Many influential and prominent women are leading HR organizations these days. When compare different career and businesses, HR is perceived as a female oriented profession. It has become more like a pre-conceived notion that the jobs of HR managers are meant for females. It was never like this before but the trend is set lately and is increasing day by day.
To discuss if it is true or not, one must know what are the requisites of HR as career and business, and even before that, what is actually HR. HR management is a function within an organization that deals with the people who work within this organization. The recruitment issues, providing direction to employees, compensation issues, performance management, organizational development, safety, wellness, benefits, employee motivation, communication, administration and training. Such are the expectations from an HR manager.
HR management as a career and business requires a strategic and comprehensive approach towards managing people and defining the culture and policies of their workplace. It is an HR manager who keeps the workplace environment congenial and worth working.
So by now, you must be aligning your perception as to why females in HR are more in demand?? It is perhaps they are more strategic in design than their male counter parts. Besides, there are many controversies regarding this. Many people still think that HR is a male dominated scenario while others think that HR is a world of women.
Lets check out what Susan, a female HR manager thinks about her field as career and business.
“When we consider the gender issues in HR., we should keep in mind that decades ago, when we were Industrial Relations, then Personnel , we were almost entirely male. (For example, in 1978, in health care, I was the only female out of 9 HR. Managers). HR. could almost be analogous to the U.S. position on unions, which began with holding unions to be contracts in restraint of trade and swung to the other end of the pendulum in 1935 with the U.S. embracing unions and encouraging the growth of unions. Our profession swung from practically 100% male to almost the other end of the pendulum — 3/4 female!
This may also be a major reason why, despite there being only about 1/4 males in HR. now, the males – with more experience in so many areas of HR. – still fill a larger number of positions at the top”.
It shows that slowly but surely, HR is converting from a male-dominated, union-oriented, security-minded career to a field attracting more and more strategically oriented – true leader females in HR who stress upon HR initiatives tying their organizations’ bottom lines to such concepts as executive compensation, health-care cost control, work/life balance and talent management.
It seems that females at the top of the HR discipline have a solid grounding in business and understand organizations and people much better than the men do. This is what most of the people related to HR field think.
Females in HR are always preferred because of their strategic, hard driving and imaginative abilities along with their levels of responsibility and achievements in their organizations.