This study examined the role of women in upper level management in a large American aerospace manufacturing corporation. Specifically, the goal of the examination was to identify those factors which had led to a limited representation of women in the upper level managerial echelon of the firm.
In this chapter, literature is reviewed which is relevant to the problem examined in the study. As the proportion of women found in the upper level of management in any company is the product of factors which are both unique to the specific organization and pervasive in society, the literature reviewed is broad in scope.
The participation of women in the American workforce is directly relevant to the examination of the presence of women in upper level management. Upper level managers do not simply appear on the organizational scene. Rather, they are drawn from subordinate managerial ranks, which, in turn, draw from the general workforce.
The history of working women in the United States is a largely ignored subject. Schools, regardless of level, seldom discuss in detail the critical roles played by women in the building of the country. Much information, for example, is provided about the soldiers at Valley Forge, yet little is said of the women who were also present as cooks, launderers, and food scavengers. American women have played vital roles in all of the country's wars as nurses for the wounded, as spies, and as workers to replace the men called to soldiering. At other times, women worked 14 hours per day and longer in the country's sweat shops and mills, and, later, were beaten, jailed, and killed in the cause of the American labor movement.1
In those earlier days when women who worked outside of the home put in an average of 14 hours per day in the workplace for a pittance, they returned home to the full responsibilities of housewives and mothers. Further, at this earlier time in American history, women were not enfr...