“Must Women Adopt Male Characteristics to Succeed?”

“Must women adopt male characteristics to succeed?”

Success is an expression that cannot be solely defined within a solitary sentence. It is a phrase that may be personally described, as one individuals outlook to success may differ from another. Overall the meaning of success is to accomplish a goal and complete what you set out to do. Within the workplace for example, one persons’ idea of being successful may be attaining a pay raise, therefore their view upon success has been achieved and they have earned a higher wage. Another individual may achieve success through reaching a higher level of position within the organisational hierarchy or alternatively, the rate in which they’ve advanced within the company may be quicker than their fellow colleagues. All of the above are very popular answers to the question ‘what is success?’. In order to fully comprehend the question in hand we also need to understand another key term, characteristics. When one has to define what a characteristic is; it is said to be an attribute or a certain trait that we can link to a person, place or thing in order to be able to indentify it. For this particular question it is focussing upon characteristics of people, in particular characteristics of males and females and how this relates to success in the workplace. A male and a female are the two sexes that come under the term gender; by gender we are referring to how culture has socially constructed differences between the two different sexes.

Why do quotations such as “Where Women are, power is not” (Rendell 1980) exist and continue to be used? In the past we would not expect to see women in successful positions within the workplace, this was due to the now out of date ‘traditional feminine sex role stereotype’. A woman would not work, instead she would look after her husband, children and home, whilst her husband or male partner would be the ‘breadwinner’ and go out to work and provide an income for his family. Through the 1950s...