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The authority attainment of women: competitive sector effects
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, April, 1996 by Rosemary Hopcroft, L.
I
Introduction
It is well documented that women are less likely than men to exercise authority in their jobs (Grimm and Stern 1974, Wolf and Fligstein 1979, Roos 1981, Jaffee 1989, Jacobs 1992, Reskin and Ross 1992). Yet the causes of this gender difference in authority have received little attention. Such neglect is not warranted since authority profoundly affects individual work experiences (Dahrendorf 1959, Kanter 1977). Moreover, gender differences in authority are associated with gender differences in wages and fringe benefits (Spaeth 1976, Wright and Pertone 1977, Halaby 1979, Robinson and Kelley 1979, Ward and Mueller 1985, Reskin and Ross 1992).
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This study examines reasons why men are more likely to have jobs with a high level of authority than are women. The measures used allow a detailed examination of the authority difference between men and women in the workplace. Such an examination is important since it is in the type of authority, and not just the level of authority, that the differences between men and women emerge most clearly (Reskin and Ross 1992). Previous studies of authority differences (Wolf and Fligstein 1979, Halaby 1979, D'Amico 1986, Ward and Mueller 1985) have used limited measures of authority in the workplace. This study also tests a hypothesis drawn from organizations theory and Becker (1971, 1957, 47) that discrimination will occur less frequently in the more competitive sector of the economy. In addition, the effects of education, hours worked, domestic responsibilities and gender-type of occupation are examined. Results show that with authority as the value numeraire, women face less discrimination in the more competitive sector of the economy, all else being equal.
II
Earlier Research
Although the mechanisms may be disputed, previous studies have found that many factors which help account for gender differences in workplace authority are those predicted by neoclassical economic theory. That is, women are excluded from positions of authority in part because they do not acquire the same amount of human capital as men do and because they do not work the long hours usually associated with a position of authority (Mincer and Polachek 1974, Wolf and Fligstein 1979, Halaby 1979, Polachek 1981, Becker 1981, 1985, Reskin and Ross 1992).(1) These studies show that such factors account for a substantial part of the gender difference in authority in the workplace, although they do not explain all of the gender gap.
Other factors predicted by economic theory to influence authority outcomes have received less empirical support. For example, Becker (1985) suggests that men and women will differ in their work activities, even with identical investments in human capital and similar working hours per week, because of the differential involvement of men and women with child care and household duties. Becker theorizes that if energy levels are finite, women will have less energy to devote to their job than men since women devote proportionately more of their energy to domestic duties. This argument can be used to account for the gender difference in workplace authority, assuming that positions of authority are more energy-consuming than other positions. Yet although evidence indicates that women in two career homes do perform the majority of child care and household tasks (Coverman 1983, Kamo 1988, Ishii-Kuntz and Coltrane 1992), it is not clear that this reduces their work effort. D'Amico's (1986) study found that increased responsibility for household chores and maintenance reduces a respondent's probability of occupying a position of authority in the workplace, while Jaffee (1989) found no effects of marital status or children on authority. Furthermore, Bielby and Bielby (1988) suggest that women do not allocate less effort to work than men, despite their heavier household responsibilities.
Some studies show that the gender-type of an occupation also influences authority level, and conclude that the concentration of women in "female" occupations (by whatever mechanism) serves to restrict women from positions of authority (Wolf and Fligstein 1979, Jaffee 1989).(2) This is explained as follows. Many "female" occupations are "support" positions by definition. For example, occupations such as clerical worker, nurse, and teacher's aide fit this description. People in these occupations are often subject to the authority of people in male-dominated occupations such as managers, administrators, doctors etc. In addition, there is often less hierarchy within traditionally female occupations than in other occupations, thus reducing the probability that individuals in female occupations will occupy a position of authority.
However, in all previous studies of gender differences in authority there is a residual difference in authority associated with gender which remains. How can this be explained?(3) Organizations theorists have suggested that the operation of institutionalized career tracks or internal labor markets is responsible for the exclusion of women from positions of authority in the workplace. An internal labor market works by guaranteeing long-term employment for individuals placed in them. People on such tracks are minimally rewarded in the early stages of their careers and substantially rewarded with high salaries and much authority in the later stages. It has been argued that firms use such devices as tactics to ensure commitment to the firm and reduce the costs of monitoring workers (Baron, Davis-Blake and Bielby 1986, Hechter 1987). As internal labor markets require employer commitment to employees, it is hypothesized that employers are much more likely to make such commitments to men than they are to women, thus creating a gender difference in authority in the workplace. This difference may be a result of statistical discrimination, that is, because women are seen as a poorer risk by employers; or it may be simply a result of discriminatory gender-role attitudes on the part of employers. For whatever reason, there is evidence (both qualitative and quantitative) that women are frequently excluded from such career tracks (Kanter 1977, Baron and Bielby 1985, Baron, Davis-Blake and Bielby 1986, DiPrete and Soule 1988), and that such exclusion from career tracks prevents women from achieving the levels of authority that men are able to achieve.
