Changing Balance of Woman Power

The Changing Balance Of Gender Power
       
How do women influence others? Are they disadvantaged as leaders? Are they less powerful than men are? These questions focus on a current and serious social issue, the relative inequities in social power between men and women. The issue of women's power, relative to men, is not merely academic. Gender differences in power have real consequences for women. For example, although women have made gai-ns in the workplace, with more women working than in the past and women possessing approximately a third of all management positions ,women continue to experience wage discrimination, be excluded from the most powerful executive positions, advance more slowly in their careers, and experience fewer benefits from obtaining education or work experience and are included in fewer networks   and exert less authority   than men in similar positions. A number of researchers have linked career advancement and access to benefits and resources within organizations to an effective use of power . An understanding of women's power, relative to men, is therefore essential to overcoming women's disadvantage in the workplace and other domains.                                                                                                                           Many researchers have acknowledged that men have greater access to social or interpersonal power than women do . In general, interpersonal or social power   has been defin-ed as having the potential to influence or control others or having control over valued resources or out-comes . These definitions presume that power derives from the structural and external advantages of one group or individual over another. Men generally have more power than women do because men generally are more likely to possess those advantages than women are. For example, according to expectation states theorists, women are presumed to be less competent than men, and consequently, in group...