Abstract

Despite legal sanctions and political pressure from women's organizations to facilitate the advancement of women in management, there has been little evaluation of specific initiatives designed to recruit, encourage, assist, or improve the performance of women in management positions. A broad array of recommendations regarding what should be done to facilitate the advancement of women in organizations has been offered. Although the variety of programs and policies recommended is extensive, there has been little empirical investigation of their effectiveness or validity. While it is clear that most firms have established some programs to deal with issues of affirmative action, it is less certain that existing programs are effective. Organizational resources may well be being spent on irrelevant activities and diverted from activities that could better contribute to organizational effectiveness. In particular, a more in-depth analysis of the priorities of women managers is needed. The results presented here deal only with the general measures of what managerial women in professional women's organizations felt was important to encourage the entry and advancement of women as managers. More extensive information regarding the tradeoffs women managers would make across a broad array of wage, benefit, and working condition options is needed.