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SOSC 102 U

Lecture Note 6

Sex Inequality at Work: Promotions;

Paid Work and Family Work

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Sex Differences in Promotion (1)

• 1. The general trend: the critical period of promotions: early years of a career. Men are promoted at a faster rate during those years (in the early 1980s, men average 0.83 promotions compared to women’s 0.47; the promotion gap narrowed considerably in recent years)

• 2. Education: – High school or less than high school education: women are more

likely than man to be promoted– College graduates: 35% men vs. 29% women being promoted– Postgraduates: 34 % men vs. 21% women being promoted

• 3. Marital Status: married men had greater opportunities than married women

• 4. Parenting: fathers of preschoolers had greater opportunities than mothers of preschoolers

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Sex Differences in Promotion (2)

• “Glass Escalator”: The more women in an occupation, the greater men’s chances of moving into supervisory positions

• “Glass Ceiling”: promotion barrier that prevents a group’s mobility within an organization

• In general, men (with higher than high school degrees) seldom encounter barriers to promotion

• Promotion-related problems for men: men who are unwilling to pursue advancement opportunities would be viewed by employers a lacking career commitment

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Sex Differences in Authority• Authority at work: exercising authority means

having legitimate power to mobilize people, to get their cooperation, and to secure the resources to do the job.

• In a bureaucracy, authority resides in the job, not in its occupant’s personal qualities. (i. e., Managers have the job authority to set rules, but secretaries do not)

• The glass ceiling in management: the higher the level of authority in an organization, the less likely women are to be represented.

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Glass Ceiling in Different Occupations (1)

• Private Works: • Catalyst’s research (2000): in all Fortune 500

companies, less than 13% of the corporate officer slots were held by women

• The top 10 highest-earning companies, women’s share of officer positions ranged from 0%-31%

• Women being CEO (Chief Executive Officer), chair, vice chair, president, chief operating officer, and the like: only 5 women in all Fortune 500 companies in 2001.

• Women in the boards of directors: 12% in the Fortune 500 companies

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Glass Ceiling in Different Occupations (2)

• The Managerial Glass Ceiling in Government Employment:

• Men also have a substantial edge over women in access to top jobs among government works. But disparity is smaller than in the private sector.

• The authority gap between men and women in government works shrank, but despite women’s gains, men still hold three quarters of the best jobs.

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Glass Ceiling in Different Occupations (3)

• Women are underrepresented in the jobs in the professions, the military, and the unions

• E. g. in the field of law, women were far more likely to be law firm associates (39%) than law firm partners (15%)

• E. g. Medical doctors: female medical school graduates between 1979 and 1993: made up only 10% of medical school faculty

• E. g. In the military, women’s representation in the officer ranks was about equal to their representation in the enlisted ranks, but female and minority officers were concentrated in less-prestigious administrative and supply areas and underrepresented in tactical operations

• E. g. the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) only started to hire female agents from 1972. Now 92% of the highest ranks were men.

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Sex Differences in Opportunities to Exercise Authority (1)

• “Glorified secretaries”: women with managerial titles but not the responsibilities and authority that usually accompany the titles. In other words, in some cases that the boss promoted women to decision-making position just to put them as “tokens”. They were not expected to really exercise the authority.

• When exercising authority, women in customarily male jobs would be resisted by their coworkers.

• “hostility toward members of the other sex”, particularly the feeling of being threatened by women with power of men in traditional men’s work

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Sex Differences in Opportunities to Exercise Authority (2)

• Blocks to advancement sometimes motivated women to start their own businesses. Yet women-owned firms tend to be smaller and return lower profits than men-owned firms.

• Why do women-own firms make less profit? They are smaller and are in the service sector. Many are operated as independent contractors (workers hired on a freelance basis to do work that regular employees otherwise would do in-house). Only 16 % hired paid employees (the rest are self-employed)

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Explanations for the Promotion and Authority Gaps

• 1. Sex-segregated Internal Labor Market

• 2. Sex Differences in Human Capital

• 3. Sex Differences in Social Networks

• 4. Organizations’ Personnel Practices

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“Internal Labor Market” (1)

• “Internal Labor Market”: the mechanism that coverts segregation into a promotion gap.

• “Job ladders”: promotion or transfer paths between lower- and higher-level jobs.

• Internal labor markets comprise related jobs (or job families) connected by job ladders.

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“Internal Labor Market” (2)

• Sex-segregated internal labor market: • 1. Sex segregation of job assignments would tend to

perpetuate itself: men would tend to be assigned to the jobs with long job ladders, while women tend to concentrate in job ladders with low mobility (e. g. the Salomon Smith Barney case: broker-training program vs. sales assistants)

• 2. Employers designed many traditionally female jobs, such as teacher, without job ladders in order to encourage turnover, thereby keeping wages low.

• 3. For workers whose jobs are on promotion ladders, men tend to be found on longer ladders that reach higher in the organization where authority is concentrated. Women are concentrated on shorter ladders, with just one or two rungs above the entry level.

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Internal Labor Market for Grocery Store Chain (Paravic and Reskin, p. 110)

Courtesy Clerk: (Sex Integrated)

Store Manager

(3.1% female)

Produce Department Manager (4.7% female)

Produce Department:

Clerk (19.1% female)

Grocery Department Manager (7.6 % female)

Assistant Grocery Department Manager (16.8 % female)

Bakery/Deli Department:

Clerk (93.7% female)

General Merchandise Department: Department Head (clerk position)

(91.8% female)

Grocery Department:

Clerk (49.9% female)

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“Internal Labor Market” (3)

• Establishment segregation: large organizations have the resources to create internal labor markets (and promotion opportunities). But women tend to concentrate in small, entrepreneurial firms and nonprofit organizations.

• Women’s share of top leadership jobs affects other women’s opportunities to promote and exercise authority.

• Women’s share of non-managerial jobs: if companies fill managerial jobs by promoting people from the insider pool, a strong representation of women in non-managerial positions increased female employee’s share of managerial jobs.

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“Internal Labor Market” (4)

• Overrepresentation of women in “staff” positions obscure women’s accomplishments. Unlike predominant men in “line” positions (entailing profits and loss responsibility), staff positions involve little risk and therefore provide few opportunities for workers to display their talents to senior managers.

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Human-Capital (1)

• The theory: Women as a group are under-represented at the top of career hierarchies because they lack the experiences needed to advance into positions that confer authority

• The theory should be revisited by emphasizing that women alone should not be blamed for their receiving less training and having less experience. Oftentimes their opportunities are blocked by organization’s personal policies and practices.

• Remedies: 1. Adding women at lower levels where they can gain experience and enter the pipeline leading to future high-level jobs

• 2. The removal of barriers that block women’s access to training and experience

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Sex Differences in Social Networks (1)

• In the following circumstances, filling jobs through social networks tends reproduce the characteristics (such as the under-representation of women in managerial positions) of the existing workforce:

• 1. At the highest levels, most organizations are male dominated.

• 2. People’s social networks tend to comprise others of the same sex, ethnicity, and race.

• 3. If the pool of people being considered is made up of members of decision makers’ social networks, women usually will be disadvantaged.

• The fact: most managerial jobs are filled through informal networks

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Sex Differences in Social Networks (2)

• Remedies: 1. actively seek to expose workers to a broader array of networks;

• 2. encourage the formation of networks of women and minority employees from across the organization;

• 3. Mentoring program: • Provide connections to influential people in the

organization who can advocate for people they mentor, teach them the ropes, and provide them with “reflected power”;

• Have a powerful person publicly support a woman from blatant and subtle discrimination;

• Allow some outsiders into the networks of powerful people, providing them with information on job openings and corporate politics.

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Organizations’ Personal Practices (1)

• Decision makers’ sex stereotypes reduce women’s chances of being promoted

• Research of Perry, Davis-Blake and Kulik (1994) shows that when women are already fairly well represented in the higher ranks, decision makers tend to act in a more gender-neutral way in conferring promotions, resulting in less bias in favor of men.

• “Homosocial reproduction”: managers’ selection of workers for jobs based on their social similarity to managers

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Organizations’ Personal Practices (2)

• Remedies: • 1. Organizations can reduce the promotion and authority

gaps by replacing informal personnel practices with formal ones that restrict opportunities to act on bias. Bureaucratic practices discourage favoritism;

• 2. Use formal criteria to ensure that decisions are based only on relevant information for each candidate and not on casual impressions or hearsay;

• 3. Raise the price (such as fines and other financial sanctions) that employers pay to discriminate;

• 4. Legislation can reduce the authority gap when it is implemented and enforced.

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Paid Work and Family Work

• The current trend

• The Concept: Work-family Conflict

• Impacts on the Sexual Division of Labor

• Remedies

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Paid Work and Family Work

• The current trend: the decline of the stay-at-home wife and mother

• According to the U. S. Census Bureau: Percentage of married women between the ages of 16 and 65 in the labor force– At the turn of the 20th. Century: 4%– At the end of the 20th. Century: 60%

• The change of family-work patterns: • Among those families with children: 44% had both

parents employed• Families with employed husbands and stay-at-home

wives: only 19% (67% in 1940)

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Work-family Conflict

• DF: Jobs and home both demand enormous commitments of time and energy and the periods of greatest energy expenditure—the peak years of family formation of career growth—tend to coincide.

• The conflict occurs in three important respect:• - Time Shortages• - Scheduling Demands• - Work-family Spillover

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Time Shortages (1)

• Both work and home spheres demand time, which result that many workers feel overwhelmed.

• A sense of a “time famine” is particularly characteristic of dual-earner families where both partners work full time

• The desire of many employers to have totally committed employees cause workers to be pressed for time. For these employers, an ideal worker should put work above all other commitments and activities.

• Home demands: child care, obtaining meals, cleaning, shopping, and laundry, etc.

• Some services of home demands can be purchased: market substitutes, such as child care centers, nursing homes, cleaning services, grocery-delivery services, and takeout restaurants.

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Time Shortages (2)

• But these market substitutes do not make up for the shortage of time and can create problems of their own.

• 1) Market substitutes are not cheap, some worker may work longer hours to pay for them.

• 2) Not all services can be hired out, nor do workers necessarily want to hire others to do them. E. g. spending time with children

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Scheduling Demands (1)• DF: Workers are expected to be in two places at the

same time. Working people who needs to care for children and elderly parents at the same time called “sandwich generation”

• Scheduling Child and Elder Care would be solutions to the problem, however:

• Inflexible child care arrangements– 1. Most child care centers operate only during standard business

hours and do not provide care for sick children– 2. Non-relative child care is seldom cheap; it constitutes one of

the largest shares of work-related expenses, particularly for single parents and poor families.

– 3. Not enough affordable facilities exist to meet the demand.• The high cost and inaccessibility of child care force some

parents to leave their children home alone. Some parents schedule different shifts in order to manage child care. This arrangement takes a toll on marriage: divorce rates are above average because spouses see so little of each other.

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Work-Family Spillover• DF: The boundaries between work and home have

become more permeable: paid work tends to spill over beyond the boundaries of the workday, and home life tends to spill over into the workplace.

• The intrusion of home life into work time can decrease workers’ effectiveness and increase their tardiness, absenteeism, and stress levels. Work life also intrudes into home time.

• The double-edge development of working from home:– Positive: it provides parents the flexibility to accommodate

school and child care schedules. – Negative: 1) it increases the pressure on professional workers to

be available outside the office; 2) workers are less visible in their organization, which may reduce their promotion chances. 3) Home work reinforces a traditional division of domestic labor: family paid home workers tend spend more time on housework than comparable women who leave home to work; male home workers do not.

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The Sexual Division of Labor and Work-family Conflict

• About 60% of married women share responsibility for the breadwinner role. Would women’s gaining economic power save them from taking most of the responsibilities of housework?

• Men, by and large, have been slower to share domestic responsibilities.

• Although both sexes benefit from the satisfaction and sometimes status and power that a paid job provides, women tend to experience more stress than men in coping with the double day.

• Employed women are more likely than men to accommodate others’ needs by adjusting their work and home schedules.

• Brines’ research shows that, in the United States, men who are economically dependent on their wives tend to do less housework than other men/

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Hours Spent on Household Tasks per Week for Full-time Workers by Sex, 1998

(Bianchi and Robinson, 2001; cited from Padavic and Renkins 2002: 161)

Household Task Men Women

Men's Hours as a Percentage of Women's Hours

Preparing meals 2.2 4.3 51.2%

Meal cleanup 0.4 0.8 50.0%

House cleaning 2 2.8 71.4%

Laundry, ironing 0.6 1.9 31.6%

Outdoor chores 1.6 0.4 400.0%

Repairs, maintenance 1.4 0.7 200.0%

Garden and animal care 0.7 0.7 100.0%

Other household task 1 1 100.0%

Total housework 9.9 12.6 78.6%

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Responses to Work-Family Conflicts (1)

• 1. Individual Solutions: • DF: Limiting family demands or limiting the time

in paid work• Usually it occurs at women’s sacrificing family

for career (i. e., postpone childbearing, have few children or remain single) or sacrificing career for family (limit their time in paid work, take part-time job).

• 2. Employer-Sponsored Programs: such as assistance with child care center, flexible scheduling

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Responses to Work-Family Conflicts (2)

• 3. Government-Sponsored Programs:• The European model: developed from the late

19th. C. • European countries believe that society bears

some responsibility for family well-being and will gain from investing in the next generation

• The U. S. model: only developed in the 1990s. The U. S. sees raising the next generation a private matter rather than public concern.