On International Women's Day, it’s interesting to consider that whilst Latvia would not be everyone’s idea of a fertile hotbed for successful women managers (it is more readily associated with rowdy groups of men enjoying stag getaways), Bucks New University academic, Gloria Moss, finds good reasons why Latvia is leading the way in providing an attractive environment for women managers.
A new book, Profiting from Diversity (Macmillan) edited by Gloria Moss, shows that in 2006 close to 41% of managers in Latvia were female – the highest proportion of women managers anywhere in the European Union. The figure exceeded the proportion of female managers in the UK by around 6% and was significantly higher than the likes of Sweden, Ireland and Germany.
Moss, a visiting professor at the Ecole Superieure de Gestion in Paris, one of the top Business Schools in France and an academic at Bucks New University’s School of Applied Management & Law, conducted interviews with senior people in Latvia and found a widespread view that female staff brought something different and significant to the workplace.
She said: “In Britain there is still a glass ceiling in relation to what many women can achieve in the workplace. A major factor holding them back are job criteria rooted in male-typical rather than female-typical behaviours. In Latvia, there is an acceptance, widely mirrored in the research literature, that people-focused styles of management, so-called transformational leadership, brings significant benefits over the masculine style of transactional leadership. In the UK about 35% of managers are female, whereas in Latvia the figure is around 41%, which is a figure approaching parity.”
When Moss first visited Latvia to speak at a management conference, Latvia’s president was a woman, as was the editor of the country’s main newspaper and the CEO of the main bank. These positions are normally a male domain.
She said: “Having spoken to many female executives in Latvia the consensus was that there are no barriers to success in the workplace. This is not always the case in the UK and other developed EU countries, where women face a multitude of challenges from male counterparts. Some of the obstacles could be reduced, and productivity improved, through a focus on the criteria for leadership positions. These are not gender-neutral in the way many people may imagine and attention needs to be given to the criteria of excellence applied.”
Moss, who is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), worked with Professor David Farnham, of the Faculty for Human Resource and Marketing Management at Portsmouth University, and Caryn Cook, a senior lecturer in Human Resource Management, specialising in employee relations. They compiled a chapter entitled Women Managers in Latvia: a Universal Footprint for the Future?
Written by experts in the field, Profiting from Diversity shows how national culture, gender and personality can impact on teamwork, management style, design and marketing preferences. It offers solutions that can be delivered to match customer preferences.
Profiting from Diversity: The Business Advantages and the Obstacles to Achieving Diversity is published by Palgrave Macmillan, priced at £55.
For further details go to http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=281244