Two Women, Three Man on a Raft

Category: Women

Last Updated: 20 Apr 2022

Pages: 2 Views: 742

In the article “Two women, three men on a raft”, the author Robert Schrank are mainly talk about the problems of power relationship and cooperation between the sexes in organizations by using an analogy between the raft experience and company management according to the Outward Bound raft trip In this article, the author mentioned that one participant’s story of how Raft No. 4 fared on the Rogue. What is more, it specifies to describe the power relationship between the sexes. In the whole trip on a raft, the men unhappy when a women as helmsperson, and the men had subconsciously and proceeded to undermine the women by habit.However, when a man was in charge, they always feel comfortable, and worked to help him be a better helmsperson. In fact, there are many people like John and the other two men in the organization. In other word, the author considers that men often unconsciously desire to protect their power from women’s control in organizations as the situation happened on Raft No. 4 on the Rogue River. Generally speaking, men usually want to control the whole things and do the sabotaging behavior to the women. In addition, the article point out that what happened on Raft No. 4, Inc. , occurs in most organizations when women enter positions of leadership.The organizations are usually designed as pyramids. It is less squeezes when got to the top. So, once women enter the squeezing, men are doubly threatened. However, more women become managers in organization; there will have to be shift in power. So for subordinates, it should be support the administrators even they are women. Furthermore, how the men cooperate with women it is very important in a collective activity. The author thinks that women should be support by the men. Otherwise, it must be like the raft is foundering. Like in this trip when the Marlene was in charge.

At last, the author mentioned that there are analogy between navigating a river and a big bureaucracy. Like river, a big organization also has sleepers and chutes. However, there existence is a far more political than intellectual task. Women trying to navigate most organizations, they may found it more complex than the Rogue. The men struggled to take over and colluded against the women so they could give their simplistic orders, they were living out the now-outdated command-and-control style of large bureaucratic organizations. In sum, in the organization, the male-female have conflict. When the women from climbing the corporate ladder.

Men would act to preserve their positions of power, and they knew how to do that with behaviors both subtle and obvious. However, in this society, the power not only belonged to the men, the women also have the right and ability to gain the power and should be supported. In addition, the author uses the river to analogy the diversity management; the manager should create the environment in which a diverse team can achieve trust and mutual respect. Otherwise, the result was there in a throwaway line in the story—the raft lost its place in line. Finally, they will lose competitive position.

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