Being a woman in management in Turkey: A case study intended for tourism industry

The tourism industry, which is one of the locomotive sectors of our country, is also one of the areas where female employees are employed most intensively. However, there are insufficiencies in the representation of these women employees in the management levels. Female managers generally serve at lower and middle level positions and the representation of women remains limited especially in decision-making top management positions. Thus, the purpose of the research is to understand the reasons of inadequate number of female managers at the top management levels of hotels in Turkey. In addition, consept of "being a women manger" has been tried to be resolved with 10 sub-problems that accompany the main research problem by the viewpoint of women managers. The research is a case study which is one of the qualitative research methods and designed with multiple case-holistic case study. For this purpose 20 interviews have been made with women managers from around different parts of the country. In the research, semi-structured interview form consisting of 12 questions was used as data collection tool. The data obtained were explained and interpreted by using descriptive analysis method over 10 themes, categories and sub-themes based on theoretical framework and findings. According to the results of the research, it is revealed that there are individual, organizational and social barriers to the promotion of female employees to senior management positions. At the same time, female managers stated that they experienced the most discrimination during recruitment and promotion stages during their career. Another important result is that women experience intensively work-family conflict and seek family and spouse support. In addition, it was found that female managers lack female role models in business life. The most important strategic features of the female managers in senior positions are determined as meticulousness and versatility. Finally, the requirement of making changes and arrangements in the legal, organizational and social sphere in order to increase women's representation in management positions has emerged.