How the World Sees Women in Charge

Fifty years ago, it was rare to find a woman in a senior management position. Data from the United States in the 1950s and 1960s suggest that women were virtually absent from these roles. As more women entered the workforce, they gradually rose to management positions. But has the way the world sees women in management changed as well?

Popular culture offers one way to explore this question. Books and films can reveal how women managers were perceived at different times, and how they understood their own lives and ambitions.

An early, prominent portrayal of a woman in a modern executive role appears in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957). Its heroine, Dagny Taggart, became a familiar figure in American culture. Rand advocated a radical form of capitalism. She rejected government interference in people’s lives and opposed collectivism, insisting that each individual should pursue their own happiness. She also strongly opposed feminism.

Dagny is an extreme, almost implausible character. She differs sharply from the women around her: she does not want a family or children, refuses to commit to a single partner, and places enormous importance on sex. Her portrayal is hypersexualized, as though sexual fulfillment were reserved for a woman who is also a successful entrepreneur and executive. She offers a model of female professional achievement, but her way of life makes her a less accessible role model.

During the 1970s, women fought for equality in many areas, including employment. The 1980s are often seen as a period of feminist progress, when the struggles of the previous decade began to bear fruit. Portrayals of women managers became realistic. These characters wanted full lives that included both a family and a career. Yet motherhood was already emerging as what many regard as the main obstacle to women reaching senior management positions.

Baby Boom (1987) explores this tension through an unusual premise: a highly successful executive, J. C. Wiatt, “inherits” a baby girl after a relative dies in a car accident. In the 1980s, the female executive is highly educated, with degrees from Harvard and Yale that have helped her secure her position. The film depicts a workplace in which women can succeed – provided they do not want a family life. The head of the company has a wife who takes care of the household, leaving him free to devote himself entirely to work. He expects the same commitment from J. C.

But J. C. grows attached to the baby and develops maternal feelings. Her workplace leaves little room for her to be both a mother and a senior executive. She moves to Vermont, where she starts a highly successful baby-food business. We see her working with her young daughter beside her. The film’s message is clear: no woman should have to choose between a career in management and motherhood. Women can have it all.

The 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century are often regarded as a less favorable period for feminism. Scholars have described this slowdown in progress towards gender equality as a “stalled revolution”. The Devil Wears Prada (2006) offers a striking example of a hostile portrayal of a woman in management. Miranda Priestly, the editor of a popular fashion magazine, is presented in an overwhelmingly negative light. Andy, a young woman looking for temporary work, joins the magazine and soon discovers that her boss is rude, aggressive and inconsiderate, and pits employees against one another.

Despite her professional achievements, Miranda cannot be seen as a positive character. She is, however, the mother of twin daughters. By this point, the idea that a woman in a senior role could also be a mother is taken for granted. Yet the image of the female boss presented here does little to support feminist aspirations.

From the 2010s onwards, the picture changes again. Women in management are now portrayed as part of a world undergoing constant, profound change. The Intern (2015) opens by exploring shifts in attitudes towards age, relationships between men and women, and the place of a career in a person’s life. Ben, a retiree looking for something to do, becomes an intern at an e-commerce company founded and run by Jules, a young married woman with a daughter.

Here, the female executive is portrayed very differently. Jules supports the family financially, while her husband stays at home to raise their child. Her role as breadwinner changes the relationship between the couple, while his role as the primary caregiver challenges traditional expectations of motherhood and fatherhood. The film shows that this arrangement, too, can create difficulties within a marriage.

The Intern offers no simple solution to the challenge of balancing a demanding career with family life. Instead, it invites viewers to consider how society might enable a woman to hold a C-suite position while still having enough time to raise her child. Isn’t it time we changed the workplace so that women could combine executive leadership with motherhood?

The paperback edition of Women Managers in American Popular Culture (Routledge) will be released on October 16.