Women in ManagementI Significant changes have taken place in the demographic makeup of the labour force. The share of working women has grown considerably. Important changes have also been made in the labour legislation of most developed economies. For example, in the 1960s the United States enacted a series of equal employment opportunity laws, which forbid discrimination in employment on the basis of race, colour, creed, sex, age, or disability. Companies that do business with the US government have an additional obligation to provide job opportunities for women. The role of women in modern society and in business in particular is growing. There are women politicians, lawyers, doctors, teachers and managers. In developed countries more and more women hold high positions in companies, though men still dominate boards of directors. In some European countries there is a tendency to promote women to high and top positions in companies. These changes in the management system have resulted from the government policy, aimed at giving women equal opportunities and rights, feminists' struggle against discrimination at work, and ideological changes in society. Unfortunately, very often the traditional roles of mother and wife contradict the new role of professional. It is not easy for a career woman to combine family duties with work. She is too busy with job-connected problems and spends a lot of time away from home. She cannot take care of her husband and children properly, cook, do the washing and cleaning. Sometimes marriages end in divorce. According to another study, female bank officers have the highest divorce rate. Female restaurant managers also rank among the most divorce-prone. Psychologists explain that these positions draw independent, assertive women who concentrate more on their career than on their marriages. At best, professional growth and a happy family life can parallel and coexist peacefully. But very often modern women have to make a difficult choice between a successful career and a good marriage. Some women prefer being a professional. Others choose their families and give up their careers. II Here is a charming story about a British businesswoman who gave up her high position in a famous company and became a good mother and wife. Penny Hughes was the youngest and only female president of Coca-Cola UK. Her salary was £250,000. She demonstrated that she could work. Sales soared under her leadership. Hughes also recruited other women who are reaching the top, and they now have a woman running Australia. At the age of 35 Penny Hughes unexpectedly resigned from her high post to be a full-time mother. Her resignation was like the death of Superwoman as an ideal. Feminists attacked her for betraying the cause. Her peers could not understand why she had done it. Her decision to leave Coca Cola was the result of that common thirty-something dilemma: how to balance career opportunities against a ticking biological clock. "I had meant to have children when I was about 30, and then the next job came along," she says. "Then, I meant to have them at 33, and I got promoted to president. By the time I was 35, I had been in the top leadership position at Coca UK for two years and I had to have children now. Also, I'd done 10 years there and I didn't want to give the rest of my life to the company." Penny Hughes was brought up in Birkenhead, Merseyside. She was an academic, sporty, and smart child. After school, she went to Sheffield University and studied chemistry. She met her future husband, David, a computer analyst, there. Hughes is prettily businesslike and super-trim. She is brisk, sensible and confident. Penny Hughes says that she has never been too busy, even when she was running Coca UK. She never took work home and finished work by 5.30 pm or 6 pm at the latest. Hughes would deal only with decisions that needed her attention. At about 4 pm on Fridays, she used to tell colleagues to go home. She wouldn't promote people who had to work 12 hours a day to do their job. They just couldn't work. Hughes is against staying late at work. Life is too short. Today Penny Hughes has established a work-home balance that makes other men and women "green with envy". She earns over £100,000 a year for about 10 days' work a month. Her work consists of four non-executives directorships at the Body Shop, Next, Beresford and the Mirror Group. She has no normal week. Over a month, Hughes attends four board meetings, does four days of reading and research. She also lectures on global branding and management. Two or three days a week she spends at home. Hughes adores her two boys and loves playing with them. She helps shape them. The woman's life is full. She is satisfied. What Penny Hughes has given up is the management. That is a relief because it takes energy, time and passion - that is what she puts into her children. The corporate culture is changing, she says. When her co-directors call her at home, often her three-year old answers the phone. Five to ten years ago, business people would have been offended. They would have expected a secretary. Now, she says to people, you take me as I am. Hughes would like to see men take up portfolio careers. She hopes she would have made the same decision if she had been a man. She feels sorry for men because they are stuck within their own conventions and roles. She wants them to change their views about work, too. Exercise 12. Find in the text the equivalents of these words and word combinations. Женщины-политики, женщины-юристы, женщины-менеджеры; в развитых странах; преобладают в советах директоров; по данным исследования, проведенного ведущим бизнес-центром; правительственная политика, направленная на; к сожалению; женщина, сделавшая карьеру; отказаться от карьеры; единственная женщина-президент британского филиала компании "Кока-Кола"; коллеги; неожиданно оставила свой высокий пост; я получила повышение и стала президентом; управляла (компанией); у нее ненормированная неделя; изменить точку зрения.
Exercise 13. Answer the following questions in pairs. I 1. What demographic changes have taken place in developed economies? 2. Is the role of women in business growing? Why? 3. What women's roles in society contradict each other? II 1. Was Penny Hughes' career at Coca Cola UK successful? 2. Which choice did she make: to be a good mother or to be a superb professional? 3. Is the corporate culture changing? What does Mrs. Hughes say about it? 4. Who must take portfolio careers, according to Penny Hughes? 5. Is Mrs. Hughes a prominent woman? Why do you think so?
Exercise 14. Work in small groups. Speak about: - Penny Hughes' work at Coca Cola UK and the reasons for giving up her position; - Penny Hughes' childhood and education; - Penny Hughes' family; - Penny Hughes present occupations.
Exercise 15. Work in pairs or a small groups. Discuss which is more important for a woman: a) - to leave secondary school and get married, - to get a good education at college / university, - to combine family life with studies; b) – to become a housewife, - to have a good job, - to combine family interests with career interests. Prove your point of view. You can use the word combinations below or give your own variants. To have a good husband and children; to become a cultivated and broad-minded person; to become a professional; to hold a high position; to have both a family and a good job; to be an excellent wife and mother and a prosperous businesswoman at the same time; to care for her husband and children; to do her professional duties; to do her housework; to be effective at work; to devote herself to her family; to dedicate herself to career / business / science / politics; to support her family; to earn her living; to be the breadwinner in the family.
Exercise 16. Read the text about a fantastic Taiwanese woman who has succeeded in combining her career, clan traditions and family life. Put the verbs in brackets in the correct tenses (active or passive). When Cher Wang ___ (to enter) a roomful of people, they struggle to contain their curiosity. As Taiwan's richest woman, founder of two important technology companies, Via and HTC, and a daughter of the island's most revered tycoon, the late Wang Yung-ching, she ___ (to be) naturally a focus of public attention. But her determination to avoid it ___ (to earn) her a reputation as shy and secretive. Only since HTC, the smartphone company she ___ (to set up) in 1997, became a fast-rising star among global gadget makers has the 50-year-old chairman of the company engaged with the public. Yet it ___ (to be) her ability to put herself in the shoes of the consumer that observers say is one of the biggest factors behind the success of, first, the chipset maker Via, and then HTC, which ___ (to make) the jump from contract manufacturer to branded vendor. It is a switch that other Taiwan IT companies ___ (to struggle) to make. "Cher ___ (to approach) the business with the eyes of the consumer, because she is not an engineer," says one executive at T-Mobile, who has worked with HTC. "Often, she instinctively ___ (to make) the right choices." Wang may be reticent in public, but speaking in Via's swanky Beijing headquarters about her businesses and how she ___ (to run) them, she is outgoing and cordial. She even asks her staff to treat her guest to the hot sweetened lemon juice she ___ (to sip) to soothe a sore throat. This personal warmth, it becomes clear, ___ (to be) also a secret weapon in her management style. She ___ (to say) one of the most important aspects of how she leads is to ask about the people in her companies: "How do I see their gift and make them successful? If you talk to them, they ___ (to feel) you like them, and you're really there for them every day." In her early years in business, says Wang, she would spend entire nights at work. "I ___ (to try) to encourage our research and development staff to stay overnight," she says. Then she ___ (to focus) on procurement, product development and marketing, but more recently, when HTC was a new company trying to develop PDAs, she ___ (to concentrate) on building the right team and preparing it for future challenges. HTC chief executive Peter Chou, for example, ___ (to send) on an MBA course at Harvard Business School to prepare him for the role. Wang ___ (to become) much more closely involved in picking employees: "I will always seek to hire people who can teach me something," she says. "If they can teach me in a simple way, so I can understand it, then they can do better, because I ___ (to ask) a lot of questions." Of the 10 children of Mr Wang, the founder and chairman of Formosa Plastics, Taiwan's leading petrochemicals group, Ms Wang ___ (to be) not initially the likeliest to have a career in business. Indeed, she ___ (to start off) studying music at University of California, Berkeley – only to switch to economics within days. While still at college, she ___ (to procure) medical equipment in the US for her father who was establishing what would become one of Taiwan's leading hospitals. Then she ___ (to take up) selling computers at a San Francisco trade show on behalf of First International Computer, her sister's motherboard company. It ___ (to go) so well that the company expanded into making PCs. In 1987, Wang and her husband Chen Wenchi set up a Via Technologies, a chip design house, in Silicon Valley. Five years later they ___ (to move) the company to Taiwan, the island's first chip designer. Via ___ (to force) to diversify. It ___ (to be) now among the world's leading suppliers of energy-efficient processors. It has also focused much more on China and is trying to build niche markets there by backing fledgling Chinese IT manufacturers and by offering them a platform on which their handsets and netbooks can run. When she set up HTC, Wang ___ (to want) to make PDA phones – mini-computers that can also act as handsets. The company ___ (to get) contracts to make PDAs for Compaq and Hewlett-Packard. Next, HTC ___ (to start) making customized smartphones running on Windows systems for mobile operators such as Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone. The partnerships saved HTC from the cut-throat competition that other contract manufactures get caught in when they serve branded handset makers. From there, it was just one step for HTC to become a branded handset maker. Since 2006, the company ___ (to sell) smartphones under its own brand. Apart from handsets running on Microsoft, it now also ___ (to have) phones running on Android, Google's platform.
Exercise 17. Match the words from the text with their definitions.
Exercise 18. Work in pairs. Discuss with your partner what factors have determined Cher Wang's career success, what personal qualities help her in her business and family life.
Exercise 19. Say what are pros and cons of being a career woman. The table below will help you. Give your own ideas and continue the lists of advantages and disadvantages.
Exercise 20. Here are some tips to a businesswoman on how to combine family interests with career interests. Complete the list of tips. 1. How to keep house - Hire an honest, hardworking woman to do housework (if you can afford it). She will do the cooking, cleaning and shopping. - Ask your retired relative or reliable jobless friend to live with your family and look after the house. - Share all the housework, including cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, shopping, among all the members of the family. 2. How to make a good wife - Take an interest in your husband's life and work. - Tell your husband about your problems at work. - Try to have meals with your family at home. - Go to parties, receptions, exhibitions with your husband. - Spend your vacation with your family. 3. How to make a good mother - Take an interest in your children's life and studies. - Send your children to the best school you can. - Hire the best teachers you can if your children have any problems in their studies. - Speak to your children about different things. - Invite your children's friends to your place.
Exercise 21. Look at the title and say what this article is about. Read the article and check your guess.
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