De genusspecifika kulturerna och ledarskap

The integration of women into management has not always taken place without problems. Some of the problems which female managers are confronted with in their work and during different stages of their careers are often said to arise, from, inter alias, the differences in the value-orientation between men and women. The interests, priorities and basic values shared by the majority of women are different from those values, norms and standards which are valid in the management of most organisations. This is seen as a fact which causes many of the conflicts which specifically concern female managers. The use of the value-system related gender differences as an analytical tool is, however, limited because of the difficulties to find proper definitions of the concept. This work is an attempt to create a concept which enables the study of the difficulties which an individual with a value-orientation which is specific to the female gender role meets in a context that is dominated by the male value-system.The differences in value-orientation between men and women are here seen as a manifestation of two different gender-related cultures. The objective of this study is, therefore, to define the concepts of female and male culture. In order to produce two gender related cultural patterns the results of previous research which has focused on the gender differences have been organized by using a model for organizational cultures created by Schein (1985).