Managerial Leadership Course Gender Consciousness

Managerial Leadership Course

Gender Consciousness Questionnaire

Without actually considering misogynists, it is a fact that there is a general tendency to doubt a woman's capacity of being a leader, although this has clearly been proven wrong by the actual facts. Although we tend to see more and more women in leadership positions, it is often the case that there is a preference for males in top management functions and a woman is less likely to succeed when competing with a man for that position.

Extensive research has been performed in order to determine women's capacity of being leaders. The Gender Consciousness Questionnaire is one of these attempts. The questionnaire is designed to determine what one may think in three areas: expectation of privilege, preference for similarity and preference for control. There is a set of 20 questions, covering each of these three areas and each questions is ranked on a 1 to 4 scale, with 1 representing a false statement and 4 a true statement.

Let's have a brief analysis of your scores. You have scored 21 for expectation of privilege, 14 for preference for similarity and 15 for preference for control. Let's analyze each score in part.

The 21 score obtained in the expectation for privilege area places you in the moderate score zone. Because the moderate score zone ranges from 16 to 29, I would rather place you in the lower moderate score. This means that you tend to balance your perspective on things between your own personal needs and the needs and perspectives of people around you. As your score is in the lower moderate zone, you tendency would be more towards recognizing the others' concerns.

Looking at some of the statements summing this score, the answers you have given are quite revelatory in this sense. For example, you have stated that the first statement is false: you would not expect your working spouse to take care of your sick child. This is an important note that you would tend to think about the career and solicitude of your spouse as well.

For the second area, preference for similarity, you have obtained 14, placing you on the high end of the moderate scores. This means that you tend to have a preference for similarity, whether this may be a similarity related to gender, race or social class. Although the questionnaire refers to people evaluation, I tend to believe that this would be a general trend in your working relationships. For example, you may feel more comfortable working with an employee of the same gender or the same race or you may tend to associate with gender or race differences actions within the workplace.

I have selected question number 14, to which you have given a 4 answer. You usually assume that promotion is generally associated with a certain type of favoritism when the people promoted are members of the opposite sex.

The final score reflects your preference for control. You have obtained 15, which is a high score. According to the questionnaire results, the primary goal of an organization is profit maximization. In order to achieve this, the organizational structure needs to be rather autocratic and controlling, so as to ensure maximum efficiency from the employees. Statement number 4 is quite relevant in this sense: you believe that organizations should focus on controlling costs and maximizing profits as primary goals and, further more, a true leader of an organization needs to be able to be in control of any given situation in the workplace. For three of the five statements that are accounted for in this area you have scored the maximum score.

2. The World Bank

Many have referred to culture as being a set of common values shared by a people or a nation for several hundreds of years. This, however, has somewhat changed or nuanced in the 20th century, with the appearance of international organizations and transnational corporations. The concept of national culture has expanded to that of organizational culture.

There are certainly different perspectives that one may have on culture and, indeed, we may even refer to different culture types that are constantly interacting with one another. We may refer to the individual, personal culture, characteristic for each individual, to the national culture, which is the culture shared by a group of people having a common history and living on a certain territory, and to the corporate or organizational culture, which is often the culture at the workplace, for a specific organization.

The interaction between these cultural archetypes gives birth to the cultural differences and cultural conflicts that we are so used to hearing about today. In this essay, we will be discussing and analyzing the organizational culture within the World Bank with the Franco- Algerian national and individual culture.

The general characteristics of the World Bank are relevant for describing the organizational culture of this institution. The best place to find these are in the organization's stated mission. As such, the World Bank's mission is to "fight poverty and improve the living standards of people in the developing world." Further more, the Bank provides "loans, policy advice, technical assistance and knowledge" and "promotes growth" in developing countries.

From the Bank's mission, we can clearly understand that this is not the usual, profit-oriented bank, financial institution or company, but rather an agency, an organization providing information and funding projects. It is more about directing cash flows towards the appropriate beneficiaries rather than making a profit of its own. In this sense, it has a different organizational culture than other banks.

First of all, the World Bank and its leaders have an orientation towards the future and towards the strategic rather than the tactic. In this sense, the World Bank has goals that are attainable in several decades, such as poverty eradication or a more even global income distribution. Many of its projects in the developing countries are long- term projects and many of them, such as fighting AIDS or increasing the level of education, may even seem permanent projects.

Second of all and in close connection with what I have stated here above, vision seems to be a key word for the organizational culture at the World Bank. Indeed, this institution has a vision that it applies tactically by projects and loans to third world countries.

If we consider the national culture to which you belong, this is a meld between the French and the Algerian cultures. The French have always seen themselves as natural leaders. This comes probably from their history, populated with faces of strong leaders such as Charlemagne, Louis XIV or Napoleon. Even if history has later turned its face from the French and they were defeated in the Franco-Prussian War and the Second World War, they have still remained with their pride spirit and their belief that they are natural leaders.

On the other hand, the Algerian history has been a mixture of independence and colonization. Colonized by the French in the 19th century (1830), it has remained a colony until the 60s. There are several issues to be pointed out here. First of all, even if the country was colonized, it was never fully submissive. Second of all, the generals' revolt that took place here had a serious impact on the colonizing power itself, in this case, France.

From this point-of-view, the melding of these two different cultures, with their particular historical perspective, seems to have created a sense of leadership for you. All French people are leaders, but this is also backed by a certain stubbornness and confidence in succeeding (if we think about their fight for independence) that you have perhaps inherited from your Algerian side.

We also need to briefly mention the influence of Islam on the Algerian culture. While not necessarily denying or minimizing the other religions (Mohammed recognized Jesus as one of the prophets), there is no doubt that Islam is considered by the Muslims to be the superior religion. This brings about a certain superiority from all Islamic people, here including the Algerian one. On the other side, the current Algerian government is a laical one, which does not limit the individual creed of the Algerians.