Career Reflections on Women in Project Management
Elizabeth is a freelance writer and project manager living and working in London. She runs The Otobos Group, a project communications consultancy specializing in project management.
Do you work in a management role with the project management sector? The PMI report on The State of Women in Project Management says that 20% of women in project management are employed in a leadership position. That’s only slightly less than the 23% of men in similar roles.
That sounds great: 1 in 5 women in project management consider themselves to be in management positions. They list job titles like PMO director, portfolio manager, product manager and development manager. That bears out with my experience, too: Many of the senior project professionals I know are women who lead PMOs and deliver strategic transformation; departments heads; and Scrum masters.
However, at the other end of the scale, I’d consider myself to have a management position, too. I don’t have staff that work for me. I don’t have any special responsibility over a department; I’m not the only person in the team with my job title.
But I manage and lead work, as many project managers do. Perhaps the question should be: What are the roles that women hold that are not leadership positions? And is there a risk that women are devaluing what we do because of a job title or not having staff responsibilities? And do men make the same judgements about their roles?
The Role of Part-Time Working
One of the call-outs in the report that interested me was the fact that …
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