Influence of female managers on gender wage gap and returns to cognitive and non‐cognitive skills

There is a modest but growing empirical body of evidence on the influence of managers' gender on the wages of their male and female subordinates. Most of these studies, however, suffer from a very raw approximation of the managers' gender by the share of women in charge, and often lack many important gender‐specific personal characteristics, such as non‐cognitive skills and life–work preferences, which can lead to biased results. This article copes with the mentioned deficiencies by employing a very rich and representative dataset of 1948 employees from the Czech Republic. It reveals surprising results as it shows that the gender of the manager has an effect on the level of wages, but not on the gender wage gap. It also shows that the gender of the manager and his/her subordinate has only a weak impact on the remuneration of an employee´s non‐cognitive skills and life–work preferences.     

Market Earnings and Household Work: New Tests of Gender Performance Theory

I examine the contested finding that men and women engage in gender performance through housework. Prior scholarship has found a curvilinear association between earnings share and housework that has been interpreted as evidence of gender performance. I reexamine these findings by conducting the first such analysis to use high‐quality time diary data for a U.S. sample in the contemporary period. Drawing on data on 11,868 married women and 10,770 married men in the American Time Use Survey (2003–2007), I find no evidence that married men “do gender” through housework. I do, however, find strong evidence of gender performance among women as evidenced by a curvilinear association between earnings share and women's housework time.     

Long Working Hours and the Corporate Gender Divide in Japan

While the workplace custom of working long hours has been known to exacerbate gender inequality, few have investigated the organizational mechanisms by which long working hours translate into and reinforce the power and status differences between men and women in the workplace. Drawing on 64 in‐depth interviews with workers at financial and cosmetics companies in Japan, this article examines three circumstances in which a culture of long working hours is disadvantageous for women workers, and the consequences of those circumstances: (a) managers in Japanese firms, reinforcing gender stereotypes, prioritize work over personal and family lives; (b) non–career‐track women experience depressed aspirations in relation to long working hours and young women express a wish to opt out due to the incompatibility of work with family life; and (c) workers who are mothers deal with extra unpaid family work, stress such as guilt from leaving work early, salary reduction and concerns over their limited chances for promotion. The article argues that the norm of working long hours not only exacerbates the structural inequality of gender but also shapes employed women's career paths into the dichotomized patterns of either emulating workplace masculinity or opting out.     

COVID‐19 and the gender gap in work hours

School and day care closures due to the COVID‐19 pandemic have increased caregiving responsibilities for working parents. As a result, many have changed their work hours to meet these growing demands. In this study, we use panel data from the US Current Population Survey to examine changes in mothers’ and fathers’ work hours from February through April 2020, the period of time prior to the widespread COVID‐19 outbreak in the United States and through its first peak. Using person‐level fixed effects models, we find that mothers with young children have reduced their work hours four to five times more than fathers. Consequently, the gender gap in work hours has grown by 20–50 per cent. These findings indicate yet another negative consequence of the COVID‐19 pandemic, highlighting the challenges it poses to women’s work hours and employment.     

Stagnation only on the surface? The implications of skill and family responsibilities for the gender wage gap in Sweden, 1974–2010

The wage differential between women and men persists in advanced economies despite the inflow of women into qualified occupations in recent years. Using five waves of the Swedish Level‐of‐Living Survey (LNU), this paper explores the gender wage gap in Sweden during the 1974–2010 period overall and by skill level. The empirical analyses showed that the general gender wage gap has been nearly unchanged for the past 30 years. However, the gender difference in wage in less qualified occupations fell considerably, whereas the gender pay gap remained stable for men and women in qualified occupations. The larger significance of family responsibilities for wages in qualified occupations is one likely explanation for this result.     

Gender Role Ideology and the Gender Based Differences in Earnings

Much of the research on gender differences in occupational earnings still focuses on human capital and the structure of the labor market. However, these variables rarely explain even half of the gender gap in earnings. Most research has examined the impact of gender role ideology as it impacts occupational choice, which indirectly can impact earnings. Using data from the National Opinion Research Center General Social Surveys, this research focuses on the relationship between attitudes about gender roles and two variables: (a) earnings, and (b) occupational positions held by women and men. Findings show that traditional gender-role ideology contributes to lower observed earnings for both males and females, independent of the influences of human capital characteristics, occupational context, and ascribed characteristics. Results support socialization as a partial explanation for the gender-based earnings differences and suggest that, to the extent that economic rewards are used to assess the value of gender role expectations, traditional gender role attitudes might continue to change and lead to relatively equal earnings among women and men.     

The gender citation gap: Why and how it matters

The weight of evidence suggests that articles written by men and women receive citations at comparable rates. This suggests that research quality or gender-based bias in research evaluation and citing behaviors may not be the reason why academic women accumulate fewer citations than men at the career level. In this article, I outline a career perspective that highlights women's disadvantages in career progression as the root causes for the gender citation gap. I also consider how the gender citation gap may perpetuate the unequal pay between genders in science. My analysis of two different datasets, one including paper and citation information for over 130,000 highly cited scholars during the 1996–2020 period and another including citation and salary information for nearly 2,000 Canadian scholars over the 2014–2019 period, shows several important findings. First, papers written by women on average receive more citations than those written by men. Second, the gender citation gap grows larger with time as men and women progress in their careers, but the opposite pattern holds when research productivity and collaborative networks are considered. Third, higher citations lead to higher pay, and gender differences in citations explain a significant share of the gender wage gap. Findings demonstrate the critical need for more attention toward gender differences in career progression when investigating the causes and solutions for gender disparities in science.     

When does part-time work relate to less work-life conflict for parents? Moderating influences of workplace support and gender in the Netherlands,Sweden and the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Working part-time can potentially be a great means of reducing work-life conflict for parents of young children. However, research has not univocally found this attenuating relation, suggesting it may not be universal, but rather contingent on other factors. This study investigates whether the relation between part-time work and work-life conflict is contingent on workplace support and gender. Results show that short part-time work (<25?h) relates to lower levels of work-life conflict for both women and men. We find some evidence that workplace support affects this relation: short part-time working women in an organization with a family supportive organizational culture had lower levels of work-life conflict than short part-time working women in organizations with an unsupportive organizational culture. For men working short part-time we find tendencies in the same direction, although this falls short of conventional statistical significance. In addition, long part-time work (25–35?h) is not significantly related to (lower) work-life conflict for either women or men. In line with previous research, managerial support is found to be linked to lower levels of work-life conflict, irrespective of whether one works full-time or part-time. Notably, the relation between working part-time and work-life conflict does not differ for mothers and fathers, suggesting that this work-family policy could help both men and women reduce work-life conflict.     

Variations of the same? A sectoral analysis of the gender pay gap in Germany and Austria

Germany and Austria are two countries with a comparably and persistently high gender pay gap. Further, both countries are classified as conservative welfare states where the male breadwinner model has been only partly modernized and strong corporatist structures shape working conditions. At the same time, welfare policy and provision are not only based on but also shape gender‐related norms, beliefs and assumptions that are virulent for job valuation and collective bargaining. Against this background the article analyses similarities and differences regarding the gender pay gap in Germany and Austria. While both countries show significant similarities regarding the causes for the gender pay gap, there are some differences regarding legislation and further policies with which the gender pay gap could be reduced. Arguing that the institutional framework strongly influences income opportunities for women and men, the article provides a sectoral analysis of the financial and insurance sector and the human health sector in both countries. Using qualitative data from a recent research project, it is argued that in the classification of a sector as ‘female’, the sectoral income level combined with different wage‐setting mechanisms have a crucial impact on wage inequalities between women and men.     

Immigrants working with co‐ethnics: Who are they and how do they fare?

Participation in ethnic economies has been regarded as an alternative avenue of economic adaptation for immigrants and minorities in major immigrant‐receiving countries. This study examines one important dimension of ethnic economies: co‐ethnic concentration at the workplace. Using a large national representative sample from Statistics Canada’s 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey, this study addresses four questions: (1) what is the level of co‐ethnic concentration at the workplace for Canada’s minority groups? (2) How do workers who share the same ethnicity with most of their co‐workers differ from other workers in socio‐demographic characteristics? (3) Is higher level of co‐ethnic concentration at the workplace associated with lower earnings? (4) Is higher level of co‐ethnic concentration at the workplace associated with higher levels of life satisfaction? The results show that only a small proportion of immigrants and the Canadian‐born work in ethnically homogeneous settings. In Canada’s eight largest metropolitan areas about 10 per cent of non‐British/French immigrants share a same ethnic origin with the majority of their co‐workers. The level is as high as 20 per cent among Chinese immigrants and 18 per cent among Portuguese immigrants. Among Canadian‐born minority groups, the level of co‐ethnic workplace concentration is about half the level for immigrants. Immigrant workers in ethnically concentrated settings have much lower educational levels and proficiency in English/French. Immigrant men who work mostly with co‐ethnics on average earn about 33 per cent less than workers with few or none co‐ethnic coworkers. About two thirds of this gap is attributable to differences in demographic and job characteristics. Meanwhile, immigrant workers in ethnically homogenous settings are less likely to report low levels of life satisfaction than other immigrant workers. Among the Canadian‐born, co‐ethnic concentration is not consistently associated with earnings and life satisfaction.     

Popular Culture and Workplace Gendering among Varieties of Capitalism: Working Women and their Representation in Japanese Manga

Female empowerment is a prerequisite for a just and sustainable developed society. Being the most developed non‐western country, Japan offers an instructive window onto concerns about gender worldwide. Although overall gender equality is advancing in Japan, difficulties remain, especially in achieving equality in the workplace. We draw on theories of ontological commitment and the psychology of fiction to critically analyse the role of popular culture — in this case manga — in the reproduction of gender inequality in the Japanese workplace. We present examples of four of the most popular mainstream manga aimed at working men and women in Japan and show how women are depicted. We argue that the hyper‐mediated fictional realism of representative tropes generates an ontological commitment to characters and narratives among consumers that reinforces the reproduction of a culturally exceptionalist national political economic space, one of whose essential defining characteristics is a gendered workplace. Our research suggests important implications for researching the relationship between culture, in all its forms, and spatial variation in persistent institutional biases among varieties of capitalism.     

Gender inequalities: the integrated approach to the gender dimension in Europe

Despite the increase in, and focus on, gender equality in European debate – along with a substantial amount of policy initiatives and legal regulations – gender equality in the workplace and in careers is still some way off. In order to see the magnitude of the gap between women and men in European countries we have considered some significant domains such as the economy (employment structure and occupational segregation), education (educational attainment) and politics (political empowerment). The article aims to present data demonstrating that the employment structure in the EU, even in those countries where women have achieved high employment rates, still suffers from segregation, both ‘horizontally’ and ‘vertically’; and to single out some ‘weak signals’ but with a strong potential for social change and some indicators for social alternatives for the future.     

The Effects of Traditional Family and Gender Ideology on Earnings: Race and Gender Differences

Despite increasing gains in labor market opportunities, women and racial minorities earn less than their white male counterparts. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study explores racial and gender variation in how family and gender ideology shape this wage gap. The findings reveal that traditional role attitudes reduce earnings for African American men, African American women, and white women. However, white women experience the largest threat to wages as a result of conventional gender ideology. Further, the number of children and the timing of childbearing are detrimental to black and white women’s earnings, while neither of these factors hampers men’s earnings.C. André Christie-Mizell, Department of Sociology, University of Akron, 258 Olin Hall, Akron, OH 44325-1905, USA; e-mail: mizell@uakron.edu.     

Controlling Anger and Happiness at Work: An Examination of Gender Differences

This article examines gender differences in the emotion management of men and women in the workplace. The belief in American culture that women are more emotional than men has limited women's opportunities in many types of work. Because emotional expression is often tightly controlled in the workplace, examining emotion management performed at work presents an opportunity to evaluate gender differences in response to similar working conditions. Previous research suggests that men and women do not differ in their experiences of emotion and the expression of emotion is linked to status positions. An analysis of survey data collected from workers in a diverse group of occupations illustrates that women express anger less and happiness more than men in the workplace. Job and status characteristics explain the association between gender and anger management at work but were unrelated to the management of happiness expressions in the workplace.     

Do Workplace Gender Transitions Make Gender Trouble?

This article examines what happens when an employee makes the transition from one recognized gender category to another and remains in the same job. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with transmen and transwomen in Texas and California, we illustrate how a new social gender identity is interactionally achieved in these open workplace transitions. While transgender people often are represented as purposefully adopting hyper‐feminine or masculine gender identities post‐transition, we find that our respondents strive to craft alternative femininities and masculinities. However, regardless of their personal gender ideologies, their men and women co‐workers often enlist their transitioning colleague into gender rituals designed to repatriate them into a rigid gender binary. This enlistment limits the political possibilities of making gender trouble in the workplace, as transgender people have little leeway for resistance if they wish to maintain job security and friendly workplace relationships.     

Equal Opportunities Policies in English Schools: Towards Greater Gender Equality in the Teaching Workforce?

The under‐representation of women in promoted posts is one particular pattern of occupational segregation by gender across post‐industrial societies. This phenomenon also characterizes those professions which have been described as ‘women‐friendly’, such as teaching. The development of national and European legislation and recommendations on equal opportunities reflects this concern to address the gender imbalance among the workforce. But do schools identify women's under‐representation in promoted posts as an issue? To what extent do school's policies recognize and remedy the gender imbalance at managerial level? To answer these questions this article draws on a study of women teachers' careers in nursery, primary and secondary education in England. It shows that school equal opportunities policy statements widely ignore the under‐representation of women in school managerial positions. It suggests that the constructions of gender issues in schools by those in charge of designing and implementing school policies, that is, head‐teachers and governors, represent a key hindering factor for equal opportunities policies to contribute to greater gender equality. A major argument in the article is that because head‐teachers' and governors' discourses do not always fundamentally challenge the position of women in society, school policies and practices can offer only a limited contribution to gender equality.     

Redoing Gender: How Women in the Funeral Industry Use Essentialism for Equality

Although some research considers women's participation in traditionally male‐dominated jobs as an ‘undoing’ of the gender system, other scholars argue that women's participation in non‐traditional roles can actually maintain hegemonic masculinity. Because women have recently entered the funeral industry in unprecedented numbers, the profession offers a unique context to study how women negotiate a sense of belonging in male‐dominated fields. I draw on 22 interviews with women in the funeral industry to reveal how gender is done and undone in an occupational context. In what Hughey ( 2010 . Social Problems, 57, 653–679) refers to as a ‘paradox of participation’, I argue that women in the funeral industry redefine the image of the ideal funeral director by using gender essentialist logic, which originally acted as a barrier to their entry to the field, to justify their participation. By showing how gender essentialism and egalitarianism can constitute reinforcing logics instead of an opposing binary, this research contributes to the literature concerning women in non‐traditional roles.     

Non‐job work/unpaid caring: Gendered industrial relations in long‐term care

This article explores the operation of gender and industrial relations in long‐term care work or nursing home work, ‘from within’ the experience of the predominantly female workforce in seven unionized facilities in Canada. Drawing on qualitative case study data in non‐profit facilities, the article argues that the main industrial relations challenges facing long‐term care workers are that their workplace priorities do not fit within existing, gendered, industrial relations processes and institutions. This article starts from the experience of women and threads this experience through other layers of social organization such as: global and local policy directions including austerity, New Public Management, and social and healthcare funding; industrial relations mechanisms and policy; and workers’ formal [union] and informal efforts to represent their interests in the workplace. The strongest themes in the reported experience of the women include: manufacturing conditions for unpaid work; increasing management and state dependence on unpaid care work; fostering loose boundaries; and limiting respect and autonomy as aspects of care work. The article extends the feminist political economy by analysing the links between the policies noted above and frontline care work. Building on gendered organizational theory the article also introduces the concept of non‐job work and suggests a fourth industrial relations institution, namely the needs and gendered expectations of residents, families and workers themselves, operating within the liminal spaces in care work.