Helen J. Muller

and

Monica Rowell

Anderson Schools of Management

The University of New Mexico

Albuquerque, NM 87131

tel. (505) 277-6471

fax: (505) 277-7108

email: muller@anderson.unm.edu

and

IBM, Houston, Texas

Forthcoming: Human Resource Management, Winter 1997 (Vol 36, No. 4)

We wish to acknowledge the Anderson Schools of Management Foundation for partial support of this study, and Patricia Gulley and William New for their research assistance. We appreciate the constructive comments of Mala Nani Htun, Gina Zabludovsky, Jeanne Logsdon, and an anonymous reviewer on earlier drafts of this manuscript. The insightful suggestions of anonymous HRM reviewers and editors helped to shape the revised manuscript. We are grateful to the interviewees for their time and support. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 1996 Western Academy of Management Meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico. A copy of the questionnaire may be obtained from the first author. In this article, quotations from the interviewees appear verbatim or are translated from Spanish.

Abstract

There is a striking absence of information on women managers in Latin America despite the fact that, in the past decade, studies of women managers in non-English speaking countries have proliferated. This study offers a preliminary analysis of Mexican women managers. Our exploratory study locates women managers within the context of gender relations and managerial ideology in Mexico and analyzes several factors that enable a select group of senior-level Mexican women to hold influential positions. The findings suggest that women have a nontraditional Mexican management style and successfully manage the work-family interface. Nevertheless, women still encounter obstacles to their advancement such as discrimination and stereotyping.

Mexican Women Managers: An Emerging Profile

In the mid 1990s, most Mexican organizations are struggling to deal with the country’s economic crisis. The current period of economic uncertainty, structural adjustment, and political upheaval is an opportune time in which to examine women’s situation in organizations. While some data indicate women’s status recently declined (United Nations Development Programme, 1995), other evidence is more optimistic: As Mexico’s borders continue to open and direct foreign investments increase, especially from the United States, economic advancement is likely (Dillon, 1996; Pacheco, 1996). Women’s presence has increased in the formal labor force (FLASCO, 1993), in the large informal sector (Nash, 1989), and in management (ILO, 1994). As restructuring progresses, women managers’ talents and skills may substantively contribute to such reform and the transformation of traditional organizations. They can help to reframe the ways in which organizations perform and to transform traditional gender relationships.

There is a striking absence of information specifically on women managers in Latin America although the literature on women managers in other world areas is comparatively well developed (see Adler & Izraeli, 1988, 1994). Latin American women have had relatively high rates of economic participation (Brydon & Chant, 1989), however, and there is an abundant literature on women and work in the region, particularly in Mexico (Benería & Roldán, 1987; Chant, 1991; García, Munoz & Oliveira, 1982; Garcia & Oliveira, 1994; Oliveira, 1989; Tiano, 1994). Although women’s presence as managers is established there are few studies of personal and organizational factors that affect their advancement. Several studies identify women in top level governmental and political party posts (Hierro, 1995; Poncela, 1995; Martínez, 1995), but Zabludovsky (1993) found virtually no bibliography on business women in Mexico. Her survey establishes the presence of women business owners in predominantly microbusinesses (Zabludovsky, 1995).

From 1970 to 1993, the rates of women’s economic participation in Mexico increased from 17.6% to 33% although it varied considerably by state (Instituto Nacional de Estadística Geografía Informática [INEGI], 1995). As women become more educated, they work more outside the home. Fifty percent of highly educated women work in comparison to 24% of women with an incomplete primary school education (INEGI, 1995). With women constituting a growing proportion of university enrollments, from 20% in 1970 to 43% in 1990 (FLASCO,1995), women will continue to flow into labor markets.

Women are advancing to management positions. In 1995, they held 9 percent of top-level government posts (INEGI, 1995). By 1993, women made up 20% (116,476 women) of all administrative and managerial workers (ILO, 1994), up from 15.7% in 1991 (FLASCO, 1995). In 1990, they constituted 51% of enrollments in commercial and business administration (FLASCO, 1995).

We embarked upon an exploratory study to understand the conditions that contribute to women managers’ success as organizational players and to identify the factors that permit them to overcome the contradictions of work and family life. We first locate Mexican women managers within the social fabric of Mexican society and then analyze the experiences of a select group of senior-level women. Our analysis is organized around the following research questions:

1. Do Mexican women managers have a distinctive style?

2) What common organizational problems do women deal with in obtaining top-level management positions?

3) What is the nature of the family-work interface that enables women managers to occupy high-level jobs?

Our findings suggest, that Mexican women, like their counterparts in the United States, bring alternative and nontraditional management styles to the workplace. Kras (1991, 1994) argues that if Mexican organizations are to be successful in the global economy, they must transform from an autocratic and paternalistic model to a more participative and flexible model. We believe women’s different managerial style, which others describe as "collaborative," "connective," "empowering," or "interactive," (Aburdene & Naisbitt, 1992; Hegelson, 1995; Lipman-Blumen, 1992; Loden, 1985; Rosener, 1990) have the potential to contribute to the current transformation of Mexican organizations being provoked by current economic and political reforms.

This paper proceeds as follows. First, we contextualize our study within the framework of Mexican gender relations and managerial ideology. Second, we describe the study’s methodology and present background data on our research subjects. We then analyze the women’s management style, the major obstacles to their advancement, and how they manage the work-family interface. In the conclusion, we develop the implications of our study for managers.

Gender Relations and Managerial Ideology

Our theoretical premise is that women’s experiences and identities are constructed in gendered social contexts that are dynamic and interactional (Lamphere, Zavella, Gonzales with Evans, 1993; Segura, 1992; Sheppard, 1992). This framework is consistent with the gender-organization-systems approach in the study of women managers which locates an individual’s work and organizational experience within a particular socio-cultural context (Fagenson, 1993). The gendered nature of power and authority relationships in organizational settings reflects such relationships in the larger society (Acker, 1991). The dominance of men in high level organizational positions throughout the world thus reflects and reinforces social and cultural norms about gender (Antal & Izraeli, 1993). A major hurdle to women’s advancement in much of the world is male dominance and gendered social norms that create a persistent stereotype associating management with being male (Antal & Izraeli, 1993).

As this theoretical framework would predict, traditional ideas about gender roles and relationships inform the prevailing managerial ideology in Mexico. As in most other countries of the world, Mexican culture historically has located women in the domestic sphere and men in the public sphere. This patriarchal ideology confronts women who work outside of the home and limits their opportunities to advance (Adler & Izraeli, 1994).

The Mexican familia (family) plays a major role in perpetuating male dominance in society. The traditional Mexican family rests upon two premises: The unquestioned and absolute supremacy of the father and the necessary and absolute self-sacrifice of the mother (Diaz-Guerrero, 1979). Machismo, the ideology of manliness which confers privilege to men, is a fundamental component of family relations (Selby, Murphy & Lorenzen, 1990). Mexican tradition also views women as physically weaker and more vulnerable than men (Garcia & Oliveira, 1994). The dominant gender ideology can be summed up as: "las mujeres en el hogar y los hombres en la plaza," meaning "women in the hearth and men in the plaza" (Massolo, 1994, p. 13).

Mexican women’s entrance into the public domain of work is often regarded as an extension of their domestic duties as either wife or mother. This results in women working in what are considered feminine jobs (Oliveira, 1989; Tiano, 1994). Their tendency to work in such jobs reflects the general trend of occupational segregation by gender which concentrates women in education, cleaning, nursing, administrative support and other service-related positions (Chant, 1991; Mauro, 1994; Zabludovsky, 1995). These positions are less prestigious and lower paying than are male-dominated occupations.

Mexican women historically have also been excluded from certain types of jobs. Until 1974 when the government amended the Constitution to grant women legal equality (Poncela, 1995), labor legislation prohibited women from working at night and in traditionally men’s work. Currently, even though women legally are afforded equal rights with men in all occupations, traditional ideology often guides business practice (Nolan, 1994). For example, at a world-class automobile assembly plant, women are not employed in the 2000 technician jobs, ostensibly because of nighttime shifts and heavy physical work (Bannister, Muller, & Rehder, 1996).

Kras (1991) argues that relationships in the Mexican workplace are informed largely by traditional family relations. Where ninety percent of industrial establishments are tiny and small businesses (Zabludovsky, 1995), the family-oriented organizational culture helps to create a comfortable and harmonious atmosphere. Management practice favors family and friends who are regarded as trustworthy and loyal to superiors; favors harmony over personal competition (Kras, 1991; 1995). The superior-subordinate relationship in the traditional Mexican organization is exemplified by the boss who is seen as "an extension of the autocratic, authoritarian father image" (Kras, 1995, p. 45). Status differences inherent in this relationship are reflected in a very high power distance (Hofstede, 1984), indicating that power is distributed unequally among people in organizations.

At the same time that the proportion of women is increasing in the labor force, some Mexican organizations are changing from the traditional autocratic model to a contemporary, less hierarchical, more participative model (Kras, 1991; 1994). There is evidence that traditional Mexican managerial ideology may be slowly changing as the influx of multinational corporations proceeds (Stephens & Greer, 1995), as women occupy professional positions (Kras, 1995), and as women predominate in assembly line jobs in the US-Mexico border industries (Tiano, 1994; Young, 1993). Such changes signal an opportunity for nontraditional managerial styles and could facilitate the movement of more women into higher level positions.

While some authors contend that basically no differences exist between men’s and women’s management styles (Dobbins & Platz as cited in Fagenson & Jackson, 1993; Powell, 1993), other authors, such as Hegelson and Rosener, referred to earlier, argue that women bring a distinctive management style to the workplace that is needed in today’s dynamic, global economy. This feminine management approach may also be characteristic of many Mexican women managers. It is an approach that fundamentally differs from the autocratic and paternalistic Mexican management style (Stephens & Greer, 1995). Yet, some critics argue that the feminine approach may continue to serve patriarchal interests (Calas & Smirchich, 1993) and that it lacks the transformational power of women’s voices (Fletcher, 1994).

Study Design

This exploratory study analyzes the experiences of twelve (12) Mexican women who hold senior-level management positions in a cross-section of organizations: Education, government, manufacturing, and service. Mexican and US colleagues, and the women in the study helped us to locate interviewees in Northern and Central Mexico. We studied senior-level managers because of their potential to influence organizational behavior norms and to be role models for working women. As discussed earlier, we wanted to understand the factors that women managers perceived to contribute to their success as influential organizational players, including their management style, organizational problems, and the nature of the work - family interface. Because women managers are "outsiders" in a patriarchal domain (Forisha & Goldman, 1981), they must develop sophisticated strategies to hold such posts.

We used a historical-biographical approach to design the interviews. Bell and Nkomo (1992) believe this method allows interviewers to gain a holistic understanding of women managers’ lives, especially when little prior research exists. We wanted the interviewees to articulate their experiences in-depth, and, at the same time, to have the opportunity to reflect upon their professional development. Using a semi-structured interview format, we guided the women through open-ended questions in three general areas: 1) family dynamics and background, 2) career and work history, and 3) management style and organizational problems.

Our interviewers’ skills, combined with a flexible interview format, enabled them to establish a trusting, empathic relationship with interviewees. The latter was critical for the women to feel comfortable about disclosing problems that arose in the course of their careers. It was the articulation of such issues that we believed to be the essence of the study. The interviews ranged from one to three hours in length. Most interviews took place at the worksite where the women gave us an orientation to the plant or business. The interviewees reviewed their transcripts and had the opportunity to correct them. Half of the interviews took place in Spanish, half in English. Because they occupied unique positions, we carefully preserved the anonymity of the women. To analyze the data we grouped all material that related to a theme or concept into coding categories. We then compared the material within categories to look for variations in meaning, and we compared the material across categories to find connections between the themes (Rubin & Rubin, 1995).

Background Characteristics

The interviewees held management positions in the following cities (and states): Guadalajara (Jalisco), Guanajuato (Guanajuato), Ciudad Juarez (Chihuahua), Leon (Guanajuato), and Hermosillo (Sonora). Nine managers worked in private organizations (seven large and two small businesses), and three women worked in public organizations. These included: A Japanese-owned manufacturing-assembly plant, shoe manufacturing companies, a British-owned automotive parts manufacturing plant, a multinational manufacturing plant, a US-owned garment assembly plant, a major university, a government justice department, a travel agency, and a financial services business.

Table 1 displays the managerial positions held by the interviewees along with other descriptive characteristics. The managers frequently occupied unique posts: The first woman to ascend to the top management job in the organizational unit, the only woman engineer to hold a senior management position at the company, and the youngest and only woman plant manager in the city. One of the oldest and one of the youngest women held the highest level posts attained by the interviewees.

This was a group of relatively young, intelligent, mostly married, and highly educated women. Eight women spoke both Spanish and English and considered themselves bilingual. Three women had achieved a higher level of education than had their husbands. The women’s educational status ranged from high school diploma (known as bachillerato in Mexico) and the BA degree (known as licenciatura in Mexico) to the master’s degree (known as maestría in Mexico). The three women who held a master’s degree and the one woman with a BA degree had studied and obtained their degrees at US universities.

The following sections discuss the factors that enabled these women to hold influential positions. First, the distinctive style that characterizes their approach to management are examined. Secondly, the more common organizational problems that they overcame to advance to and retain their posts along with some of their strategies are explored. Third, the nature of the family-work interface that they negotiated are analyzed.

Management Style

The women managers whom we interviewed had a management style that differed from the Mexican male norm. The women’s style shared features with the feminine style of management, discussed earlier, that is interactive, connective and empowering of others. Ten women spoke extensively about the attributes of their management style. The data analysis found substantial agreement among the women concerning their style. The managerial-style profile of the interviewees has the following attributes:

The young plant manager believed that the key to successful management was working effectively with people by..."treating them the way you want to be treated." Her comment conveys the people-oriented approach and the emphasis on relationships and harmony in Mexican culture that characterized the interviewees. The remarks of an internationally visible executive shows the interviewees’ respect for and support of employees:

I just have common sense...I’m very positive all the time, so I like people. I like to work with people. I think everybody is capable to do everything...I believe in everyone. And I have been very, very successful with my people...They are wonderful, they always help me a lot...the people who work with me, they are promoted...we are never behind because everybody that works for me do what they are supposed to do and more. I always listen to them.

This comment illustrates the positive and supportive nature of the managers. Such traits parallel those noted by Rosener (1990) and Hegelsen (1995) in their analyses of both worldwide and US women managers. These authors describe a management style where women share power and information. Similarly, the executive in the Japanese-owned company emphasized her respect for its Japanese plant manager who was more participative and consensus-oriented than other plant managers with whom she worked. The contrast she drew highlights a key difference between the traditional, Mexican, autocratic style of management (Kras, 1991,1994; Stephens & Greer, 1995), and the interactional, participative style of the interviewees. The managers in the study also emphasized their concern for efficiency and organization. Consequently, they gave similar emphasis to the timely accomplishment of tasks and goals and to the development of relationships in which employees assume responsibility in carrying out tasks rather than responding to orders.

The majority of the interviewees noted women’s differences from men. They believed that women managers relate better to people than male managers, are more organized, more detail-oriented, work harder, and hold greater consideration for others. They felt that women have to continually demonstrate their competence in addition to being better performers than men. For example, a manager in a shoe manufacturing plant in Leon recalled that in team situations, in which she was the only woman, the men continually tested her competency, they constantly expressed reservations about her capacity to work, have a home, and a child. She remarked that it took her male peers at least three years to begin to accept her as a competent person.

The characteristics above are not unlike those experienced by other women managers who perceive that they have to cope with the effects of "sex-role spillover:" that is, men view women in ways that are inappropriate for the work context and appropriate for the domestic context (Sheppard, 1992). In sum, we believe the interviewees’ management style shares more in common with the feminine approach to management and less in common with the traditional Mexican management approach. Some elements of the women’s style are characteristically Mexican, such as their emphasis on maintaining harmonious interpersonal relationships. Their general approach, however, seeks to lessen status differences, and, in this respect, departs from traditional Mexican custom. Generally, the women transcended the organizational constraints of their gendered work contexts and used their style in a nontraditional manner.

Obstacles to Advancement

Overt and subtle discriminatory behavior and traditional cultural stereotypes were the most common obstacles women encountered in their advancement to management posts. As managers, they continued in varying degrees to experience such obstacles. Some of the more common problems they dealt with included: Difficulties in hiring and promotion, salary and benefit discrimination, employer’s ignorance and lack of enforcement of the law, old boy networks, and traditional attitudes regarding women’s roles. These types of discrimination worldwide reflect trends that either emphasize gender differences in organizations, favor people who most resemble those at the top (males), or support hierarchical interaction patterns that reinforce occupational segregation by gender (Adler & Izraeli, 1994).

All of the interviewees discussed obstacles at work. Ten women reported at least one specific incident in which they encountered discriminatory behavior. At least half of the interviewees emphasized that women have difficulty getting hired and promoted because either men are more comfortable working with men, will not accept women as peers, or believe women cannot do the required work. Some representative behaviors and attitudes that women experienced included the following:

Other obstacles that the interviewees recounted pertained to difficult working conditions for women in general: Inequalities in labor unions, under Social Security, and in labor courts that they perceived to be occupied predominantly by men unconcerned with women’s rights. Half of the women, however, believed that discriminatory behavior is not as prevalent as it was several years ago.

The interviewees developed a variety of strategies to overcome such obstacles at work. Their strategies demonstrated that they commonly practiced assertive behaviors to surmount problems and to improve performance. Such assertiveness is in sharp contrast to the traditional expectation, described earlier, that Mexican women should be submissive. One study, however, has suggested that the higher a Mexican woman is organizationally, the more she perceives herself to be assertive (Korzenny, Korzenny, & Sanchez de Rota, 1985). Assertive behaviors used by the interviewees included negotiating for more pay and benefits, searching out jobs that paid salaries comparable to their US counterparts, seeking out bosses who respected their competency, instituting sexual harassment procedures, using objective criteria rather than personal ones for hiring decisions, hiring women supervisors who treated employees equitably, and learning English.

For example, a Leon factory manager on maternity leave found that her male "replacement" was given "a considerably higher salary and a company car." After returning to work, enduring considerable personal duress, and confronting her employer, she renegotiated her contract and eventually received a higher salary and more benefits. In some environments, the managers have achieved parity with men. The interviewees in Juarez secured management positions in border assembly plants (maquiladoras) that pay senior managers the same salary as their US counterparts in order to stay competitive.

Eleven of the interviewees indicated that their bosses’ attitude towards professional women made their working conditions more than acceptable. Several interviewees offered that when they hired women in supervisory positions patronizing language problems disappeared. Kras (1995) and Nolan (1994) have noted that using proper titles at work is important and helps to establish status differentials, but gender-based superior-subordinate communication problems are not addressed in the literature. Also, as noted earlier, hiring and promoting friends and family is not uncommon, however, several interviewees said that they made hiring decisions based on merit rather than favoritism:

Well, for me, the one who comes in and has good qualifications for the job is the one who is going to get it, probably because I am a woman, that’s why. But you can find in other companies that the general manager, who is a man, they don’t like to deal with women in those positions. They prefer men.

In sum, the women in the study displayed extraordinary commitment to progressing in their careers and to advancing organizationally. They repeatedly stressed the obstacles that women encountered in organizations, that they perceived to be patriarchal, and with supervisors and bosses who, for the most part, preferred to work with men. To break the glass ceiling, these women had to develop assertive strategies to surmount many impediments and to seek out organizational environments that permitted them career advancement.

Work-Family Interface

The importance of the family to Mexican culture and the maternal obligations associated with it cannot be overemphasized. Yet, women who are employed outside the home challenge the traditional role expectations of family life. Women themselves have to cope with the contradictions inherent in the work and family domains (Lamphere et al, 1993; Segura, 1992), and families must incorporate the reality of women’s employment. Extensive family responsibilities can impede women managers’ career achievements (Parasuraman & Greenhaus, 1993). On the other hand, involvement in wage work increases women’s autonomy and rearranges relations in the patriarchal Mexican household (Young, 1993).

Support from families and husbands was very important to the managerial careers of the women in the study. They all diverged from the traditional patriarchal behavior norm and arranged their lives to successfully live across both domains. These interviewees exemplify the modern Mexican woman who has transcended traditional gender role expectations to lead an active professional and personal life. They also reflect class-based differences in middle and upper class Latin American women who often have domestic help to perform housework (Duley & Edwards, 1986) making it easier for women to pursue professional work.

The interviewees agreed that, generally, more Mexican women, including themselves, are getting education and working outside the home, and several elaborated on the changing family expectations of women. One manager’s comment illustrates such change:

Although women agreed that societal expectations are changing, several of them expressed reservations that women could easily commit to both family and a career, and a few indicated concern that family values could become subordinated to work.

Women working outside the home live one life but have to deal with two domains (Lamphere et al, 1993). Negotiating the inherent contradictions in work and family roles requires skill and perseverance. Chant (1991) found that some husbands supported their wives’ work while others either held back economic resources, refused to help at home, or made her support the household with an increasing percentage of her own wage. The women managers in this study believed they successfully negotiated both domains, and they developed strategies to accomplish this including apportioning tasks related to child care and housework, selecting a compatible partner, and allowing time for family as well as work. Several women acknowledged that their families actively encouraged them to develop their careers and supported their "different ways of thinking" or desire for nontraditional female roles.

The manager-parents paid other women to assist with child care and/or housework. Such domestic help contributed to the women’s ability to preserve time for family and to maintain domestic tranquillity. Most of the married women (including those without children) did not cook or clean, and they attributed the success of their marriage, in part, to this practice. They reported that having domestic help decreased resentments and incidents of tension in the family. Two women shared domestic duties with their husbands in addition to having domestic help. Two of the single women lived with relatives.

One interviewee contrasted the interviewees’ experience with other Mexican women when she pointed out that most women in the work force either quit or drop out of the labor market for extended periods of time when they marry or have children. The interviewees were employed continuously in their adult lives; early on, they expressed an interest in developing a career, and when they had children, they arranged a support system that enabled them to continue working. That the interviewees consciously constructed their lives is demonstrated by a manager in Juarez:

We never do anything. We pay for it…That way I’m not - never mad because I have to go home and do something…since the beginning, when we got married, we decided we were not going to have domestic problems, and that helps a lot.

The married women had dual-career marriages. The spouses held a variety of professional positions and had demanding careers. The married women perceived that their husbands to not feel threatened by their work, and half of them strongly emphasized that their spouses were the key to their success. For example:

Yes, it was one of the things that I always look for, I was always thinking to get someone with an open mind, you know, that accepts the women work, that the women can get into a high position…I don’t have any problem with that. He is a professional and he always help me and everything.

In general, husbands and families demonstrated support of the interviewees’ careers. Role conflicts between domestic duties and work, nevertheless, occurred from time to time. While there might have been reduced tension at home because of domestic help, the husband generally expected his wife to be the primary caretaker of the children. Only one manager stated that her husband volunteered to care for their children, although the others said that their husbands helped out.

Although the majority of married women had successful marriages with Mexican men, two women chose non-Mexican spouses because they anticipated marital problems with traditional Mexican male attitudes. In sum, the interviewees perceived spouses and family support to be crucial to their success both in the home and the outside work domains. Their marriages were dual-career and unconventional by customary Mexican standards.

Conclusion and Implications

The globalized economy, the changing political economy of Mexico, and the influx of women into the labor market and professions are part of the transforming social fabric that can create more opportunities for Mexican women to advance to management. We have illustrated how changing gender relations and managerial ideology are opening opportunities for alternative styles of leadership exemplified by this select group of women managers, and how their presence, in turn, is facilitating such transformations.

The interviewees in this exploratory study are part of a new wave of Mexican women who practice nontraditional management, transcend discriminatory obstacles, and are involved, to a large extent, in unconventional, dual career marriages. Mexican culture’s emphasis on family relationships may help to alleviate their role conflicts. This preliminary study suggests that Mexican women managers could have a higher marriage rate than their US counterparts. In other respects, in management style and skills for overcoming discriminatory obstacles, the interviewees appeared to share characteristics with other women managers both in the U.S. and worldwide. Such a phenomenon is similar to middle and upper class Latin American urban women, who as part of the cosmopolitan ruling sectors, share characteristics with their counterparts in the US except that they have more domestic help (Duley & Edwards, 1986).

We are cautious about generalizing from these experiences to other Mexican women managers. Our intention was to discover patterns and to analyze experiences of particular women in several types of managerial settings. Other researchers may want to determine whether the unique attributes of these women can be generalized to a larger group and how such characteristics may vary according to employment sectors, organizational types, and by region within Mexico. It is also important to know how Mexican men regard the unconventional male roles found in this study. We do believe, however, that the issues raised by the findings in this study are notable and relevant to people who are interested in hiring the best talent and to women who aspire to be managers. Drawing upon our findings, we develop several suggestions for managers:

1) The nontraditional, feminine-oriented management style of Mexican women managers that differs from the autocratic Mexican management style, is relevant and timely to modern organizations that are moving away from hierarchy and autocracy to be change-oriented, adaptive, empowering, and competitive.

2) The assertive and interactive style of some Mexican women managers could be an asset to organizations that seek to transform the traditional organizational model. Those women managers with bilingual skills may also be particularly adept at cross-cultural interactions where client-oriented skills and cross-national adaptation is needed.

3) Mexican women managers, because of their dedication to high quality job performance and their courage in overcoming behavioral and attitudinal barriers, may serve as role models and mentors for other employees, especially where executives want to encourage competitive, world class standards.

4) To attract the talent of educated Mexican women, organizations need to establish responsive human resource management practices that facilitate their recruitment, retention, and upward mobility; moreover, male employees and managers need training to help them cope with changing gender roles that will inevitably affect their job performance.

The women managers in this study represent a generation of young Mexican women who are well-educated and eager to work in challenging careers. They demonstrate that Mexican women can draw strength from their families to help them overcome the hardships of moving into higher level positions. Women must also possess the technical skills and interpersonal competency to demonstrate to male peers that they are equally competent. We believe that the experiences of these women will be helpful in assisting local and international managers who are interested in developing better working relationships for all employees in Mexico and to academics who are conducting research.

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