Research on Women in Management: A Developmental Perspective

Women and development have acquired significant attention since last two decades. This attention has been two fold. One has been the overall integration of women in development of the economic growth of the nation while the other has been the issued of security in status and allocation of resources for their growth and partnership. The Indian experience suggests an increasing number of educated and professionally trained women enter formal settings of organizations which range from private, government and multi-nationals. Women are of an integral part of banking and financial institutions, communication media, travel and Life Insurance Corporations. This paper reviews five distinct areas of research. 1. Women’s entry in management and the resultant home-work interface. 2. Actual managerial role taking and its interface with organizations. 3. Women’s role taking anchored in the socio-cultural processes and as such role taking and its interface with culture. 4. Women’s role and its interface with development. 5. Studies of individual women who have broken through the barriers and achieved success. This paper proposes that one of the critical and significant area of research on women in management would be to identify women’s institutional role and institutional processes which they perceived as their resource in the social setting. Finally this paper also proposes research on values women hold, and the changing profile if young women, which would provide insights into the coming generation of women managers in India.