Management training for women—what the west forgot?
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230150207 |
| Published date | 01 November 2006 |
| Date | 01 November 2006 |
| Author | Pauline Amos‐Wilson |
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT, VOL.
15,
167-178
(1995)
Management
training
for women-what the west forgot?
PAULINE AMOS-WILSON
Development and Project Planning Centre, University
of
Bradford
SUMMARY
Drawing on experience of providing women for senior management programmes in developing
countries and in the
UK,
this article considers the issues associated with management training
for
women. In particular, it discusses the approaches currently adopted in the west, the attitudes
that inform these and their shortcomings. It describes the outcomes achieved through an
approach to training designed and implemented with women from developing countries, which
is
somewhat different to experience in the west. It goes on to suggest that at
a
time when
developing countries are importing management training at an increasing rate from the west,
measured critique should be applied to assessing the efficacy of programmes, not in respect of
their appropriateness in
a
development context, but on a basis of whether they are effective in
their place
of
origin. Moreover, it is argued that, in fact, the west has much to learn
for
its
own
applications from developing countries.
INTRODUCTION
For
the past six years Bradford University’s Development and Project Planning Centre
has been commissioned by aid agencies to conduct programmes aimed at enabling
women in developing countries
to
enter senior roles in management and public life.
Such programmes have generally contained research, training, personal and organis-
ational development, advocacy with national governments and aid agencies and
networking activities.
There are a number of reasons why the governments
of
developing countries wish
to
engage their women more fully in senior roles in public life, and why aid agencies such
as the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank and the UK
Overseas Development Administration support such initiatives. These include a desire
to make full use of national human resources, a concern with social justice and equity,
but, perhaps most pragmatically, a growing awareness that development projects and
activities that do not involve women or are not gender and family sensitive often fail.
(Moser, 1994; Turner and O’Connor, 1994, pp.
80-83;
Tanzanian Bureau of Statistics,
1992; Hollway and Mukurasi, 1990; Khan, 1992)
In many cases western-centric’ approaches to development programmes, formu-
Pauline Amos-Wilson
is
Lecturer in Management Studies at the Development and Project Planning Centre,
University
of
Bradford, Pemberton Building, Bradford, BD7
1
DP, UK.
I
use the terms ‘western’ and ‘west’ here, and
not
‘developed’
or
‘industrialised’, because the material
1
wish
to
discuss
was derived specifically
from
western, developed, industrialised cultures, and
not
those
from
the
east.
CCC
0271-2075/95/020167-12
0
1995 by John Wiley
&
Sons, Ltd.
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