The relationship between sex roles of managers and attitudes towards women managers in family businesses: A research in Uşak province

Being a part of the society, family businesses have great importance in our country just like in the rest of the world. The general tendency in family businesses is to pass management from one generation to the next. Altough, family businesses seem to have a management structure in which both daughters and sons have equal chance in succession process, in fact, there are differences in the attitudes towards each sex.According to the findings in related literature, generally, women hold less formal roles and rarely have a chance to become top managers. In this context, staying in the background in daily life as a result of gender roles, women face similiar circumstancesin business life in general and in the family businesses in particular. In other words,patriarchal structure of the family businesses restrain women from rising upper levels of the management.The purpose of this study is to investigate attitudes of managers employed in the family businesses towards female managers in relation to gender roles (feminine, masculine, androgynous and undifferentiated) and some demographic variables (ie. sex, age, marital status etc.). The data were collected from 118 managers (30 women, 88 men) employed in family businesses in Uşak province. Descriptive statistics, corelation analysis, t-test and analysis of variance technics were used to analyze the data. Results indicate that, women have more positive attitudes towards female managers than masculines. Further more, those who have feminine, androgynous and undifferentiated sex roles have more positive attitudes than masculines. There was found to be a significant negative relationship between age and attitudes; that is as the age increases vithe attitudes get negative. In addition, it is found that the attitudes towards female managers vary depending on the sector of the firm and the number of the workers in the firm. The managers in the manufacturing sector have more negative attitudes than managers in the services and trade sectors. Also the managers in the mid size enterprises have more negative attitudes than the managers in the small size enterprises. However, no significant differences were observed between the groups and attitudes towards female managers when the participants were categorized based on their age, education level, marital status, wives? employment status and being professional or family member. Keywords: Family Businesses, Stereotypes, Sex Role Stereotypes, Female Managers, Attitudes towards Female Managers.