differenceblog, posts by tag: jobs - LiveJournal

An article in yesterday's National Post announces that women now outnumber men in "core federal government employment." Since just 1995, the balance in federal bureaucracy has shifted from 54.1% male to 54.2% female. Much of this shift is attributed to a 33% cut in less-skilled jobs over the past decade. Men held 61% of the executive jobs in this survey.

According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (2004), there have also been declines in the number of "blue-collar" federal jobs (non-postal) in this country. Women have made gains in the technical and professional "white-collar" categories, but there have been declines in the number of women employed in clerical positions. The total employment split was 56% to 44%; interestingly, only 39% of those retiring in 2004 were female. According to testimony by the Rhonda Trent, president of Federally Employed Women (2007, PDF), women made up 47.1% of the total federal workforce in 2005, but only 26.2% of the Senior Executive Service.

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It seems that the frequently mentioned phenomenon of greater diversity in male status (men outnumber women on the lowest and highest tiers) also applies in federal employment. This does not strike me as a merit-based system, although it could be education-based. While women have been outpacing men in education in recent years, the average age of the federal workers in the U.S. sample was 46.7 -- a generation that would have entered college around the time I was born. Canada seems to be doing a better job of equality than the U.S., which doesn't surprise me at all. <LOLCAT> Hai, I can emigrait now plz? </LOLCAT> I'm also trying to figure out how women could be retiring less often than men. It could be that 2004 was just a fluke. Another option is that women leave without retiring -- since women tend to live longer than men, it seems unlikely that they were "dying in the saddle."

Who holds women back in the workplace more: men or women? Judith Sills' column (2006) in Psychology Today claims that women often feel their "worst enemy" in the workplace is another woman; Sills calls it "a common survey finding" and offers advice on how to deal with workplace competition between women. Garcia-Retamero and López-Zafra (2006) found more discrimination against women leaders from women than from men, although blogger Robert May at Business Pundit complains about the lack of "solid evidence" in this study.

Ramit Mizrahi's (2004) note in the Yale Law Journal asserts that female-on-female harassment is not only common, but does qualify as sex-based discrimination under the Civil Rights Act (see also Mizrahi, 2004). However, Berkley and Watt's (2006) review suggests that same-sex workplace harrassment is not covered under current statutes, and that further action is necessary to protect GLBT employees (admittedly a separate issue).

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I've heard many women complain about the pressure to join the old-boy's-network to gain acceptance in the workplace. When I was working as a female, I certainly wanted to be associated with the males I worked with more than the females, but I'm hardly good example in this circumstance. Working as a man, in a mostly female department, I've felt perhaps too supported by my bosses, and I sometimes worry that my progress may have more to do with my presenting gender than with the quality of my work.

A significant portion of the salary disparity between men and women can be traced to differences in salary negotiation. Stevens et al (1993) found that even after training in salary negotiation tactics and goal-setting, female MBA students were still negotiating lower salaries than their male counterparts, partially because they were still setting lower salary goals. Small et al (2004) found that women initiated negotiations less often than men in a situation where negotiation was not explicitly suggested, although O'Shea and Bush (2002) found that women were no less likely to negotiate for higher salary. Lisa Barron (2003) found that men asked for higher salaries in their initial salary request. Barron suggests this is related to beliefs she found in the men and women in her study: men were significantly more likely to be sure of themselves, believe that they were entitled to more than other employees, and expect to prove themselves during negotiations (as opposed to on the job).

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I've never negotiated for a salary, period. It has occurred to me recently that this is probably stupid, not to put too fine a point on it. I've received raises as a result of an annual employee review, or through promotion, but I've never once asked for a raise or for a higher starting salary. I've been in a position to negotiate recently, and I'm forcing myself to do it, but I think it's harder than my transition was.

Zhang (2007), in a report for Statistics Canada reported that Canadian women were now no more likely to quit a job than men. The data analyzed were from the Longitudinal Worker File (LWF), an ongoing survey of a 10% sample of Canadian workers. In 1984, 5.5% of Canadian men quit their jobs, compared to 7.0% of women, but by 1994, the women's quitting rate had dropped to 5.6% while men's quit rate remained stable. In 2002, 7.6% of men and 7.7% of women had quit their jobs. While the study suggests that maternity leave is a major factor (4.2% of women took temporary maternity leave in 2002), it does not say whether Canadian legislation has changed the availability of maternity leaves during the period studied. The study also does not attempt to explain the dramatic rise in both men's and women's quit rates between 1994 and 2002.

In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has a similar tool to the LWF, the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (NLSY). NSLY data is collected from a "nationally representative" cohort. (12,686 in 1979, and 9,000 for the 1997 cohort). Royalty (1998) concluded from NLSY-79 data that gender differences in voluntary job-to-job and job-to-unemployment mobility were due to the behaviour of less-educated women. The differences in job mobility were significantly different for less educated women than from more educated women, and men in both categories.

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I never quit a job for pregnancy and never missed a day of work or school due to menstrual issues, but thinking about this article, I realize that I did quit a job to follow a lover. It seems like many of the heterosexual couples I know relocate based on the man's job prospects more readily than they do for the woman's job prospects. When the man is making more money than the woman, increased priority to his job seems to make financial sense, but if the woman's income is hampered by increased job leaving, then what does that prove?

Despite ample evidence that women tend to have worse jobs, studies find that women report equal or higher levels of job satisfaction as men. While many studies seem to focus on the women's relative happiness, asking "Why Aren't Women More Dissatisfied?" (Hodson 1989) or "Why are women so happy at work?" (Clark 1997), few studies seem to examine why men are so unhappy. An HR Solutions 2007 survey suggests that job fit and career development are predictors of job satisfaction among women, whereas feeling included in decisions and senior management's concern for employees were predictors for men. These sorts of results suggest the hypothesis that locus of control would have a differential effect on men's and women's job satisfaction; however, Muhonen and Torkelson's 2004 study examining this relationship had mixed results.

Sousa-Poza and Sousa-Poza (2003) suggest that gender differences in job satisfaction are decreasing. Hodson (1989) suggested that when job characteristics, personal expectations, and family responsibility are controlled, these differences shrink. Andrew Clark (1987) goes further by pointing out that young, educated professional women and women in male-dominated fields do not show a boost in job satisfaction, which he suggests is due to similar job expectations to their male counterparts.

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Hodson also suggests that men may be more willing to "verbalize dissatisfaction"; however, we discussed the socialization of complaining in December ("Valid Complaints" 12/1/06), and found that in couples interaction, women were more likely to complain. This suggests to me that the acceptability of complaints is situationally dependent. I personally have a bad habit of bitching about my jobs. It's bitten me in the ass more than once. However, I don't think my level of complaining has decreased since my transition, but I do think people are less offended by it.

Connie Llanos (2007), reporting for the L.A. Daily News, says that "men are ignoring the social stigmas associated with nursing and finding that the job is not just women's work." The medical industry is actively recruiting men to combat the nationwide nursing shortage. Jerry Lucas, editor of Male Nurse Magazine, told Llanos he "felt compelled" to get men interested in nursing after working in New York City after September 11th. Progress, however, is slow. Jean P. Fisher (2007) reporting for the NC News & Observer says that 3% of RNs in North Carolina were male in 1985. Twenty years later, men still make up only 7%. "The biggest challenge is still getting men to see nursing as a masculine role," Billy Bevill (VP of recruiting at NCCN) told Fisher.

Simpson (2004) reported that men in female-dominated careers "adopt a variety of strategies to re-establish a masculinity that has been undermined by the ‘feminine‘ nature of their work." Beck et al (2006) found that boys were less comfortable than girls in entering into a non-traditionally-gendered career. Gender stereotypes do have a significant effect on the workplace conditions for male nurses. Evans (2002) suggests that the stereotype of males as sexual aggressors impacts the ability of a male nurse to do his work. Yassi et al (1995) did not find significant gender differences in workplace injury rates between male and female nurses, despite Floge and Merrill's (1986) observation that male nurses were asked to lift things more often than female nurses.

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As I've mentioned before, I gravitate towards other-gendered fields. There may be some truth to my mother's insistence that I have to put myself in the minority. However, I think that the important thing to look at between yesterday's Girl Geeks! and today's post is the implication that women are empowered by entering into male fields, whereas men are weakened by entering into female fields. This inherent sexism is probably too obvious to be worth stating, but I don't see any obvious solution.

Ichino and Moretti (2006) suggest that a substantial portion of the wage gap between men and women can be tied to menstrual cycles. Ichino and Moretti conclude that 11.8% of the earnings gap can be explained by absenteeism on a 28-day cycle. Slap's 2003 review suggests that 75% of adolescent girls suffer from problems associated with menstruation as well, and that this is a leading cause of doctor's visits among this group. In contrast, Hardie (1997) found no differences in absenteeism or work performance between women pre- during-, or post-menstrually and men.

Whether menstruation can or should be optional has been under investigation for some time. Loudon et al (1977) reported "enthusiastic" tolerance of an oral contraceptive regimen that reduced the number of periods nearly 30 years ago. More recently, Kaunitz (2000) pointed out that in modern society, women menstruate up to 3 times as often as in "primitive societies." Archer et al. (2006) reported this month that continuous oral contraception has similar safety and efficacy rates to cyclic oral contraception, a result that Reuters reported as meaning that ending periods was safe for most women (although this interpretation may be too broad).

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Patri Friedman drew my attention to Ichino and Moretti. I am interested to see how their research translates cross-culturally, since I can't speak to working conditions in Italy. Hardie's study, which focused on actual reported cyclic data, as opposed to Ichino and Moretti's 28-day assumption, feels more likely to be accurate to me, but I'm aware of a bias in my own thinking, since my menstrual symptoms were rarely severe. Hardie did find that "self-diagnosed" PMS did correlate with health and work problems, so these results obviously require closer scrutiny.

It's worth noting that in the last post about menstruation, it seemed that women were at their closest to male responses during their periods, which makes it seem odd that avoiding it would decrease the gender gap.

In "How Big is the Wage Gap" (8/15/2006), we looked at how differences in priorities led women to accept less pay for similar jobs, in exchange for more flexibility in hours or more time off. An alternative theory, such as that proposed by Groshen (1991) suggests that "sexual segregation", or the tendency for certain lower-paying fields to be female-dominated, was the primary reason for the wage gap. However, many recent studies suggest that this theory holds little promise.

Bayard et al (1999) concluded that even within female-dominated fields, women still tended to be paid less than men in the same jobs. Camille L. Ryan's analysis of 2001 data (published 2005) also confirmed the conclusion that women earned about 73% as much as men in the same fields, and that this gap was consistent across fields and levels of education. However, Ryan notes that women's labor force experience is more variable than men's within fields, and that the variability in women's earnings is partially explained by this, which points back to the "greater time away from work" hypothesis.

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Even before I was ready to admit to myself that I needed to live as a man to be happy, I joked that "if I had been born a man, I'd probably be a nurse or a teacher." I find it fairly amusing that in the same year that I transitioned from female to male, I also transitioned from a male-dominated job (theatre technician) to a female-dominated one (administrative assistant). My mother often insisted that I had a strong desire to be in the minority. I hope there's more to it than that.