Women and Leadership in Corporate Australia : Questions of Preference and "Adaptive Preference"
We are told that the second generation of women leaders will reap the benefits of the breakthroughs made by their predecessors. Yet will they? Research shows that women's numbers in executive positions are still appreciably less than are men's, and progress toward equality has slowed. This article seeks to explain the persistence of gender inequalities in organizations. In particular, it describes the phenomenon of "adaptive preferences," whereby many women confronting a dominant male organizational culture reduce their expectations. They resile from leadership ambitions both because they adapt their preferences to prevailing possibilities and because they make a conscious decision not to play by the existing rules of the game. In this way, gender inequalities can be self-reinforcing. Overcoming gender inequality therefore demands much more radical organizational change than has occurred to date.
Women and Leadership in Corporate Australia: Questions of Preference and "Adaptive Preference"
Pulling back from leadership is a response by many women to the problem of gender inequality. To overcome gender inequality, we must understand why, even in the face of organizational action favouring equal opportunity and opposing discrimination, women still comprise only 10-30% of executive management. Only then can we feel confident that the actions we propose to overcome systemic bias against women will have a chance of succeeding.
Sections 2 and 3 summarize a number of salient international and Australian contributions on gender in organizations. Section 4 presents a set of stylized facts about women's recruitment and advancement in Australian organizations. Section 5 contains a distilled summary of barriers to women's advancement and, in this context, discusses preferences and "adaptive preferences," namely the "phenomenon of adaptation , in which individuals adjust their desires to the way of life they know" (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 136). Section 6 suggests policy conclusions and recommendations.
The following facts about women's representation in business leadership are useful background for the discussion that follows. According to the annual census by the Catalyst organization in the United States , women held 8.7% of Fortune 500 corporate officer positions in 1995. By 2002, the percentage had nearly doubled to 15.7% (Catalyst, 2002b; Wellington , Brumit Kropf, & Gurkovick, 2003). According to the Commonwealth Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA), the executive ratio for women in the Australian ASX 200 is 8.4%. The British corporate data are similar to those for the Australian ASX (Mann, 1995, p. 9).
Anne Summers, author and former head of the Commonwealth Office of the Status of Women (OSW) in the mid-1980s, is scathing about Australia 's "dismal record." She noted that a 2001 "International Labor Organization (ILO) international survey reported that Australia had the lowest number of female managers of all the industrialized countries." The study, Summers said, reported that "just 1.3 percent of [senior] executive positions in Australian companies are held by women" (Summers, 2003, p. 178). Summers also recognized that some progress has occurred. She used the example of the Westpac bank, which is often presented as a gender equity leader in Australia . Others have also noted Westpac's achievements:
In 1992, across the financial services industry only 2.8 percent of women were in management positions. Today, 82 percent of Westpac's branch managers are women. In the same period the percentage of female managers in senior management increased from 0.7 to 19.3 percent; in middle management from at least 3.7 percent to 25.9 percent; and in junior management from at least 11 percent to 38.1 percent. (Priest, 2003)
Yet Australia still lags behind world leaders. In Canada 's banking and insurance industries, the executive level ratio is about 23% (Hiyate 2003; Wirth, 2001). Women currently comprise more than 35% of the Bank of Montreal's (BOM) executives, up from 9% a decade ago. A Task Force on the Advancement of Women initiated by the BOM's president spearheaded the change. The BOM's aim is a 50% ratio of female and male executives by 2007. The Scandinavian record is similar to that of the BOM. They too must be doing something right (Wirth, 2001). One reason Australia 's performance lags is that, even when organizations have formal strategies, they lack effective practices (Equal Employment Opportunity Network for Australians, 2003) . In a significant study in the Australian context, Burton (1997) identified major institutional practice barriers as causes of women's low numbers in senior management roles. The main barriers were stereotypical beliefs about women's roles, attributes, preferences, and commitments; biased selection processes for entry to senior and executive management; biased workings of human resource management systems and practices; and inadequate provision to women of access to formal and informal development opportunities.
Another important set of results has been derived from Catalyst's 2003 survey within Fortune 1000 companies of 705 women senior executives and 120 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). Most of the latter were male. The survey elicited possible reasons for the slow progress of women in leadership ranks, coming up with 17 barriers to women's advancement ( Wellington , et al., 2003). Significantly, according to Catalyst, men and women attribute (consistently) different causes for women's low numbers in leadership roles. While male senior managers tend to look toward women's attributes, preferences, and life circumstances for reasons, women are far more likely to look to the organization itself when they identify barriers to their progression .
However, both women executives and male CEOs agreed upon two factors. The first was lack of general management experience. The other was lack of high-level profit-and-loss experience or the phenomenon of "glass walls" (Wirth, 2001, p. 39, 100-106). Not only do women within the organizational pyramid encounter the glass ceiling, but also invisible walls that stop them moving horizontally into the only serious "pipeline" that heads toward the ceiling (Wirth, 2001, p. 48).
Other writers emphasize the significance of women's role in providing care (unpaid care in the main) within the family and society (Nussbaum, 2002b; Probert, 2005). This helps to explain why the "problem of time" is critical. The demands of having to care for others often restrict what many women can achieve in their careers. For this reason, women in leadership are too often burdened with an unreasonable choice: to have children and sacrifice (or delay) career, or to sacrifice (or delay) having children to pursue their careers. The choice is unreasonable because it is a choice that men do not, as a rule, have to make. Most importantly, childcare responsibilities can force career breaks on women in the so-called prime working age years. The result is a vicious cycle. Nussbaum illustrates why and how women often become stuck in a track that makes it harder for them to achieve their avowed career goals. Because men generally have better career opportunities, the tension over who "cares" for children is often resolved by a decision for
women to "elect" part-time work or work on a "track" that does not promise much job advancement. Unfortunately, most careers still define the successful worker as the full-time worker and define part-time workers, or workers who take extensive leave, as second-class workers. A macho ethos still prevails in the workplace, according to which the good worker is the one who puts in long hours and takes little time off. Such policies (especially common in the U.S. , with its tradition of valuing overwork and devaluing leisure) discourage ambitious men from doing care in the home or taking parental leave, even when it is available. (Nussbaum, 2002a, p. 38-39; see also Wirth, 2001, p. 56)
Summers (2003) also stresses the explanatory power of the work and family nexus. She laments that, in 2002, an external evaluation of the Westpac bank had to acknowledge that "discrimination has gone underground" and is "now less overt and harder to detect than it was 20 years ago." An interesting observation was that "younger Westpac women were more adaptive and felt more confident about being able to deal with the corporate culture." The trouble was that they were "yet to have children and so for them the crunch has not yet come." The crunch had hit their older female colleagues, who "perceived an alien corporate environment" and believed that "the pipeline doesn't work" (Summers, 2003, pp.186-87; see also Priest, 2003).
The organizational findings in this section are "stylized," which means that they are not specific to any identifiable organization. Rather, they fit the average profiles of a number of more enlightened corporate, public sector, and educational institutions in Australia . The profiles derive first from the author's funded institutional research in large corporate and public sector organizations and, secondly, a project on women's attitudes to economic wellbeing for the Security4Women consortium of women's organizations that was funded by the Australian government's office for the status of women.
Figure 1 presents the findings of the above research using stylized percentages. This figure depicts women's entry into executive or senior management roles only, not into the workforce generally or into lower-level management positions. Note also that the picture in Figure 1 is more typical of an organization that abides by anti-discrimination law and policy. The organization will have broad gender equity, equal opportunity, or diversity management policies and procedures. Yet this typical organization--which we might even describe prima facie as "trying" to achieve equity--is unsuccessful. The organization may experience incremental progress, but the result for women ultimately is iniquitous.
The challenge posed for researchers is to explain why. We have to explain why women do not advance to leadership in the same proportions as do men. Moreover, we must explain why inequality of outcomes persists in organizations that, on the surface at least, espouse equality of opportunity and abide by anti-discrimination law.
Catalyst (2003a) describes itself as ". the premier non-profit research and advisory organization working to advance women in business ."
The EOWA "is a statutory authority located within the portfolio of the Australian Commonwealth Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR). EOWA's role is to administer the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999 (Commonwealth) and through education, assist organizations to achieve equal opportunity for women" (EOWA 2004a). Note that the definitions of "executive" here might differ.
The ILO study to which Summers refers (Wirth, 2001, p. 38) cites data from the OSW. Summers claims that the figure of 1.3% is "the lowest of the 41 countries surveyed" (Wirth, 2001, p. 178) for the ILO study. The range given for the 41 countries in the ILO study is 1% to 5.1 percent (for the US ), so Summers's claim should be reasonably accurate. See also (Wirth, 2001, p. 38-41).
Note that data here are from different sources.
See Bank of Montreal (2003); Catalyst (1998, pp. 31-35, 79-81, 221-222); and Hiyate (2003).
See Wellington , et al. (2003). See also Catalyst (1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2003b). Catalyst's conclusions are reinforced by other research (e.g. Bailyn & Fletcher, 2003; Wirth, 2001, p. 53, 101-106).
Elsewhere, Summers says: "There is no pipeline" (2003, p. 183).
Figure 1. The Nature and Transition of Executive Management Intakes over a Decade in Leading Australian Organizations
The first problem to acknowledge might be surprising, even to many equity practitioners who think that formally unbiased systems are in place: organizations tend systematically to favour both external recruitment and men when they recruit. Sometimes we can ignore the obvious, which is that formal procedures by themselves do not guarantee fairness. Bias is deep seated, and part of the explanation is that it nourishes on the tyranny of "experience." Those who have experience are those who are already doing well and who have not gone "off track" (e.g. to care of children). Experience is self-reinforcing and, consequently, favours men.
Is the tyranny of experience sufficient to explain the gender bias most organizations will likely find if they examine their recruitment practices searchingly? Doubtless "experience" is part of the explanation, but it is not sufficient. We also need to acknowledge that organizational culture and practices are still overwhelmingly male. We simply cannot ignore powerful influence, genuine elites, and old school ties (McCalman & Peel, 1992). Leader tracks and "old boys" networks are laid down well in private schools and university colleges. Only after we recognize that selection mechanisms continue to reproduce disadvantages for women, despite genuine efforts to make them more equitable, can we place the rest in context. If recruitment were strictly equal, corresponding to the actual proportions of male and female graduates, the other factors that operate within organizations would have far less force. For instance, the biased rates of advancement in Figure 1 (direct promotion or effective promotion by competitive selection for a higher position) obviously would seem iniquitous and cry out for explanation. Figure 1 translated into words tells us this:
• Over a decade, 8% of executive senior management recruits advance to higher levels, but only 2% will be women who advance, compared with 6% of men who advance (i.e. of those who advance, 75% will be men and 25% will be women);
• Executive senior management ranks will continue to be overwhelmingly male, with 50 of every 70 recruits still in the organization after 10 years being men; and
• Women executives or senior managers advance roughly in about the same proportions as they enter the organization (sometimes it might reach one-third of those who advance, more often it will be about one woman for every three or four men, or 20-25%, as presented in Figure 1).
What the research behind Figure 1 also revealed is that even predominantly female organizations (e.g. in the services sectors generally) will not necessarily predispose themselves to higher proportions of female leadership. The reason is that executive recruitment is largely a separate process from functional promotion systems or "rising through the ranks."
What are the barriers to women's leadership advancement/recruitment? Table 1 lists the 24 most common barriers described by the Australian and overseas literature. Included in the list are both active barriers and absences. An example of an active barrier is selection systems generate implicitly or explicitly biased decisions based on normatively male notions of leadership ("resemblance" or the "face fits"). An absence or lack by contrast is organizations do not have systems to develop career experience (e.g. job rotation). The list also includes some barriers identified by the literature that rely on myths: e.g. women have an ineffective leadership style. While we might readily contradict such simplistic beliefs with counter examples, they are still real barriers to women precisely because organizational leaders hold them. The second step is to analyze and classify the list so that we might gather a sense of relative weight among the key barriers. Table 2 amalgamates and classifies the list systematically by kind, which enables us to make greater sense of the dynamic, relational, and holistic process whereby women's disadvantage perpetuates.
Table 1
Barriers to women's organizational leadership identified in key studies
| • Women do not have sufficient general management, operational, line, or profit-and-loss experience ('glass walls'). |
| • Women are excluded from informal networks of communication, information, advice ('old boys' network'). |
| • There are too few female role models. |
| • Organizations do not have flexible working arrangements that afford work life balance, and this clashes with women's personal and family commitments. |
| • Stereotypical beliefs about women's personal and family commitments prevail in organizations. |
| • Leading women are not mentored in organizations. |
| • Women are not aware of and/or competent in organizational politics. |
| • Selection systems generate implicitly or explicitly biased decisions based on normatively male notions of leadership ('resemblance'). |
| • Promotion, appraisal, and HR systems generate subjective decisions not based on merit (e.g. promotion by seniority). |
| • The belief that women's behavior differs from the organizational norm (or 'women do not fit the corporate culture') exists in organizations. |
| • There are too few opportunities for visibility and challenging assignments. |
| • The corporate culture is inhospitable (e.g. poor diversity policies, long hours, and/or absence of flexible working arrangements that afford work life balance). |
| • Women do not desire to reach senior level but self-select (or are negatively mentored) into non-operational staff areas. |
| • Too few women have been in management ranks long enough ('pipeline'). |
| • Women have an ineffective leadership style. |
| • Women do not have the skills or education to reach senior levels. |
| • Stereotypes that women do not have the skills or education to reach senior levels prevail in organizations. |
| • Women are sexually harassed and discriminated against in other ways. |
| • Women cannot gain access to formal and informal career development opportunities. |
| • An assumption that women will not relocate prevails in organizations. |
| • Organizations have inadequate succession planning and training, and this disadvantages women. |
| • Women in dual career families step back from leadership (including 'mother track' and 'father track'). |
| • Women do not have broad organizational experience. |
| • Organizations do not have systems to develop career experience (e.g. job rotation). |
The key studies used for Table 1 are: Burton (1997), Catalyst (1996), Catalyst (1998), Catalyst (2001), Catalyst (2002a), Mann (1995), Priest (2003), Wellington , et al., (2003), and Wirth (2001).
Table 2
Barriers to women's leadership advancement
| Barrier Type or Kind | About Organization | About Women | About Women's Relationship to Organization |
| Belief Barriers | Stereotypes about women's roles, attributes, preferences, commitments, and capabilities | ||
| Belief that women's leadership approach does not fit (male) corporate norm | |||
| Practice Barriers | Top leaders are not responsible and accountable for women's advancement (including diversity policy outcomes and mentoring) | ||
| Selection, promotion, appraisal, and human resources mechanisms reproduce disadvantage for women | |||
| Career development mechanisms (including education and training, succession and career planning, job rotation) are weak or disadvantage women | |||
| Sexual harassment and discrimination continue to exist, and this intimidates, sidelines, and alienates women from the organization | |||
General Barriers (equating to or because of an inhospitable corporate culture |
'Adaptive preference formation' and women opt out or into non-operational areas | ||
| Organizations do not offer work life balance (e.g. long hours), and this clashes with women's actual commitments | |||
| Diversity is not valued or given mere lip service | |||
| Specific Barriers | Insufficient visibility and experience in line or challenging roles | ||
| Excluded from informal male leadership networks of communication, information, advice | |||
| There are too few female role models (and women need such role models) | |||
| Social Barriers | 'Mother track' preference |
The layers and classifications in Table 2 help to identify how vicious cycles are generated in organizations as self-reinforcing causal mechanisms . Figure 2 attempts to capture such a mechanism in a simple form. We can start at any point within it. For instance, an original cause in biased selection and promotion can reproduce a response from women to pull back (including adaptive preference formation), typically claiming: "What's the use? I won't get the job anyway." The absence of women being selected for leadership in itself helps to reinforce a wrong, stereotyped perspective that women are not leaders or leadership material. If women pull back from leadership or move into non-line areas, existing leaders reinforce the existing patterns of selection, do not take work-life balance seriously, and consolidate the existing corporate culture, which is inhospitable to women and drives adaptive preference formation.
The existence of self-reinforcing vicious cycles in organizations is one reason that proposed answers must be holistic. The second reason concerns proposed solutions. Because problems have multiple causes and effects within organizations, they are likely to respond best to holistic cures. This is not to say that all aspects of such cures have equal weight. On the contrary, much greater weight always falls to the leadership aspects, especially in organizations that contain precisely defined hierarchies, divisions of labor, and job roles. Furthermore, too much focus on one barrier can engender organizational laziness or the fallacy of queuing. The fallacy of queuing occurs when a goal such as increasing the number of women in leadership is subtly queued behind some other related organizational objective, like the broad goal of career development. The absence of a career-development system in an organization is a barrier to women's advancement, but women's advancement should not wait until a desired career development system is achieved. Rather, central weight should be given to the role of top leadership in driving change for women through more effective career development, strategic planning, and implementation. The result would be different because the process would be different. For example, factors such as work-life balance would be picked up because they help to create a hospitable corporate environment for women, help to overcome adaptive preference formation, and reinforce a changed (non-stereotypical) view of women at the highest levels of the organization. This in turn would reinforce leadership understanding of diversity and leaders' commitment to drive change. In other words, instead of the vicious cycle we might see a virtuous cycle, as depicted in Figure 3.
Figure 2. A Vicious Cycle: Barriers to Women's Leadership
Figure 3. A Virtuous Cycle: Overcoming Barriers to Women's Leadership
Preferences: adaptive or just plain preferences?
Those who favour London School of Economics academic Catherine Hakim's approach to women's preferences would disagree with the approach suggested here. Likely, they would say that, with the possible exception of extreme biases in some organizations selection practices, the outcomes in Figure 1, for example, could be explained by the deeply held preferences of women themselves. It is worth exploring this objection, as it could be argued that women are not selected or do not advance just because they do not put themselves forward. Women do not put themselves forward for executive leadership, in equal proportions to men, at least, just because many simply do not desire to. Moreover, they do not desire to for good reasons of their own, and these reasons should be respected.
Now this view is implausible, if only because more women are graduating with degrees in the business disciplines in Australia today than are men. Regardless, it will be useful to press the underlying arguments of the "given preferences" or "revealed preferences" perspective, both to understand them better and to show why they are weak. The argument that women may be segmented into dispositional types with well-ordered preferences is spelled out by Hakim:
A review of recent research evidence (Hakim 2000) shows that once genuine choices are open to them, women choose three different lifestyles: home-centred, work-centred or adaptive . The three preference groups are set out, as sociological ideal-types . with estimates of the relative sizes of the three groups in societies, such as Britain, where public policy does not bias the distribution .These divergent preferences are found at all levels of education, and in all social classes and income groups. They are found in all European Union countries, and in most other modern societies. (Hakim, 2002, para. 8)
The notion is evident in Hakim's work that preferences are akin to hard-wired mental dispositions (indeed hard-wired "types" of dispositions) sits behind much choice theory as an assumption, especially in economics. From the embedded nature of the preference follows the conclusion that choices are virtually predetermined. This deterministic approach to preferences is likewise a limiting approach to choice. To remind readers of its limited scope, the word choice in Hakim's approach will appear in quotes as "choice" from now on.
It also follows, according to the standard preference "choice" approach, that rational deliberation has little to do with determining preferences. Rather, preferences sit behind and inform rational deliberations. Rational "choice" merely concerns how to achieve the actual states represented by the (hard-wired mental) preferences. For a woman of Hakim's home-centred "type," choices might therefore concern when to partner, when to marry, whom to partner and/or marry, when and if to leave paid employment, when to have children and how many, and how to construct a family budget in order to achieve a home-centred lifestyle. That is, reason, deliberation, and choice are merely instrumental.
This view of desire, preference, and "choice" goes back at least to the 18 th century Scottish philosopher David Hume. Hume espoused a non-cognitive theory of motivation, by which he meant that we could not deliberate rationally over the ends (or preferences) that motivate us. He did say, however, that such deliberation could help us to choose the means we might employ to achieve those given ends. How then did Hume conceive how we form the ends that motivate our actions? His answer was that we were motivated to act by social customs and habits, and these customs and habits were responsible for forming our desires and preferences. According to Hume, such customs and habits were based in turn on our inherent psychological dispositions and changed at a glacially slow speed. This is what he meant by his seemingly odd belief that reason should be the slave of the passions (Norton, 1993). The passions (or emotions) behind our desires and preferences could be trusted, said Hume, because they were indeed relatively passive and conservative mental dispositions. Nussbaum explains:
Hakim uses "adaptive" here to mean adaptive between work- and home-centred priorities. It is not the same meaning that adaptive has elsewhere in this article.
[In] familiar Humean models of the explanation of action . desires are hardwired in psychology, lacking in intentionality and impervious to modification. Beliefs then simply function to provide desire with information about how to attain its object. It was on this account that Hume famously held that reason is and must always be the slave of the passions. (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 136)
Positivistic economists and sociologists might not express themselves as extravagantly as did Hume, but there is no doubting that his ideas are especially influential in 20 th century economics: hard-wired desires (wants) shape preferences, and preferences are the ends toward which "rationality" seeks efficient means. For example, Lionel Robbins's 1932, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science , which Paul Samuelson popularised in his influential post World War II economics textbook, defined economics as the discipline that addresses how to deploy scarce means efficiently to achieve given ends. This definition can be found in the first chapter of all standard economics textbooks today.
Hakim's underlying view that preferences are non-cognitive (or pre-cognitive) and that we deliberate merely over "choosing" how to achieve our preferences (or given ends) is arguably false. The first problem is that actual preferences result from deliberation, and they can change. We wrestle mentally over our choices. We do make decisions that, within limits, alter our life courses. Secondly, Hakim's perspective seemingly ignores the problem that preferences can be adaptive: i.e. they are formed in response to circumstances. This brings us to the third problem: if prevailing circumstances embody a history of discrimination and or disadvantage, adaptive preferences can reinforce and reproduce the history of discrimination and/or disadvantage. Preferences are not a clean sheet, as it were. Revealed preferences--as shown in actual choices and social roles--therefore are a bad basis upon which to develop policy.
In addition, the very idea of pre-formed or hard-wired preferences necessitates that such preferences be well ordered. That is, they must be able both to be ranked (ordered) at any point in time and to be consistent over time. If non-cognitive, pre-formed preferences were to exist without order and consistency, life would be diabolically confused. We would be paralyzed by a permanent clash of conflicting but unshiftable wants, needs, and desires. Hakim's approach, in which preferences spring from relatively unchanging character types, therefore assumes both order and consistency. If only for this reason, it is necessary to challenge whether preferences do function in this way in rational decision-making.
Indeed we must even question whether such "preferences" are the basic data upon which choices are made and actions are undertaken. Strong grounds exist for thinking that they are not. In fact, "most practical reasoning is typically about adjudicating between conflicting, inconsistent desires and other sorts of reasons" (Searle, 2001, p. 30). It is quite reasonable on Searle's account for women to desire a full career and to have children, knowing that this will be a difficult decision precisely because to act on the latter will conflict with the former. It is also possible for a woman to want to concentrate on her career today and not in the future, and to want children in the future but not today. None of these desires are unreasonable. Women are not greedy for wanting a career and a family, or even for wanting just children and a career. Men desire these things and more. It is also permissible to be utterly confused while thinking about how to resolve one's conflicting desires and options.
The standard way out of this problem in the literature is to say that rationality is not about desires as such but about preferences . Rational deliberation must begin with a well-ordered preference schedule. The problem with that answer is that in real life deliberation is largely about forming a set of preferences. A well-ordered set of preferences is typically the result of successful deliberation, and is not its precondition. (Searle, 2001, p. 30; original emphasis)
The problem that women face is one that men largely do not. The problem is that women have to undertake the hard deliberations in unfavourable circumstances. If Nussbaum and Sen are right, and we all encounter the "phenomenon of adaptation , in which individuals adjust their desires to the way of life they know" (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 136), then women will encounter additional difficulties in forming preferences (Sen, 1999). The least of these adaptive difficulties is the problem known as "sour grapes." This name comes from Aesop's fable of the fox and the grapes: the fox, not being able to reach the grapes, conceives them as sour. Based on reasoned probabilities inferred from experience, women might well consider many leadership positions out of reach. Whether this leads them to think them "sour" in the manner of the fox is another question. Women certainly have sound reasons to think the culture of many organizations is sour, but that is hardly adaptive thinking or sour grapes. It is a rational assessment of the situation.
However, such rational thinking can lead to adaptive decision-making : i.e. of the type that says, "I do not really want to be part of that." Similarly, the "mother track" outcome discussed in section 2 above cannot rightly be considered as the result of a woman forming an adaptive preference as such (i.e. adaptive thinking ). Instead, the decision-making adapts to the circumstances by "making the best out of a bad lot." The thinking, desires, and preferences may also adapt, but it is not necessary that they do. It is clearly possible for women who make decisions that put them into the mother track to see things clearly for what they are, to rail against the injustice of it all, and to prefer the world were different.
In contrast, the more genuine forms of preference or desire adaptation, according to Nussbaum (2001), are those that include "lifelong habituation, and [not] . simply giving up on a desire one once had." This is especially relevant to women because key "cases do involve lifelong socialization and absence of information" (p. 139). Socialization and absence of information are factors that define the known way of life and constrain women imagining possible alternatives to it. Nussbaum also highlights a "closely related group of arguments" that show "that people's preferences are in many ways constructed by the laws and institutions under which they live." Accordingly, she maintains that "we can hardly use preferences as a bedrock in our deliberation about what laws and institutions we wish to construct" (Nussbaum, 2001, p. 142-143; citing Rawls, 1996, p. 269).
The plurality of the actual desires and preferences women have should be respected, Nussbaum maintains, but that should not blind us to the forces shaping those preferences and desires. Hakim, in contrast, ignores the problem of adaptation, as if a formally unbiased "public policy" cast were sufficient to eliminate its force. Nor should a respectful approach to women's choices today blind us to the institutional changes required if women's choices are to be more open in the future. Indeed, we can infer from Nussbaum that the domain of choices open to women will expand in response to institutional change, in much the same way that women today have greater real choice because the law and public policy have changed over the past four decades.
Organizational change solutions are neither easy nor separable from each other. However, because certain barriers facing women in organizations command obvious attention, we can be reasonably direct. We can also draw strong inferences from the discussion in the preceding section. Changed institutions create changed environments and responses, for women and men. Hence a list of the policy conclusions might include:
• Convince the highest levels of management that their organizations have gender equity problems that only they, the highest levels of management, can rectify. For each woman who is appointed or advances today, three men will be appointed or advance. This deprives organizations of talent and reinforces a culture in leadership that women find unwelcoming and unproductive.
• Establish highest-level internal diversity task forces to communicate the message that organizations must remedy the problem and that the expectation is that the organizations must change accordingly.
• Develop a concrete strategy that includes the two following features. First, understand better the particular reasons in given organizations that some women graduates and employees might not be putting themselves forward for leadership. Secondly, it will be necessary to set clear targets and managerial accountabilities for gender equity that will be benchmarked, evaluated, and acted on. Such targets can have attached timelines, but ultimately the goal must correspond broadly with the graduate pool's proportions.
• Thoroughgoing changes in human relations practices, especially regarding career development and work life balance must follow. However, we must not dissolve 1 and 3 into such broader changes and thus water them down. Measures that affect some but not all women can be extremely important here (e.g. childbirth leave, child care, and family friendly meeting times) for their demonstration effects.
5. If private sector organizations are unwilling to do what is necessary, then governments must lead in their practices as employers and by legislation. We do not elect them to be spectators.
What might be an appropriate response to some male sensibilities adversely affected by these suggestions? After all, and despite their moderate wording, the points above intend to break open the "old boys' network." The response "get over it" would be a good place to start.
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Author's Note
Dr. Doughney received a Ph.D. in the areas of political economy and the history of economic thought from Victoria University , Melbourne , Australia . His research includes workplace and women's issues, the impact of slot-machine gambling on poorer communities, and ethics in social and economic policy. He wishes to thank the two anonymous referees for their very helpful advice. The usual caveat applies.
See Nussbaum's chapter "Adaptive preferences and women's options" in Women and Human Development for a clear exposition of her view.
