The Opportunity 2000 Campaign has recognized that equal opportunity policy change has to be accompanied by a process of culture change in organizations. However, sustaining commitment to an equal opportunity culture may be a difficult task in times of rapid and varied organizational change. In particular, the volume and scope of 'restructuring' that follow mergers, acquisitions, divestment, the introduction of internal markets, and other changes in business strategy often lead to 'downsizing', 'delayering', and outsourcing of business functions. This can have very variable outcomes for the careers of women managers. For them the experience of organizational restructuring is akin to participation in a lottery in which they are occasionally winners, but usually losers. This is the main finding from in-depth case studies of three large organizations in the public sector, pharmaceuticals, and financial services, which have all experienced some form of 'restructuring' over the last five years. The main conclusion of this research is that unless restructuring involves an expansion of managerial positions it is likely to disadvantage women managers. The reasons for this are that it leads to job losses in functions where women are concentrated; highlights the disadvantages of poor line manager support; reinforces exclusion from the valuable informal organizational networks that provide access to career development opportunities; and renders formal equal opportunity policy monitoring ineffective. These findings have considerable implications for organizational and national policy initiatives to achieve an equal opportunity business culture.

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slower rate and their penetration into management is modest even in those industries which largely employ women. Where they have been successful in acquiring management positions these are mostly confined to lower and middle management level and few have succeeded in achieving senior management posts. For example, the 1994 Institute of Management survey revealed an overall increase of above 8 per cent in female managers over the last 20 years (from 1.8 per cent in 1974 to 9.5 per cent in 1994). Those at director level, however, increased by less than 2 per cent, from 0.6 per cent to 2.8 per cent, over the same period (Institute of Management, 1994).There is a growing literature which attempts to explain women's underrepresentation in management. For example, a variety of research has shown that women's career paths are different from those of men. Women have made careers in marketing, personnel, administration and advertising, rather than general management or the specialist areas which offer the best opportunities for progress (Evetts, 1993; Nicholson and West, 1988). Prejudice against women has been found in recruitment and selection procedures (Motram, 1987), promotion and appraisal processes (Alimo-Metcalfe, 1994) and in their less favourable access to career development opportunities (Jackson and Hirsh, 1991). The attitudes and behaviour of the women themselves, their family roles (Cooper and Davidson, 1984;White et al., 1992) and even their speech patterns (Schick-Case, 1994) have also been cited as a problem.Academic writing and research attempting to explain women's underrepresentation therefore focuses mainly on the behaviour of individual women -their career choices, attitudes, family commitments, etc., or the prejudice of their male superiors or colleagues. Their prescriptions for change also follow this individual perspective, concentrating on how management development, career planning and equal opportunities policies can assist women in their careers (see for example, Flanders, 1994). As yet, however, there has been little consideration of the way in which characteristics of the organizations in which they work may facilitate or impede the progress of women in their attempts to enter management. There are some grounds for believing that women find career advancement easier in public sector bureaucracies (Davidson and Cooper, 1992) and some writers have argued that women are more likely to progress in the new leaner and flatter organizations (Cooper and Davidson, 1984). Moreover, a recent large-scale cross-industry survey in the USA (Blum et al., 1994) found significant relationships between the proportion of women in managerial posts and a number of organizational characteristics. The authors conclude that "organizational measures of social structure, resource needs and institutional tendencies" account for almost half of the variation in the percentage of management positions filled by women in the organizations in their sample [p. 262].The discussion so far has drawn attention to the need to analy...

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