The Influence Of Attitudes On Gender Roles Towards Under Representation Of Woman Managers In Malaysia

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Hemalata Alagan , Sumathi Paramasivam Mangalam

Abstract

The paper examines the influence of employees’ attitudes on gender roles towards the underrepresentation of top women managers in public listed companies in Malaysia. We examined two factors that predicted attitudes (family-work conflict bias and organisational culture), and the current attitude of employees towards women managers, whether there is a relationship between attitudes and underrepresentation of women managers. This research proposed that attitudes towards gender roles will influence the representation of top women managers in organisation. The research is guided under feminism theory. The feminist theory recognises women’s persecution and the patterned social arrangements that support this persecution and placing female in a lower rank in an organisation. The confirmatory quantitative method was employed as the research strategy and more specifically, ATWoM (Attitude towards women managers) was applied to explore the attitudes of employees’ at workplace. The data was collected from 282 female and male employees from ten listed companies from five different industries and analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling. The findings of this study revealed that organisational culture and family-work conflict bias was indeed the predictors of attitudes towards gender roles. The research also revealed that there was positive relationships between attitudes and underrepresentation of top women managers. The results of this study recognised the importance of identifying changes in attitudes towards gender roles which inspires women in terms of performance and representation.

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