2. Introduction
• General outlook of Pakistani society reflect women’s increased
involvement in different professions.
• Pakistani managers and entrepreneurs adopted the north American human
resource management practices as strategies to attain above average growth
and sustainable survival in the changing market (Saher, 2010)
• Women workers are hired on priority to create the North American, gender
egalitarian, impression. Thus, more women are joining professions which
were previously considered male domains.
3. Cont…
• On the other hand this change has made women’s life more complex by
creating dual demands of joining profession and maintaining honour of the
family and exclusive handling of reproductive duties besides professional
responsibilities.
• There are certain rules/demands of modern organizations which are
inconsistent with societal norms of Pakistani society.
• For example managerial positions demand their employees to be more
assertive, aggressive and empowered whereas the socio-cultural values of
modesty, family honour encourage women to be humble in dress,
conversation and action. (syed, 2008)
4. Cont…
• Women managers experience double edge, pressure and confrontation not
only due to organizational norms but also from society’s specific gender
roles expectations.
• This cross cultural context of organizational structure and societal context
creates more challenges for women managers.
• Syed identifies this situation from a social psychological perspective that
women in modern organizations in Pakistan experience moral and
emotional dilemma due to inconsistency between the display of rules at
workplace and Islamic female modesty where they continuously strive to
maintain cultural and professional identities.
5. Challenges
• The workplace though created challenges for women employees
especially women managers to manage workforces socialize on highly
gender specific norms.
The women managers face different subtle and obvious societal and
organizational challenges that includes Token position , glass ceiling
,glass wall ,harassment , unavailability of networking and mentoring
relation.
(Dr,Sahar,Shazia Safdar,Tasmia Matloob)
6. Cont…
• Shah contend that men in Pakistani society find it hard to accept women in
the positions of authority even in the professional context, which suggest
home-to-job transferring of role relationships Men’s dominance in the
domestic setting is replayed in the ‘Public’.
• So women’s role as managers become more critical when she has to
supervise men to achieve organizational goals.
• Budhwar depict that women managers have to deal with male ego which is
viewed as serious barriers to women’s upward growth on managerial
laadars.
7. Cont ..
• Chuma and Ncube the women performance at managerial position is
jeopardize by their male colleagues especially by older one as they feel
insure by women and considered managerial position as their own
right.
8. Some major challanges
No importance to
women’s opinion
No social circle
and mentoring
relationship
Male Hide the
opportunities
Clear difference in
bonuses
Sexual harassment
9. Case studies
Balancing the work-family role was one of the
serious challenge that women face.
Support of the family is an another big challange
10. strategies
Vartan Bhanji As A Strategic Mechanism
• Saher & mayrhofer (2013) have highlighted the importance of vartan
bhanji management styles, organizational culture , individual ,
departmental and organizational performance despite adoption of
western HRM practices in contemporary organizations in Pakistan.
• “Vartan bhanji” has been considered as a strategy to develop social
network (saher,2010) as well as mechanism to influence people in
Pakistan.
11. Cont…
• According to khilji (2013) social connections and interaction generally
take precedence over rules in contemporary organization of Pakistan.
• Khilji further highlights that family centered mores of local culture are
explicitly reflected in organizations working in Pakistan.
• The workers create family like relationship with non-kin on the embedded
assumption of ‘Vartan bhanji’ in Punjabi culture (Saher, 2010)
12. Cont…
• VB as an informal social network is significant to access various types
of resources and information in pakistan and information is shared on
the basis of social bond among VB members (saher, et al,2012)
• Family like relationship are developed with non kin for their social
integration into the kin group (lyon,2002) to develop association with
informal networks in the organizations.
• Here VB works as a mechanism to have access to informal network
through developing kin-ship relations with non-kin.
