Gender and communication at work: an introduction

The last three to four decades have seen a rapid increase in numbers of womenin the workplace worldwide, with more women also entering managerial ranks.However, despite legislation in many countries aimed at furthering women’scapacities to move to the top of their organizations, the phenomenon of the ‘glassceiling’ persists (Davidson and Burke, 2004; Ryan and Haslam, 2005). Publicpolicy documents, academic research and popular books advocating government,industry and organization-level policy initiatives to facilitate women’s advancementcontinue to be published. So-called ‘business case’ arguments, that is, argumentsto the effect that organizations that fail to acknowledge and use the skills of allmembers of their workforce will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage,seem to have had much less effect than similar arguments for other kinds of businessand organizational change.