Dr. Ann Gregory, honorary research professor at Memorial and professor of business, has spent the last seven years trying to find out more about the women who have made it past the glass ceiling. The management table is traditionally male territory, with just 12 per cent of senior management positions and 7.5 per cent of directorship positions belonging to women.

Wondering about the conditions and characteristics that led to the success of this group of women, Dr. Gregory joined a team of researchers in 1999 to find out the story behind the success. After seven years of research, a cross cultural team that spans the Americas, and more than 1,100 surveys and 300 interviews with women in 10 different countries, the book Successful Professional Women of the Americas: From Polar Winds to Tropical Breezes was published.

The researchers took both a quantitative and qualitative approach to look at the impact of culture, personality and leadership styles, barriers women faced and support systems they used, as well as country-specific factors. The team looked for systematic differences between women of different national cultures, and also sought fundamental commonalities among successful women, regardless of location. The results they found were somewhat surprising.

“We had expected to find more differences, but we were struck by the similarities across countries in both the surveys and the interviews,” noted Dr. Gregory.

Successful women from the various countries and cultures surveyed shared several attributes that they felt contributed to their accomplishments: a high self-effacy, high internal locus of control, and a high need for achievement.

When looking at culture, it was necessary to note the differences between respondents from Newfoundland and Labrador and from other parts of Canada. As Dr. Gregory explained, “Newfoundlanders are impacted by the psychological impact of experiences with colonial rule, the intensity of the Protestant-Catholic divide that was present in all parts of life until recently, a rigid social stratification system, and the strict separation of roles for women, with the Catholic church notably vocal in their support of the traditional role for women.”

There were a few instances where the Newfoundlanders and Labradorians had different responses from the other groups surveyed. Some felt they had to be more authoritarian in their management style owing to the traditional authoritarian culture in the province.  Others felt that their religion played a role in their success – either positively or negatively.

All Newfoundland and Labrador respondents discussed the negative image associated with Newfoundlanders. As one woman explained, “I feel the implications of the Newfoundland culture more now as a director at the national table. As a Newfoundlander you always have to try harder. They don’t understand much about us. We are penalized – it is harder.”

Virtually all women interviewed were aware of characteristics within themselves, such as their personality, values and beliefs, and characteristics of their environments and life experiences, such as opportunities, education, support systems and discrimination that helped or hindered their efforts to achieve personal success.

Dr. Gregory summed up her research experience by saying, “the project provided insights indicating that women everywhere have similar problems and characteristics but that there are differences, some owing to different stages of women’s development and others owing to cultural aspects. The successful women across the Americas were all hardworking women who believed in their own ability to succeed. These women know they face challenges, and they succeed in spite and sometimes because of them.”

Dr. Ann Gregory has been an honorary research professor, a university-wide appointment, since 2003. This fall, Dr. Gregory accepted a position at the American University in Bulgaria and is now teaching there.