- Good evening. Thank you for joining us for A Feminist Perspective. This weekly radio broadcast is sponsored by the Women's Resource and Career Planning Center. A program and information service of the Dean of Women's Office, 220 Strong Hall, the University of Kansas. Also located in the Women's Resource and Career Planning Center is a large lending library. This library contains a great deal of information in the form of news clippings, government documents, magazine articles, research studies, and books pertaining to the many aspects of the women's movement. We should like to invite you to come in to browse or take advantage of the lending library. That's in 220 Strong Hall at the University of Kansas. The materials in the Women's Resource and Career Planning Center are as valuable for men as for women since sex role stereotypes and definitions affect both sexes. Tonight we're going to discuss women in management. Our guests, Dr. Rosalind Loring from UCLA, Dr. Beverly Anderson from the School of Business at the University of Kansas, and Cindy Herd who's graduating this year from the School of Business. Dr. Loring is the author with Theodora Wells of a relatively new book, Breakthrough: Women Into Management, is visiting on the campus today. Dr. Loring, could we start out by asking you how you got interested in writing a book with this particular title?

- Well the title came after the decision to write the book as I guess titles frequently do, but Theo and I have both been managers for a number of years, and we were increasingly aware of the fact that we were rather rare and we didn't think it was a very good idea. That there surely should be many more women. And so we wrote the book for men to read because it is after all still men who make it possible for women to be managers.

- Beverly and Cindy, you have both read this book. Are there introductory questions you want to raise with Dr. Loring about it?

- Well generally I think that it would've probably been better if someone else would've talked to you about the book because I happen to agree with you. Sometimes I think that it's little bit better if someone challenges some of your comments on what you've said. And I think that the major points that at least I felt, that you were saying there's problems with women and there's problems with men. Before women can be successful in management, and by successful I mean a significant number of women in management, that we're going to have to work on both aspects, both the women's image of themselves and what they'd like to do, as well as the way men tend to treat them, and I really enjoyed the way you had written it for men because I tend to agree with you that a lot of men need a little bit of awakening. But also I think it's a good book for any woman to read, and maybe she can see herself in some of the portraits that you're printing that they tend to be a little bit questionable of whether they want to go on and take the challenge. And some of the myths that you referred to in the book I thought were quite interesting because many of them do concern a woman's concept of herself, of how am I going to handle the house and a full time job as a manager too. How do you do it?

- Well I've been doing it for so many years that I suppose one does it gradually. One makes those decisions step by step. I do think that women today are making the decision that they will be managers at an earlier age and that they plan their lifestyle to fit that. So that many of a little niceties that women used to engage in probably they choose not to do. And I think as with everything else we can select. We always have some discretionary time and energy and so we can choose whether or not to do that. I think what has happened in the past, and this will not come as a surprise to you, is that many women became managers by an evolutionary process rather than by a firm decision. So it's splendid to know that there are schools of business and management around the country which are deliberately encouraging women now to enroll with the definite goal of being a manager.

- Cindy, is this a goal of yours, as a graduate of the School of Business, to go into management?

- Oh definitely, yes. Sometimes I look back on my life and I think that it's really strange that through everything that I've been through I ended up in the School of Business and it was a lot because of Dr. Anderson. I'm very pleased with it, and I think that a woman has an awful lot of opportunities within the School of Business and in the working world. A lot of it we know is from government pressure, these sorts of things, but I wanted to ask you, a lot of times we hear, I enjoyed your book from the aspect that it exploded a lot of those myths by using factual information that can be used further to encourage other people and show them what the real truth is. But a lot of times a woman will be in a working situation and will want to advance, but finds some element missing. The advancement isn't there. What does a woman do when she finds she's not advancing in a career that she really enjoys?

- I think a woman should do in that case what a man does in that case and that is he surveys the situation, discusses it with top management to see whether or not they perceive a potential, often will go for counseling or testing or assessment, and then he'll research the market. Because there isn't a great deal of movement as you know among managers. The good old days when people entered a firm in their youth and stayed through to retirement is really gone, long gone. And I think that more women tend to be tentative about moving. It's one of the kinds of socialization we're not yet thoroughly familiar with, so that women tend to enter a firm and if they're comfortable stay rather than demanding a raise, demanding training opportunities, and it has gotten to that stage I think where women can ask for and expect to receive more opportunities when the firm itself is so backward that it doesn't perceive the benefits to the firm for providing opportunities for women. And I think women should move on because if she does indeed have the quality and the knowledge and the expertise then I think she'll find another place. There are more and more opportunities.

- One of the things that many firms say, that they can't advance a woman because advancing them required travel. And one of the things that you tend to bring out in your book is many of the myths that they say well we can't have a woman traveling. What I wanted to know is why do you think it's okay for women to travel in some jobs which men expect, such as an airline stewardess which I happened to have been for several years. It was normally expected by men, of course women can travel in that job. During the war years of course it was necessary for women to travel. A nurse could always travel to hospital bases. Why is it all of a sudden a woman in management is not supposed to be able to travel? This is amazing.

- Well the reasons of course are, I think, at the base of many other reasons why women don't move into management with a great deal of success. And that's because women become far more of a threat as they are managers. I think the travel issue is a ploy. The travel issue is really an excuse which is a fairly easy one to use. I think you remember that in the book we also talked about the fact that managers' wives often exerted very subtle but real influence on their husbands. And so for many men and their wives the notion that a woman might be traveling with the men produces a great deal of discomfort and suspicion and is usually, if not always, unwarranted. I think that men who are off traveling are as, have as many opportunities to perform a behavior which is not considered desirable by their wives whether or not they travel with women, so it does seem to me to be a ploy. I do a great deal of traveling. My husband doesn't like to, so my husband stays home and every time his firm asks him to travel. Excuse me, he finds someone else to go. On the other hand I thoroughly enjoy it. I like getting out around the country and meeting new people and being in new places. And so I travel a great deal and we've reversed the tradition, but we still stay married and so I think it's because we have the kind of acceptance of of a reality that we hope would become more visible to more people.

- Another thing that is used often is the fact that women can't fit into the social role necessary in a business situation such as the meals, the drinking, this sort of thing. How do you feel about that?

- I think it's terribly important that women do that. It's always interesting to me that women who are known or expected to be hostesses at home for their families, whatever level they are, somehow in a social situation of a cocktail party, you are moving with upper management, are often seen as being less able, less sophisticated. And I suppose it's because we are less well-trained to be political. And that's really what those social occasions are. They are political gatherings under another guise. It's a little bit like international ambassadors getting together to have a good time when at all times they're on guard and expecting to be performing some part, some aspect of business arrangements. And I don't think we do know as much about that. I long since discovered that whenever I am in that kind of a setting, it's very helpful that I know how to talk about more than one thing. It's very good that I know something about football and basketball and baseball and I make it my business to learn. And I know a bit about architecture and about the oil crisis and so forth and so on. Because that's the way so much of the negotiation really takes place. It's not visible, it's not tangible, it's a very subtle kind of maneuvering that takes place, and in the process you establish your credibility. Once that's established, then I think you're more credible in all kinds of discussions in board meetings and so forth. I think the fact that more men are retreating to the kind of social gathering places where women cannot go, the golf course, the gym. The spas and places of that sort, the more difficult it is for women to be with them, and that raises a different kind of a question and that is to be certain that the real decisions aren't made during those social engagements. We may indeed be changing social patterns. I don't think all men are socially apt either. But they somehow learn to hide that, there's a facade that a man puts up, and I think one of the best things about women in management is that we are more reluctant to put up that facade, we're more likely to make the situation and the decision-making a very real process.

- I'd like to raise some questions here for the benefit of our radio audience. I'm thinking in terms of three different kinds of people. The student right now who hasn't made a career decision. In the case of the University of Kansas this would be in her first two years because she would be in the college and then enter the School of Business in her junior year. What do you see as the true opportunities in business, particularly in management, for a woman student today? Let's just take a bright woman student who is trying to make a career decision. How would you advise her?

- Well I would advise her, first of all, not to go in as a secretary. In spite of all the books which are written about this I would say that that's not the road to health, happiness, and management. And I believe that because once men, once managers get a view of you, an image of you, then that's a very difficult thing to change. I think there are other ways in, I think particularly developing an expertise. I think when one doesn't just learn management one learns to be the manager of something. So it's very good to have another field. In your case, Cindy, I gather it's marketing, so to be skillful at marketing could be to come in as a junior member of the marketing team, as a research assistant, so to speak, as someone who does a good deal of the leg work for the operation. I think that's along the career ladder. It's very much the same as the academic ladder. You enter as acting assistant professor I suppose and move perhaps--

- As an instructor.

- That's right.

- An instructor, right, if you're a woman. But I do think that this is one of the reasons why liberal arts majors are somewhat at a disadvantage. Though more and more management is recruiting, women from liberal arts disciplines, history, philosophy, psychology, whatever, simply because they are broader in their understanding of life, of how people function, of how the systems of the society work. And I think those are also benefits to have. I think one, upon interview, a student upon interview needs to be able to speak with conviction about what it is that I know which will contribute to the functioning of the firm.

- You commented on bringing in the liberal arts graduates. Is this happening you think as much among men as it is among women?

- Apparently yes. It goes in cycles, I've been interested to watch over the years the Harvard Business Review's reporting of who they look for in the National Chamber of Commerce. Reporting what kind of background is substantial and beneficial. And apparently a liberal arts background is helpful. One of the things that is very difficult in narrow training early is that then you can be very specific and very specialized and immediately helpful. The potential for growth isn't there and I suppose that's why we then come to my own field which is continuing education. And we find many people in programs around the nation, in business, in management, in continuing education, are often, expressly for those people, who were narrow in their early education and then had to come back and broaden it as they moved along.

- Which way, if you had the choice, would be better? I think, Beverly, I've heard you comment on some concerns about this.

- Yes, well basically what I was concerned about is from the study of, what is it, University of Illinois, it's cited in your book and I forget the one that does the survey of industry, where they said that one of the problems was that there were not enough qualified women. I mean firms were looking and they couldn't find women with, such as accounting degrees where they wanted accountants, they couldn't find them with management degrees, that they were being forced to hire them out of the liberal arts. This has been a concern, a colleague and I have been doing quite a bit of work on it, is the idea that many times they will take a woman who doesn't have the background that perhaps a male does and throw them both into a training program. And then the male tends to outperform the woman.

- Always, yeah.

- Because he's had, shall we say, a management background or some type of training which lends itself to the type of training program that the business puts him in. And I know this is, at least it seems like the enrollment of business schools across the nation, that the number of females is very low. Relatively speaking.

- Yes, it is very low and has grown only in a very small percentage. I think it is a problem. And I think it probably depends upon the kind of firm that we're talking about. If you're talking about a firm which is a production operation, a manufacturing firm, then I think probably one ought to have gone through with accounting or economics or some hard field so to speak, not a hard science but a hard field, which makes them immediately useful to the firm. If you're talking about a firm which is a very large corporation which has a whole variety of needs for managers of services and planning as well as for production, then I think the liberal arts background probably is better. And so it depends, I suppose, on where the women are and what their available industries are for them. And I think that that's an individual decision. I do know that major corporations interview men as well as women who have liberal arts backgrounds. If they could also find people with accounting and economics I suspect they'd prefer that. I think psychology's a good background too, by the way.

- Now what about the working woman who is underutilized? We know we have a large number of women who are in the labor force, but are working at jobs they could have done without going to college at all. I'd like to ask all of you really to respond to a question that was raised with me the other day. A well-qualified woman who had been in the job for a considerable period of time, another job became available in the same firm for which she was eminently qualified. And no one even noticed that she was there. But hired someone else from outside. What would you advise her to do in a situation like this? Considering the present laws that we have.

- Considering the present laws, it's far easier than it was even five years ago of course, and I would advise her to first of all of course discuss it with management. Find out why they did not consider her, find out whether they really have a reason that they had considered and not told her, or whether indeed they had just forgotten as people frequently have in the past. I think she can, if she wants to, file suit. I think that one of the difficulties of an individual filing a suit is that it makes it very difficult for her to find further employment in that area, geographic area that is.

- You're assuming that she would be fired from her job?

- I'm assuming that it would be, she might not be fired, but it would be very difficult to work. No one likes to work for a firm where they file suit because the firm frequently makes it so uncomfortable for you and also manages to tell all the other people in the immediate vicinity about it. So one of the things we do recommend over and over again is that where possible, women get together and do it. There is strength in numbers, and if you can get a woman's organization such as NOW or WHEEL to file suit for you, this is far preferable because then the charge that this may end the hostility is dissipated or dispersed at least among a number of people, not dissipated. I do think we cannot. We can no longer let it be. We can no longer let it happen that women will watch this and not say anything about it. I think we've had examples of the telephone company for example where women for all these years have trained the men who then moved on up in management. I don't think it's happening in the telephone company anymore. And one of the major reasons it isn't is because they have had losses which they then had to comply with.

- They're still interested in making money.

- Yeah, they are there to make money.

- They can't afford then to continue to violate the law, I presume, indefinitely.

- It's very encouraging, I might add, that the number of men who are now of themselves somewhat more committed and convinced there's a value of doing this, I cannot say I feel overwhelmed by the number, but it's encouraging to see there is at least some growth, yes.

- Do either the other two or of you have a comment on what you would've advised this woman?

- Well I think I would go along with what Dr. Loring said, that I would talk to management and try to find out why that she had been overlooked. And I don't know, I might just be mad enough to up and quit and had done my resignation, make it very well known why that I quit if I couldn't find any just reason. I don't know, but what, I agree that you can't just sit back and keep taking this thing because this is what women have always done. And this is why people can get away with treating women like this because they know they aren't going to raise a fuss about it. And I think that we have to start realizing that we're going to have to start making some fusses someplace along the way if we want to get ahead.

- Right, and in a way this is an indicator of who is a manager because one of the things one needs to be is aggressive. And so if you're going to be aggressive in behalf of the firm, you surely have to demonstrate that by being aggressive on behalf of yourself.

- Have any of you ever been passed over for something that you think you should have been considered for and said nothing?

- Well I always try to predict and anticipate. I don't wait to be passed over if I can help it. So as soon as I am aware that there are movements I am there in the administrator's office asking questions and indicating my interest in having that position.

- Has this always been true, or is it something that you developed as you learned about how things work?

- Somehow for me this has always been true. I grew up at a time, in a family without enough financial support and without a father in the family and I think that often one's early childhood does have an impact on how you function. So I grew up believing that women could do what men could do, to a very great extent I might add, because we did all the physical work as well as the mental work of operating a family and a home. And so that's my experience. I also learned rather early somehow that if I wanted not to do the kind of work I was doing, which was selling in those days, I'd have to find some other way, there was no one else who was going to break ground for me. And then it was a matter of learning how to do it in a way that would be successful.

- I wish that all women were at that stage. Because I think part of a very great problem in connection with this is just seething inside, or going home and talking with some sympathetic person about it, but saying absolutely nothing in the office itself. Do you have any idea how you'd feel? I presume, Miss Cindy, at this point you would raise some questions.

- Yes, I'd like to comment that in the School of Business we've been going through interviews. Seniors have been, for first semester, they're over with now, but several times I was a little bit upset by the questions they were asking. And in one interview in particular I finally asked the man if he asked the same sort of questions he was asking me to the men he interviewed. He said no. I asked him why and he said because of all the traditional myths about absenteeism, about lack of commitment to work, this sort of thing, were the reasons he was giving for asking these questions. I would like to credit the School of Business in that at that point I ended the interview, got up, went out and talked to the placement director who then went and talked to one of the deans and the company was asked not to interview anymore on campus. This is the sort of thing that women are going to have to be able to do. You're not gonna have to be able to sit there and say please, dear God, give me a job, when you have to have some amount of self-confidence in that what you have learned you're going to be able to put to use and if that's not the particular firm, you have to be able to say forget it, you know? And if they're being insulting to you you have to be able to take action.

- But you have to know, first of all, that you are being insulted.

- That's right. No, a lot of times they'll ask a woman if she's planning to get married, and we were warned about this, and that they also ask that question to men. If you're ready to jump down someone's throat for asking that question you could find yourself in a very embarrassing situation.

- I think it really is a credit to your school because if there had not been a woman on the faculty you might not have been briefed in that way in advance and that would have made a great deal of difference in your response then.

- I'm going to have to expand it a bit beyond the business school, however, because it's been illegal for that kind of recruitment to take place here now since 1964 when the Human Relations Committee made this decision and notified everyone because we have many placement bureaus. What I am concerned about, however, is the number of women who probably are being interviewed, I know they are because of the many times you hear about it, who do don't respond as Cindy did. Who don't go and tell anyone, but who are simply afraid. Afraid they won't get the job if they don't answer every illegal question which is asked, or every question which represents some of the myths.

- You raise a very interesting point, and one I'm quite concerned about, because the thing that finally clobbers most women is this concern about are you therefore not being feminine when you act in this way. And if one were to see Cindy right now and watch her as she responds you'd know the femininity bit is not the problem, not the issue. And it is in fact the way she did it. Not that she did it, but the way that she did it, and I think more and more women are learning ways of behaving which make it possible for them to follow through on their convictions without feeling defensive. And then it comes out with such harshness. As soon as we we're defensive about what we do it just comes out in an explosive quality which is unappealing for men as well as women. So it's a matter of style, but following through.

- How many companies now, not in exact numbers of course, are using women as recruiters? Is it common at all?

- I don't know, I don't have the statistics to know.

- Yes, it's fairly common from the ones, the firms we've had interviewing in the business schools. As a matter of fact a fair number, I mean not 80%, but I mean there have been, a sufficient number have come through.

- My experience has been that a lot of the talk, a lot of times I'll sign up on a sheet to interview with a man not realizing that there was a woman interviewing and the schedule will be switched so that I'm actually interviewing with the woman.

- I see.

- And the intent there, I presume, is to influence more women to be interested in the company? By seeing that they had sent a woman, or what do you think is the reason for that?

- I think that's partially it. I think sometimes the men feel uncomfortable when dealing with a woman. I really do.

- Afraid of asking the wrong questions?

- Right, right.

- Undoubtedly they've been given lists of things not to do.

- Yeah, it's interesting, one of the things we've learned is that men have learned how to assess a man's potential, and they know they do not know how to assess a woman's potential. And so they are truly uncomfortable, and rather than risk a failure on their part, they don't learn, they just send someone else instead which is a rather narrow view I think of how to perceive.

- I wish that we had longer to pursue the subject of women in management. Our guests tonight have been Dr. Rosalind Loring from UCLA, Dr. Beverly Anderson from the School of Business at the University of Kansas, and Cindy Herd, a senior in the School of Business who will soon be carrying out her own breakthrough into management. We hope that you will.