and banking sector and the medical industry. Each of them
was interviewed by the author for about one to three hours.

Critical Analysis
The strengths and weaknesses of the research paper have been analyzed and discussed as followed:

Strengths

There are strengths of both the idea and approach on which the study is based. The author has done
an exceptional job in presenting the paper with a clear and distinctive approach, which is not vague for
anyone that may read the paper. It is understandable even for a person who does not have a background in
social sciences.

One of the most significant strengths of the study is its framework that is derived from strong
conceptual and existing theories to establish a strong argument. By drawing on others’ ideas, Professor
Billing was able to clarify the relevant issues and the appropriate research methods. She conducted an
extensive literature review, to formulate the hypothesis regarding the relationship between masculinity and
management positions. For example, the “concept of Habitus” given by Bourdieu (1977), which was used
to explain the impact of generational differences on the actions of women managers in dealing with the
norms set by men. Furthermore, the author incorporated various other different theories to draw a
hypothesis like the absence of Ontological Status of the norm, the Social Identity theory and the
Construction of jobs as masculine and feminine. Hence, the context and theoretical background of the study
is very strong.

Weaknesses

Although the study has achieved its objective and despite having positive reviews, the academic
paper has garnered some negative aspects with regards to its research methodology. The author chose to
solely rely on qualitative research methods for collecting data. She conducted interviews of women
managers. However, the problems associated with interviews are that the information that is obtained may
not be reliable, especially on attitudes, values and opinions. Interviewer bias may also undermine the
validity of the data collected from the interviews as the values and opinions of the researcher can interfere
with the results obtained.

Moreover, there is difficulty in directly comparing the results of such in-depth interviews with each
other because each of them is unique. The sample size was also relatively small therefore, the results of the
research are unlikely to represent the entire population of women working in management (Browne,
2005). Therefore, it is preferable to use mixed research methods as they have several benefits over the use
of a single research method as it eliminates chances of errors, which may arise when relying only on
qualitative or quantitative research methods. Hence, different research designs like questionnaires and
observations should be used to obtain more reliable and in-depth data.

Another limitation of the research paper is that the author’s focus has been on the female gender
and the working men were neglected and left unheard. The study is female centered. In regard to the
bibliography of the study, more than half of the studies that are cited in the paper were published or
conducted more than a decade ago. It makes it doubtful that the study correctly portrays a current state of
women managers in organisations across the world and the whether the theoretical concepts can be applied
to explain today’s societal affairs.

Conclusion
In this essay, the chosen study by Billing (2011) has been critically analyzed. Both the strengths
and weaknesses of the study conducted by Billing (2011) have been identified and discussed. The use of
theoretical concepts study and its clear approach are its prominent strengths. The major weakness of the
study is that it on only one data-collection method to provide reliable information.