Woman with managerial jobs

[Woman1987]

Is it OK for a woman with grown up children has a managerial job? I work for a large organization and the department I work consist of about 50 people and our manager is a woman. On the one hand I think she does her work well, on the other hand it feels more natural to me if a man would do her job. In my opinion she does her work very well because she is very kind hearted and I would almost say a kind of mother for the employees and at the same time she is able to stand up as an authority and knows how to deal with difficult employees. She also has the reputation of being a good manager, better than our former male manager.

 

[Dominics_FIre]

There’s nothing wrong with a female manager… If she can do her job, that’s what matters.

 

[Angel_Bradford]

Why wouldn’t it be okay?

 

[AnneTeresa]

Why would it matter if she’s a woman if she can do the job? It’s about qualifications and performance, not gender.

 

[Woman1987]

I though it might be not OK since by nature a woman has other qualities and men are by nature better leaders.

 

[JReducation]

Is it OK for a woman with grown up children has a managerial job? I work for a large organization and the department I work consist of about 50 people and our manager is a woman. On the one hand I think she does her work well, on the other hand it feels more natural to me if a man would do her job. In my opinion she does her work very well because she is very kind hearted and I would almost say a kind of mother for the employees and at the same time she is able to stand up as an authority and knows how to deal with difficult employees. She also has the reputation of being a good manager, better than our former male manager.

Let’s look inside the Church.

**Vatican City: ** has over 100 women who are in management positions.

Religious life:

Abbesses are all managers.

Superiors General are all managers (i.e. Mother Teresa)

Catholic Institutions:

Schools, colleges and universities have had female presidents, deans and deparment heads for a very long time.

Catholic hospitals have been run by more women than men

Catholic charities

Diocesan Chancellors – there are many women who are the chancellor. It’s no longer a priest’s job. My chancellor is woman.

According to Catholic law, the only management position that a woman may never hold is one that requires priests and brothers to obey her. That would be a superior. Men can be the religious superior of a female community, but women may never be the religious superior of a male community. This has to do with faculties. Many male religious (not all) are also priests. Their superior grant them faculties to preach, hear confessions and witness marriages. Women cannot grant faculties.

Outside of that, women have been running things in the Church for centuries.

Let me tell you a story. When St. Francis founded the Poor Clares, it was expected that he would be their superior and that he would write their rule. Afterall, Benedict was Scholastica’s superior. Dominic was the superior for the Dominican nuns and Augustine for the Augustinian nuns.

Instead, Francis ammended the rule of the friars and prohibitted them from even entering the convents of the nuns. He believed that women and men were equal; therefore, Clare and her sisters should govern themselves without the interference of the friars. To this day, their superiors are their CEOs.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[starsmurf]

I though it might be not OK since by nature a woman has other qualities and men are by nature better leaders.

No, men are not by nature “better leaders”.

You can’t lump all women together and say they have these qualities and then lump all men together and say they have others. There are plenty of women with “male” qualities and plenty of men with “female” qualities.

Your manager sounds like a great one, you say she can be kind and supportive and is concerned for her staff’s personal wellbeing but when required can be authoritative and will tackle difficult employees. What more do you want?

“Anyway, the Christian attitude does not separate man from woman and woman from man” - 1 Corinthians 11:12. If St Paul doesn’t think there is any difference between men and women, then neither should we.

 

[midori]

Ugh. My male boss used to be in charge of my department; I was in charge of a sub-division within that department. I’m used to hanging out with strong, alpha guys. They’re comfortable in themselves; they’re strong, it’s natural for them to lead; they don’t need to bully or play games because they’re confident; it’s a pleasure to work with them because they’re so capable. My male boss, on the other hand, was a total beta male. He didn’t have strength; he didn’t have confidence; he didn’t have the ease of a natural leader. He wasn’t a good communicator; he’d email you from five feet away instead of telling you he had a concern to your face; he played the stupid high-school clique games of the upper management and didn’t stand up for his underlings.

He left. I got his job. I was an “outsider”, and I was comfortable-- so I never played the cliquey games and just concentrated on making the department run well. My underlings were adults, and I gave them the freedom they needed to do their jobs without micromanaging them. If I had a concern, I addressed it. If they had a concern with another department, I took care of it.

I left. Another woman in a different department got my job— and proceeded to micromanage my people. And play stupid cliquey high school games. And so on and so forth.

So, yeah. Just because someone’s a guy doesn’t mean they’re a strong leader. Just because someone’s a woman doesn’t mean they’re catty, or sensitive-yet-weak. Sounds like you’ve got a good, reasonable person as your manager; I wouldn’t worry about gender.

 

[JReducation]

I though it might be not OK since by nature a woman has other qualities and men are by nature better leaders.

Again, we can challenge that.

We have seen women in leadership positons as heads of state: Israel and India come to mind.

We have seen women in leadership positions in academics, service, business: look at what I posted before about Catholic education and Catholic hospitals

We have seen men do the same jobs.

I believe that men and women look at the world through different windows. We see things differently. That does not necessarilly affects one’s ability to lead. Point of view and vision are not the same as leadership skills.

In my own religious family, Francis was the founder, but Clare was a better leader.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[Woman1987]

thanks for the answers

 

[TrueLight]

Is it OK for a woman with grown up children has a managerial job? I work for a large organization and the department I work consist of about 50 people and our manager is a woman. On the one hand I think she does her work well, on the other hand it feels more natural to me if a man would do her job. In my opinion she does her work very well because she is very kind hearted and I would almost say a kind of mother for the employees and at the same time she is able to stand up as an authority and knows how to deal with difficult employees. She also has the reputation of being a good manager, better than our former male manager.

Congratulations on your journey home.

I have a question for you.

Do you attend a parish where it is frowned upon for a woman to work outside the home while raising children?

Is it a traditional parish?

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Women have been in management/leadership roles for, well, probably all of history. On the other hand they were often positions of a family nature or over other women, or in some other way a role distinct from those of men. I’m not a historian or sociologist, but my impression is that having the vast majority of roles in society filled indiscriminately by either men or women, and the attitude that this is normal and the only just way to order a society, is a peculiarity of our own time. Even in highly matriarchal societies, leadership roles (and other socioeconomic roles) were, I think, generally differentiated into those filled by women and those filled by men.

The basic structure of the Church reflects this more general pattern for human society, and the non-negotiable aspect of this (male-only priesthood) combined with the inappropriateness of having laypeople in positions of authority over clergy, maintains a more patriarchal structure in the Church than has been retained in Western Civilization as a whole. Even so, in areas where there is room for flexibility modern Church practice has often been influenced by the gender egalitarianism of the society surrounding it. This is not surprising, and I don’t think it should necessarily be seen as proof that it is right, any more than influences of feudalism on some levels of Church organization in the Middle Ages and on the thinking and values of average Medieval Catholics would be a sign that the development of feudalism was inherently a good, Christian thing. In fact, since society is far less Christianized today than it was in the Middle Ages, it could be even easier to interpret it as simply a secular influence upon members of the Church (though of course arguements could still be made against seeing it as exclusively a secular influence).

You won’t find much support for going back to more differentiated gender roles in the workplace today, outside or even inside the Church. Ideals of gender equality, equal opportunity, anti-discrimination, etc. have become very ingrained into the modern mind, and not without some good reasons. There were real problems with sexism in the past (and even today). Women in general are better able to exercise their gifts and talents for the betterment of society than they were in the past. There is, intuitively, a kind of justice in ideas like equal pay for equal work. And there is even something to be said for providing more opportunities for people to choose from in terms of a way of life, rather than imposing an extremely ridged social structure on all, though it’s probably possible to go too far in either direction.

Also keep in mind also that not every potential variable in social structure is necessarily a matter of right and wrong. There may be entirely morally neutral alternatives to the way any given people does things. I believe planting crops was often done by women in many North American pre-Columbian tribes (while the men went out and hunted or fought wars), but by men among the Maya peoples (who saw and sometimes still see planting as symbolically connected to the male role in reproduction). Is either more “correct” than the other? And if both are equally valid options, how about men and women both planting crops?

Yes, arguments could be made in favor of stronger gender roles in society too. Men and women certainly have different roles in the nuclear family (and in the sacramental/ministerial life of the Church). Husbands/fathers (natural or spiritual) simply are not wives/mothers (natural or spiritual). They are different roles, and furthermore the relationships between these roles have both horizontal and vertical components. In what way, if in any way, should this difference be reflected in the wider society, of which the family is the basic cell? I think it’s a worthy question to ask, but one which even asking, much less trying to answer, can earn you a lot of opposition and even hatred. This is especially true for us men who could be seen as trying to re-oppress women, so I think any rediscovery of secular, wider-society gender roles, if such a rediscovery would be a good thing, would probably have to come primarily from women.

 

[puzzleannie]

Is it OK for a woman with grown up children has a managerial job? .

is okay with whom? certainly there is no problem from the POV of Catholic teaching, which is why I assume you ask here. Why would it not be “okay?” If it is okay with company and she is doing her job what does age, gender or family status have to do with it in any way whatsoever? I confess to being totally mystified by the question.

Please tell me what qualities nature endows women with that makes them unfit for managerial jobs. That is definitely a new one. So you mean no women are qualified, by virtue of gender alone, to head religious orders, Catholic schools and hospitals and all the professional managerial jobs done by nuns and sisters through the years. to give only a limited example.

 

[danlaupat]

My goodness, why would it not be okay?!! God gives each and every one of us a gift… if one’s gift is to manage, become a doctor, teach, write, care for children, etc., why on earth would it matter if one is a woman or a man? Why couldn’t a woman be a manager even if her children weren’t older? I am 50 years old and manage a department of 30 people in a hospital --and my children are teenagers. I have been a wife, mother, and professional woman for many years. I spent several years at home when the kids were little but returned to work later on and then moved up the ladder. Even when my kids were young I was involved in doing professional writing, teaching college part-time, and volunteering.

One of the saints I admire the most is Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross). In her book “Woman” she wrote about the roles and education of women. She discussed the natural vocations of woman as mother, wife, etc. and also vocations beyond this… She stated, “there is no profession which cannot be practised by a woman” (p. 49). She did not deny the relevance of womens’ God-given roles of mother and wife, but she also didn’t think that a woman’s vocation stops with these roles. St. Edith Stein was a scholar (PhD), writer, professor, Jewish convert, and then later Carmelite nun. She certainly is one of my role models.

 

[TheDoctor]

In my opinion she does her work very well because she is very kind hearted and I would almost say a kind of mother for the employees and at the same time she is able to stand up as an authority and knows how to deal with difficult employees.

The ability to see and interact with the total employee (thoughts + feelings) is what separates great managers from great leaders. Your boss is a great leader. I have worked for bad and good managers, bad and good leaders. Sounds like you have a gem.

 

[The_Old_Medic]

Even in the 1930’s, 40’s 50’s and so on, a woman could, and some did, hold a managerial job.

If I might ask, why on earth would you ask such a question? And please, none of this stuff about men being better leaders. I think that Indira Ghandi, Margaret Thatcher, etc. would have put a complete stop to such thinking. Sadly, it appears that even some women are still polluted with that “stinking thinking”.

I am male, and have been one for almost 68 years now. Some of the best managers i have ever worked with, or for, have been women. So have some of the worst, by the way. Jst as is true with all kinds of people, some women are good managers, others are not.

I spent 10 years on active duty with the United States Army and saw many very good female managers. I also worked in hospitals as a Registered Nurse, and once again saw many very good female managers.

 

[paul11b]

It is perfectly fine for a woman to be in charge. I am a male and I have been in the army and a police officer (traditionally male dominated professions) and some of the best leaders, workers, and all around people I have ever worked with have been females.

 

[odile53]

Sounds like you have a great boss, I’d be thanking God for her!

I’ve had good managers and bad managers of both genders. It doesn’t seem to be a gender-linked trait, as far as I can see.

 

[Debora123]

Is it OK for a woman with grown up children has a managerial job? I work for a large organization and the department I work consist of about 50 people and our manager is a woman. On the one hand I think she does her work well, on the other hand it feels more natural to me if a man would do her job. In my opinion she does her work very well because she is very kind hearted and I would almost say a kind of mother for the employees and at the same time she is able to stand up as an authority and knows how to deal with difficult employees. She also has the reputation of being a good manager, better than our former male manager.

Ok… so then what in heaven’s name is the problem???

 

[severus68]

Let’s look inside the Church.

**Vatican City: ** has over 100 women who are in management positions.

Religious life:

Abbesses are all managers.

Superiors General are all managers (i.e. Mother Teresa)

Catholic Institutions:

Schools, colleges and universities have had female presidents, deans and deparment heads for a very long time.

Catholic hospitals have been run by more women than men

Catholic charities

Diocesan Chancellors – there are many women who are the chancellor. It’s no longer a priest’s job. My chancellor is woman.

According to Catholic law, the only management position that a woman may never hold is one that requires priests and brothers to obey her. That would be a superior. Men can be the religious superior of a female community, but women may never be the religious superior of a male community. This has to do with faculties. Many male religious (not all) are also priests. Their superior grant them faculties to preach, hear confessions and witness marriages. Women cannot grant faculties.

Outside of that, women have been running things in the Church for centuries.

Let me tell you a story. When St. Francis founded the Poor Clares, it was expected that he would be their superior and that he would write their rule. Afterall, Benedict was Scholastica’s superior. Dominic was the superior for the Dominican nuns and Augustine for the Augustinian nuns.

Instead, Francis ammended the rule of the friars and prohibitted them from even entering the convents of the nuns. He believed that women and men were equal; therefore, Clare and her sisters should govern themselves without the interference of the friars. To this day, their superiors are their CEOs.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

thank you very much Brother.