Abstract

The study aims to explore Organizational attributes and their relation to career development. The career development of females was necessary for the country's economic progress. The data was collected through questionnaires from universities and two college female academic staff. The sample size was determined through a multi-stage sampling technique. The total sample size of the study was 301. The data were analyzed by applying simple linear regression. The findings of the study show that there are many issues related to the career development of females in organizational but some have great influence such as Organizational/institutional behavior towards female employment, recognition of their work, standers of success, workplace harassment, biased attitude, glass ceiling, and transportation problems. Further researches must explore this problem at a broad level and include other sector female employees to identify their problems in career development. The government must formulate female-friendly policies to make it easier for females to work outside the home.

Key Words

Organizational Structure, Organizational Attributes, Career Development, Glass Ceiling, Work Place Environment

Introduction

The subjugation of female educators at the higher management levels across schools is considered the result of biased management decisions and patriarchal procedures deeply anchored in the education management framework. Often organizations use informal recruiting and screening procedures as they capitalize on personal networks, rather than formally selecting on merit. Male applicants tend to have more opportunities for work in Pakistani society, as men have greater social networks than women. Women on the other hand, because of religious and cultural restrictions, tend to avoid social networks with their male colleagues. Academics also deny women from providing them opportunities to rise on managerial posts in the lie they are offered even fewer opportunities for career preparation, for formal meetings, for training from conferences at a local or international level, for financial aid, and research-related projects (Farooq, 2020). 

Women in Pakistan comprise 49.2%. They have attained 52% of all types of professional jobs. Women are performing in lower positions. Mentoring and supportive environments are possible enablers for greater representation of women in universities but women have not received welcome behavior from male colleagues. Women did not receive higher positions despite their excellence. Women have to do most of the administrative tasks which inept them to perform their research activities and eventually hinders their way to career development (Shah, 2020). Regardless of the significant rise in the number of women employed in the country, their progress in terms of senior executives has limited applicability. Women were facing the problem of inappropriate policies in organizations that discourage hiring a female on top position regardless of her excellent record.

Women faced a double burden as she has to work at home and deal with the office work. This leads to stress which limited women's career progress. Organizational Policies and Practices on selection and promotions are hampering women's careers (Imtiaz, 2018). Most of the organization’s top positions were held by males and they favor male applicants in recruitment, promotion. Even the training is offered to male colleagues as compare to female colleagues. Training is essential for career development. Because of a lack of broad and diversified networks, women lag in generated ideas for research and publications, which put them back in a career (Sarwar, 2019). Women were appointed in organizations but did not get the support because there are biased HRM policies regarding hiring and promotion. Men are given greater assistance in carrying out their jobs than women, who gradually see men progressing to higher levels. 

The problems include nepotism and a complete disregard for efficiency. The women remain backstage and males play the front stage role in most organizations (Okeke, 2017). The institutional under-representation of women is still prevalent at universities worldwide concerning professional academic and general personnel. The pay gap in comparative work is also a notable issue. Women are usually hired to comparatively low promotion chance positions. Women received the long working requirement which is almost not possible for women in Pakistan society (Yousaf, 2016).

 Organizational attributes affect the career progress of women. As the organizational policies regarding hiring, promotion, and working hours affect the mental health and progress of its employees. If the policies are biased it would destroy the employee's career. A career in academics customarily depends on the number of articles. Women usually have limited time to work outside the home and it ends in doing academic tasks. There remains no time for the female to work on her research. In this way, they remain in the same position for years (Sandhu, 2019). The right to share one's views with higher authority is a fundamental right for all genders. In developed countries, women appear to be missing or on the outskirts of the institute because they have fewer work prospects. In most academic institutes, women are not preferred for leadership or top positions (Zainab, 2020). Late sittings have become a norm in most of the offices. If the employee is unable to follow the norm they consider a lack of ambition. Women in Pakistan are unable to follow this norm because of family responsibilities and organizational policies. Workplace harassment also blocks women's way to progress. The Glass ceiling increases the pay, opportunity gap between men and women (Hina, 2018). 

In Pakistan society, women are considered less productive as compared to males. Women in offices have to discuss their decision with male management to get approval or influence the higher authority. There is an increasing number of workplace harassment cases up to 29% (Razi, 2016). Both genders experienced many challenges in career growth, but historically women face more difficulties than men. This happens because she must first work at home to fulfill her duties. Although certain policies are conceived in offices, those are not yet adopted (Adame et al., 2015). According to the “Global Gender Gap Report”, (Schwab et al., 2017), Pakistan stands in the 146th position in economic equality. This result shows restlessness in the country's economy. Career development requires study and several research papers, but women have also been less included in the education field due to their family, childcare, insufficient family resources, and a lack of professional network opportunities. It is observed that many women want to stay low so that they can play dual roles in easy mode (Yousaf, 2017). 

The top position or administration position required more time and effort which is somehow not possible for the female because of the patriarchal society. Women prefer their family over career and leave the career because of the stress they are going through during their dual role. It’s not only a dual role but females also suffer from the inappropriate behavior of male colleagues. The discouragement increase and affect their career progress (Arif, 2017). Mentoring plays the important role in women's career development because when women have someone to guide and support them in their research work they develop relations with other colleagues. The development of networking helps her in career development. Most of the top positions in organizations were held by males and they usually do not support female colleagues in developing networks. The process of women's career development becomes slow (Mate, 2018).

Due to a challenging work schedule, women prefer to move to a comparatively smaller organization from the larger organization. The small organization has flexibility in working hours. They feel less stressed and can focus on their career development. The drawback is that it means women have to struggle again to prove their competency and this would slow their career development. The small organization means the networking would be small as well and it would affect employed women career development. Organizational attributes play an important role in the career development of women if the policies and atmosphere are supportive women will have more chances to progress. Career breaks also affect women's career development because women are usually assigned to labor-intensive work and this slows their growth in a career (Han, 2018). Women do not prefer the top positions and it affects their career. They do not work hard because whether they work hard or not they would be staying in the same position. Furthermore, when women leaders try to exercise authority, they face a lack of support and negative reactions from colleagues (Alqahtani, 2019).

Objectives

Literature Review

The factors ‘Organizational Reputation’, ‘Development Opportunities’, “Flexible working hours” and ‘Work-Life Balance’ emerge as the most predominant predictor of Organizational Attractiveness for employees. Further, gender equality policies provide a valuable amount of hardworking employees. The women usually prefer to have training in an early stage of their career. In this way, they will have fast career development. Organizational attributes attract the employee to join the organization and help them in their professional growth (Madhavkumar, 2016). In the career development of women, the issues women usually faced in an organization are Coaching, forums, and other types of organizational support. Promotional mechanisms have shown to have a potential gender preference, and while networks, training, and other sources of funding for organizations are not helping women advance, they are a valuable obstacle to women leaving a market with inadequate involvement and retention of women (Francis, 2017). Male workers were favored by organizations because they would not miss work due to child-rearing duties. In male-dominated institutions, there tended to be less encouragement and facilitation for female academic staff, such as a lack of flexibility in working hours. The top women management help the other working women and become their role model in career development. The opportunities for career development are limited for women as they are not preferred training and mentorship programs (Fakhr, 2016). Long working hours in universities and heavy workload affect women's career development such as females have to develop programs, administrative work, academic courses, teaching, and research paper. They have to work at home being a mother, wife, daughter, and sister. They cannot remain outside the home long. Pay equity is also a question in many organizations. Professional development can’t be achieved as women have fewer opportunities for international scholarships as compare to men (Waheeda, 2018). As experienced by human resource practices, organizational culture seems to play an important part in shaping female managers' subjective criteria of successful work. Their job satisfaction is affected by their willingness to work flexible hours, work from home, or live in company-provided housing. When it comes to formulating and enforcing strategies, both the company and the government must be thoughtful (Agarwal, 2017). The literature can be summed up in the following flow diagram. 



Methodology

The targeted population included all the female higher education academicians in Multan. Multan is one of the oldest cities of Pakistan with a glorious history. From Multan city, all seven universities (public and private sector) and two public sector colleges offering postgraduate programs and having female teachers were included to select a sample. The total population of female teachers in selected universities and colleges was 1390. Corchan’s sample size formula was used to calculate sample size and it generated n=301.  The sample was collected by using a proportional stratified random sampling technique and 301 respondents were selected from the targeted areas in the following manner. Stratified random samples enable researchers to achieve the best sample, representative of the surveyed population (Cohen, Lea, and Welkowitz, 2012).

Graph 1



The questionnaire was adopted from previous research by Posholi (2013). Some variables were excluded and new included according to the Pakistani culture.  The research was based on a quantitative research technique. The investigation was measuring the effect of organizational attributes on the career development of female employees. In the questionnaire, three types of 5 points Likert scales were used. 

Conceptualization and Operationalization

The organizational/institutional structure is “Values within the organization that shape behavioral outputs and the structures, processes, and incentives in which it operates” (Julia, 2017), and the operationalization of the organizational/institutional structure includes the factors such as glass ceiling, no transportation facility, lack of employment opportunities, the biased attitude of male boss/colleagues, workplace harassment, difficulty in re-entering the economic sector after a career break, and biased sponsorship which was used by (Posholi, 2013) in his previous research. The concept of Organizational attributes refers to “values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that employees share and use daily in their work” (Rogel, 2014). In this research, the organizational attributes are operationalized as the behavior towards female employment, their work, policies, and standers of success (Posholi, 2013; de Fatima Nery, Franco, & Neiva, 2020). The concept “Career development” is perceived in this research as “The process of learning and improving one’s skills so that he/she can do his/her job better and progress to better jobs.”(Cambridge Business English dictionary, 2017) and the operationalization of the concept is “Opportunity in mentoring, training (Lack of support system), and promotion (biased organizational/ institutional culture, lack of recognition of managerial/supervision/ management abilities of women) and rewards (lack of equity in pay)”. These variables are used in the previous research by Amir (2014). 




Reliability and Validity

Tavakol and Dennick (2011) state that an alpha value ranging from 0.9 > ? ? 0.8 is an appropriate value to consider an instrument reliable. To check the reliability of the instrument Cronbach Alpha (?) was applied. It was used to check the internal consistency and estimate the reliability of the instrument. The reliability of the instrument that included 33 items was 0.83 which is good reliability. According to Neuman (2007), validity is the accuracy of the instrument which is measuring exactly what is meant to be measured and measurement is not overrepresented. For the present study, the instrument’s face validity was proved by two Ph. D. faculty members of the department of Sociology, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan

Demographical Characteristics of Respondents

Graph no. 2 demonstrates the demographical description of respondents. Which includes their age and teaching position. Most of the respondents were Lecturer (76.1%) and 14 (4.7%) were Associate professors. It is maybe because females do not get promotions frequently as male colleagues. The next finding shows that most of the respondents were young (38.9%) and belongs to the age group 26-30 years. Females have restrictions on their working hours from family and usually cannot continue their careers after marriage 

Graph 2



The female academics for the present study were mostly single (52.5%) and 9 (.3%) were widowed. Marital status has a major impact on women's career development. The married woman does not get a recommendation for high offices, since she has multiple household duties and it is said that she is not involved with her job (Linge, 2015).  The married respondents (33.6%) had mostly 1-3 children and 33 (11.3%) respondents had no children. 

Graph 3



Family type influences career development and especially female career development. About half of (52.5%) respondents belonged to the nuclear family system and 23 (7.6%) respondents belonged to the extended family system which shows that when females have fewer responsibilities at home they can focus on their career development. Most of the respondents (58.5) were having an M.Phil degree in their respective subject. 

Graph 4



Graph 5



The respondents of the present study belonged to the private and public sector educational institutes. The study shows that more than half of the respondents (54.8%) belonged to private educational institutes because Multan city has a too-small number of public universities. Most of the female respondents (82.1%) did not work overtime due to their other family commitments and organizational structure.

Hypothesis Testing

To analyze, the data Multiple linear regression was performed to check if the independent variables (organizational attributes and structure) affected the dependent variable (career development of female academicians) or not. In other words, regression was performed to predict a value of one variable for a given value of the other (Zuo, 2019).

 

Hypothesis 1

H1= Organizational attributes (behavior

towards female employment, policies, recognition of their work, and standers of success) sufficiently predict the career development of female academicians in higher education organizations




 

Table 1. Model Summary

Model	R	R Square	Adjusted R Square	Std. Error of the Estimate
1	.713a	.509	.502	2.343

 




The R-value is .713 that shows the high correlation and the R-square value is .509 which describes that the independent variables cause a 50.9% variation in dependent variable The model is suitable for the data.




 

Table 2. ANOVA^a

Model		Sum of Squares	Df	Mean Square	F	Sig.
1	Regression	1684.808	4	421.202	76.728	.000b
	Residual	1624.913	296	5.490
	Total	3309.721	300

Dependent Variable: Career development

Predictors: (Constant) Organizational/institutional behavior towards female employment, policies, recognition of their work, and standers of success.

 




The ANOVA table depicts that model predict the variation in dependent variable significantly. Significance value of regression model run is p = .000. It is a good for data.




 

Table 3. Coefficients^a

Model		Unstandardized Coefficients		Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.
		B	Std. Error	Beta
1	(Constant)	7.324	.714		10.254	.000
	Organizational/institutional behavior towards female employment	1.453	.139	.437	10.464	.000
	recognition of female employ work	1.709	.144	.498	11.827	.000
	Policies	-.010	.134	-.003	-.071	.943
	standers of success	.413	.119	.148	3.462	.001

a. Dependent Variable: Career development

 

Description




The linear regression analysis shows that among the organizational attributes such as organizational behavior towards female employees, standers of success and recognition of female work influence the career development of female however the organizational policies do not affect the career development of female employees. Career progression policies, the acknowledgment of female jobs, the employment policies, and employee-friendly policies are organizational variables that affect women's career performance (Narayanan, 2017). This shows that Organizational/institutional attributes have a significant effect on female employee’s career development. Females are usually retired from the same position and not promoted to higher positions. Risky tasks and high standers affect female career success as females have a double responsibility. High commitments create stress and fear of failure in employment. A positive workplace for employees by esteeming them and paying little to their similarities and differences could be helpful for their career progression. Reasonable partition of work, rights, commitments, and duties among people through making a reasonable authoritative culture regarding tasks orientation is also needed (Benslimane, 2020). The office policies are usually ticked box exercise and not implemented effectively which creates uncertainty among employees, But the above table shows that policies do not affect the career development of female employees it is maybe because they have other issues which are more problematic than office policies (Lantz-Deaton, 2020). The pessimistic environment of the organization badly affects the career development of female employees. The performance of the female employees also decreases however the positive environment at the workplace increases the chances of a progressive female career. The level of engagement increase as the employee has support at the workplace (Wang, 2017).

The regression equation would be described as:  Y=a + bx

Career development = 7.324+1.453 (Organizational/institutional behavior towards female employment) + 1.709 (recognition of their work) + -.010 (Policies) + .413 (standers of success)

 

Hypothesis 2

H1= Organizational Structure (Lack of employment, Workplace harassment. Biased attitude, Glass ceiling, Transportation problems, Re-entering in job market, Biased sponsorship) are good predictors of Career Development




 

Table 4. Model Summary

Model	R	R Square	Adjusted R Square	Std. Error of the Estimate
1	.749a	.561	.550	2.228

 




The results in model summary table are showing that correlation is very high with a value of R = .749 while R-Square value shows 56.1% variation in dependent variable predicted by independent variables.




 

Table 5. ANOVA^a

Model		Sum of Squares	Df	Mean Square	F	Sig.
1	Regression	1855.565	7	265.081	53.411	.000b
	Residual	1454.156	293	4.963
	Total	3309.721	300

Dependent Variable: Career development

Predictors: (Constant), Lack of employment, Workplace harassment. Biased attitude, Glass ceiling, Transportation problems, Re-entering in job market, Biased sponsorship,

 




The significant value of p = .000 shows that

model is significantly fit to data.




 

Table 6. Coefficients

Model		Unstandardized Coefficients		Standardized Coefficients	t	Sig.
		B	Std. Error	Beta
1	(Constant)	9.760	.598		16.309	.000
	Lack of employment	-.009	.138	-.004	-.068	.946
	Workplace harassment	.213	.100	.088	2.141	.033
	Biased attitude	1.001	.140	.383	7.133	.000
	Glass ceiling	.763	.153	.284	4.979	.000
	transportation problems	.462	.155	.152	2.981	.003
	Re-entering in job market	.100	.158	.037	.631	.528
	Biased sponsorship	.095	.152	.033	.627	.531

Dependent Variable: Career development

Description




The institutional structure includes Lack of employment, Workplace harassment. Biased attitude, Glass ceiling, Transportation problems, Re-entering the job market, biased sponsorship (Plickert, 2017). If the structure was gender-balanced then the employed feel relief and become more productive. Simple regression analysis is performed to approximate the relationship between career development and Lack of employment, Workplace harassment. Biased attitude, Glass ceiling, Transportation problems, Re-entering in the job market, biased sponsorship. Females argued that they didn't have access to information about policies that influenced their work, and that merit is often ignored by higher authorities. Females believed that their senior male colleagues/department heads had a biased attitude toward them, but that they are highly motivated to conquer these barriers at work (Shah, 2020). The r-value is .749a and the r square value is .561 which describes that the independent variable has a small variation in the dependent variable. The second table shows that Workplace harassment, Biased attitude, Glass ceiling, transportation problems have p=.0001, which means that these variables significantly influence the career development of female employees' academics.  Many glass ceiling factors create a hurdle for the female employee to climb the top position. One of them is the biased attitude of male colleagues towards female colleagues (Alwis, 2020). Maternity paid leave attracts many female employees but the later part is pathetic when they try to enter the job market again the stereotypes such as she cannot pay attention to work as they are divided between mother role and office employ (Gregory, 2020). After childbirth, it is difficult for females because she has to care for her newborn child and office timings are usually not flexible for female employees (Kaushiva, 2020). On the other hand, lack of employment, Re-entering the job market and biased sponsorship has no relation with career development. Sponsorship is seen to be significant and is given importance in academics. It supports the individual in career advancement and utilizing her skills. It helps an individual in achieving high rank in the institute but the findings show that female has received enough sponsorship which satisfied their need that’s why they do not mention it as a barrier to their career development (Levine, 2021). Most females in institutes face difficulties such as work-family struggle, segregation, unfair limitation, wage differentials, generalizing, and inappropriate behavior at the workplace. It is usually not reported and female leaves their career and remains backstage (Ruzungunde, 2020).

The regression equation would be described as:  Y=a + bx

Career development = 9.760 + -.009 (Lack of employment) + .213 (workplace harassment) + 1.001 (biased attitude) + .763(glass ceiling) + .462 (transportation problems) + .100 re-entering in job market after career break + .095 (biased sponsorship).

Conclusion

The Institutional/organizational policies and environment affect the career development of female employees. The findings of this study would be helpful for further researchers and in formulating new policies for gender balance in institutions. Firstly, Organizational attributes such as a women's friendly, value-added and female work enhance their career progress. Corporate characteristics have a major effect on women's career development. Secondly, the organizational structure affects female workers' job growth. Compared to a balance of gender organizational structure, the institutions where men are more dominant, women face more difficulties in those organizations. Workplace harassment is one of the main problems of less participation of female employees in the economic sector but the problem was not discussed frequently by researchers. Glass ceiling is another issue that creates a hurdle for female employees. Females have less time to participate in the income-generating activity and the organizational structure also sometimes discouraged female employees. 

Recommendations

The contributions of this paper will optimistically generate interest in similar studies on HRM practices in organizations. Institutions of better gaining knowledge of the need to facilitate woman faculty of their quest of preserving work-own circle of relatives balance, in particular at senior-degree positions. Organizations have to inspire ladies to keep longer in service to benefit from staff diversity. 

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