Nussbaum‟s (2000a) combined capabilities suggest that external conditions can affect the capability development of women negatively. This happens when external
conditions constrain the internal capabilities of women middle managers. In this
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regard mentors can act as barriers to women middle managers moving ahead in their careers. When there are constraints and barriers to one‟s advancement, the situation can be seen as having a narrow capability set (Sen, 1999). The data in this study suggests that some women HoDs have not advanced further in their careers, or in their personal lives, partly due to an obstructive influence of their mentors. As the literature indicates, a mentor provides a protégé with career enhancing and psychosocial
functions (Kram, 1985). Mentors therefore ought to help their protégés develop and progress in their careers and in their personal development. Exceptions to this were found in some of the letters.
Hema‟s letter to one of her mentors indicates that he did not prove to be trustworthy or loyal to her. An extract reveals the anger she feels at his betrayal:
...you have given me the opportunity to be innovative and to grow. You never hesitated to compliment, praise and talk highly of me as a member of your SMT. However, when it comes to backing the women on your staff in terms of promotion or short-listing, you failed us all. You know for a fact, that it is the women on your staff that have brought all the accolades for _______________ Secondary. You have still not given us a reasonable explanation as to why not one of the eight women from _____________________ Secondary who applied for the Deputy Principal post was not short-listed. You and the SGB short-listed one male colleague from our school. Mrs _____________________ and myself disputed this post and we both won the dispute. However, this post eventually went to a male, despite the fact that I am the only woman in the SMT. I feel aggrieved about this and feel that you, Mr _________________ have let us women down. That post should have gone to a woman. (Hema, Unsent letter)
From the above extract, it is noted that although Hema‟s male mentor (the school principal) guided her in her role as a HoD and encouraged her as a member of the school management team, he acted as a barrier to her promotion into a senior
management position at the school. This shows that Hema does not have the strong set of capabilities with freedom and the opportunities needed for promotion and this could allegedly be due to her gender.
The principal‟s selection of the male applicant over the eight female applicants for the management position suggests that this mentor may consider women to be less
competent than males for senior management positions. According to Noe (1988), leaders differentiate between their subordinates in terms of their competence, the extent to which they can be trusted and their motivation to assume responsibility.
Subordinates who have these characteristics are regarded as group members. Because women generally may not be perceived as possessing desirable qualities such as leadership, assertiveness, competence and emotional control, they are less likely to be
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considered as worthy of being members of the group (Noe, 1988). Hema‟s complaint to her mentor suggests that, although the women were numerically more than the men at her school, the women were not part of the hegemonic leadership group that was dominated by men. Thus the leadership and the control of the school were in the hands of a few men.
Furthermore, Hema expresses the view that, despite the women in the school having brought “accolades” to the school, they remained the outsiders and needed to prove themselves worthy by twice as much effort as their male counterparts in order to be accepted by the dominant group or to be considered for senior management positions.
She asserts that although women voiced their opinions through a dispute and won the case, their voices remained unheard, and they were further silenced into submission when the only male applicant was selected for the deputy principal post. By
expressing these sentiments, Hema is demonstrating the capability of resilience as she is committed to persevering even when faced with obstructions to her promotion into senior management. The capability of informed vision is also evident in the extract as Hema believes that more women ought to be given opportunities and freedom to become senior managers in schools, as they are capable of doing so. In this way Hema is able to imagine an alternative future for women in school management, one that is free of discrimination against women seeking promotion in schools.
The extract from Hema‟s letter shows that even though a woman may be considered competent and fully qualified to take on a senior management position in school, her perception is of barriers to higher management positions. One of these barriers is the situation when men monopolise the promotion process and act as gate-keepers of the selection committees. Hema‟s account shows that while women may be welcomed into middle management positions in schools at the first tier of management such appointments do not carry as much positional power as the upper management positions do. Therefore, power in the form of decision making, control and authority still lies in the hands of a few select men in this secondary school, as is shown in the following extract from the letter:
...from my experience with how the SGB operates, the patriarchal attitude of the chairperson and his male counterparts and his underhanded, subtle, coercive manner of controlling and manipulating the outcomes of the interviews, no woman stood a chance. You were part of this selection committee. (Hema, Unsent letter)
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Hema interprets her own experience as being about patriarchy, and the rule of members of the school governing body (SGB) and the principal over oppressed women in the school. This polarised positioning is a widespread phenomenon.
Coetzee (2001) notes that men, through patriarchal rule, have complete power domination and authority over women. Women therefore lose their autonomy and subjectivity when they are bound by the decisions men make for them. In her letter Hema‟s autonomy and subjectivity appear to be at risk when she describes her
struggles to stay in control of her position as a woman leader in the school. According to Hema, the patriarchal attitude prevalent in the SGB allows her male colleagues to employ ruthless tactics to remain in power. She describes these tactics as
“underhanded, subtle” and a “coercive manner of controlling and manipulating the outcomes of interviews”. Through these tactics she asserts that her male colleagues were able to control the flow of women into leadership and management positions in the school. The sweeping claim that “no woman stood a chance” captures the depth of her outrage against the might of this hegemonic group of men who, through their domination and control, render the women voiceless in the school.
Her resentment towards her mentor for being “part of this selection committee” points to th is of her gender. That she berates her mentor in the letter suggests that he may not have been her ideal mentor as she regarded him as untrustworthy and biased against women educators.
In her letter Valerie also refers to a mentor or role model putting up barriers that do not allow e betrayal she felt when he overlooked her for the senior position allegedly on the bas the career advancement of a woman protégé. This emerges in the following extract of a letter to her mother:
I feared you as a child and always thought you were cruel, especially when we got a hiding. ...
Growing up was not easy as you did not allow us to have friends. You did not want us to be exposed to bad habits and thought that that would influence us. This made life difficult when I was on the outside world. I felt like an outsider confronted by people. I never knew how to communicate with people... My personal life is a mess, but I am at peace with myself. I rather concentrate on the professional side of my life because you always told me that success at work is what would put food on the table. (Valerie, Unsent letter)
Valerie‟s narrative shows how by fearing a “cruel” mentor or role model, her capability of emotion becomes underdeveloped whereby she finds it difficult to communicate with people and form relationships. The tough love shown by her
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mother, however, strengthened the functional capability of senses, imagination and thought in Valerie as she had developed the necessary professional skills.
Valerie reveals in the above extract, that her mother as mentor, helped her mature and advance in her career, however, she failed to offer encouragement and support in Valerie‟s personal life. Instead, Valerie‟s mother, in trying to protect Valerie from the influence of outsiders, left Valerie feeling socially inept by having difficulties with sustaining relationships with others and always feeling like an “outsider”. By focusing on guiding and mentoring Valerie only in her professional life, Valerie‟s mother overlooked supporting Valerie emotionally. To compensate for her lack of emotional support, Valerie concentrated her efforts on her professional life and career. The above extract indicates that in her mother-mentor relationship, there was limited psychosocial support.
The weak interpersonal aspects of the mentoring relationship contributed negatively to the protégé‟s personal growth despite her professional achievement. With an emphasis on the career development support in the relationship, Valerie was able to advance with greater ease in her career into her management position. Valerie‟s mother may not have guided and coached Valerie in her career per se, but she pushed Valerie to
“concentrate on the professional side” of her life and to therefore make a success of her career.
Although the women HoDs may have experienced some barriers to their professional or personal development, they were able resist these obstacles and continue in their roles as middle managers. Their resilience to transform their weak capabilities to stronger capabilities or offset their weaker ones with stronger ones, thereby improving their sense of well-being as middle managers, is evidence of their transformational leadership abilities. While some women, as exemplified in the participants, may have been disadvantaged in certain ways through their mentors‟ actions, other women were disadvantaged by not having a mentor or role model to guide and inspire them. One such participant is Arthi and I present her account in the next section.
6.5 “I am My Own Inspiration”
Mentors and role models are important in guiding and inspiring women who aspire for management positions (Godshalk & Sosik, 2000). What is apparent in this study is that none of the participants were formally mentored for their management roles. Only
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Hema, Thembi, Rita and Neelam were informally mentored for their roles as new educators in the department by their supervisors at school. The other participants either had mentors or role models in their personal lives who inspired them in their role as middle managers. One participant, however, asserts that she did not have a role model or mentor and therefore she did not write the letter. In our conversation about this she said:
I‟m sorry Sharitha, but, no one has inspired me in my career. Neither has anyone mentored me to be the manager I am today. In fact, I have motivated and inspired myself through the years.
(Arthi, response to unsent letter)
At the outset one might assume that the absence of a role model and mentor would render a weak capability set. However, Arthi‟s claim is that she has developed the capability of resilience and perseverance through her own efforts and influence. Arthi did not see her lack of mentor as a barrier to her promotion into management. This is confirmed by Grogan and Crow (2004, p. 466) who assert that “mentoring can
produce side effects of stifling innovation and perpetuating the status quo”. Therefore Arthi claims that instead she “motivated and inspired” herself to become a manager.
However, her lack of a mentor or role model may serve as a hidden barrier to her career advancement in that she lacks the psychosocial support that could be provided by a mentor. Sen‟s capability approach (1999) suggests that a lack of a mentor for women aspiring for management positions can be viewed as an unfreedom.
According to Sen (1999, p.3), one major source of unfreedom is social deprivation.
Through the unequal treatment of women, which is socially generated (Sen, 1999), women face more barriers than their male counterparts when aspiring to management positions. Without a mentor Arthi would have been deprived of support. That she is in denial about this deprivation and the reasons for her denial may be found in her childhood history. Losing her mother to cancer in her teenage years and soon thereafter having her father emigrating to another country without his children, may have left Arthi feeling abandoned and lonely. This may have led her to needing to fend for herself from early on as she could not necessarily rely on her parents for support.
Arthi‟s discourse indicates the loneliness and isolation she feels as a woman manager when she says that “no one has inspired me”. She has made the journey to
management on her own and through her own determination. This required strength.
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She has been resilient to any barriers that she might have encountered, particularly in not having a mentor or role model and she has exercised her agency for her own career development. This is confirmed by Sen‟s (1999, p. 189) quote when he states that: “women are no longer the passive recipients of welfare-enhancing help, women are increasingly seen, by men as well as women, as active agents of change: the dynamic promoters of social transformations that can alter the lives of both women and men”.
Arthi‟s claim is that she was the solitary agent of her own career development and this implies she has the capability of resilience. Through her agency and determination to succeed, she has reached a state of well-being and is able to function as a middle manager.