Beyond Glass Ceilings and Brick Walls - International Labour ...

CHAPTER THREE
Dismantling Glass Ceilings
Management Issues in Promoting Women’s
Participation and Gender Justice
Wijaya Jayatilaka
I Introduction
Gender equity and ensuring equal access to resources and opportunities have
become social goals common to all nations. Gender justice is conceived as an
integral part of human rights that is universally espoused. All national
governments in the global community of nations have made these
commitments are working towards realising this goal. Various national and
international organizations assist and monitor the progress towards a just
society. However, gender equity can be realized only when all social and
economic institutions adopt mechanisms to ensure gender equity. This
includes all sectors, i.e. the government, non-government as well as the
private. The role of the private sector and business will grow in importance
with the emphasis placed on this sector for economic growth and employment
generation. Hence, the relevance to examine more closely, opportunities
and threats to gender justice in women’s employment as managers, and
their career mobility in the private sector.
The need to examine the role of women in management, especially in the
private sector in Sri Lanka, arises due to several factors. Although Sri Lanka
takes pride in a high literacy rate, - equal access to education and employment
opportunities and a fairly egalitarian policy in the distribution of educational
and training facilities, the numbers of women in senior management positions,
who are directly responsible for decision-making, remains low. This is in
spite of the fact that in most university programmes including management,
law and liberal arts, the numbers of women outnumber men. The management
and accounts training programmes offered by private educational
organizations and institutes are also attended by a large proportion of women.
This chapter addresses the issue of “women in management”. It does so
under three sections. First, we will examine in brief a few major concerns in
management which provides the basic framework. Second, we will assess
certain important “gender in management” issues relevant for the assurance
of greater gender equity and justice. The third section is a set of case studies
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