Shifting Standards and the Evaluation of Competence: Complexity in Gender-Based Judgment and Decision Making

Gender stereotypes regarding task competence may lead perceivers to set different standards for diagnosing competence in women versus men. Specifically, stereotypes may prompt lower minimum standards (or initial screening criteria) but higher confirmatory standards for women than men (Biernat & Kobrynowicz, 1997). In two studies simulating hiring decisions, predictions were that women would be (1) more likely than men to make a short list for a job but (2) less likely than men to be hired for the same job. Results were generally consistent with predictions only among female participants (Studies 1 and 2), among those exposed to a female experimenter (Study 1), and among those held accountable for their decisions (Study 2). The role of motivational factors in the setting of standards is discussed.     

Mothers and Fathers in the Workplace: How Gender and Parental Status Influence Judgments of Job-Related Competence

We investigated the influence of gender and parental status on employment decisions. The shifting standards model predicts that parenthood polarizes judgments of women and men such that mothers are held to stricter employment standards than fathers. Social role theory predicts that parenting role, rather than gender, guides judgments of mothers and fathers. One hundred ninety-six undergraduates at two universities evaluated a job applicant; the applicant was either male or female and was either single or married with two children. Results showed that parents were judged less agentic and less committed to employment than non-parents. Parental status also interacted with gender, indicating that fathers were held to more lenient standards than mothers and childless men. We discuss theoretical and practical implications.     

Gender-Differentiated Experience in the Peer Culture: Links to Intimacy in Preadolescence

This study tested claims that gender differences in intimacy are attributable to gender-differentiated experiences in the peer culture (i.e., male and female 'worlds'). Participants were 188 Canadian preadolescents (10–12 years, 106 girls) who completed questionnaires regarding the intimacy of their same-sex best friendship, intimate support received from peers, and two dimensions of culture–gender composition of the friendship network and participation in communal (i.e., intimacy-promoting) and agentic (intimacy-repressing) activities. Consistent with the 'two worlds' explanation (a) communal activity participation related positively and team sports negatively to same-sex friendship intimacy, but the latter only for boys, and (b) having other-sex friends predicted same-sex friendship intimacy for boys but not girls. The two worlds explanation, though supported, requires revision to accommodate findings that male and female preadolescents' activity participation overlapped considerably, intimate friendships were not limited to intimate contexts, agentic activities potentiated both agentic and communal goals, and peer cultural variables predicted intimacy better for boys than girls.     

When Professionals Become Mothers, Warmth Doesn't Cut the Ice

Working moms risk being reduced to one of two subtypes: homemakers—viewed as warm but incompetent, or female professionals—characterized as competent but cold. The current study (  N = 122 college students) presents four important findings. First, when working women become mothers, they trade perceived competence for perceived warmth. Second, working men don't make this trade; when they become fathers, they gain perceived warmth and maintain perceived competence. Third, people report less interest in hiring, promoting, and educating working moms relative to working dads and childless employees. Finally, competence ratings predict interest in hiring, promoting, and educating workers. Thus, working moms' gain in perceived warmth does not help them, but their loss in perceived competence does hurt them.     

Do men leave feminizing occupations?

This article analyzes the 1970 and 1980 Public Use Samples of the decennial census and the 1983 Current Population Survey to determine if the degree of occupational feminization, i.e., the change in the percent female, affects men changing occupations. The results lend some support to the contention that men do not leave feminizing occupations. Men in occupations with the greatest increases in their percentage of female workers had the lowest percentage of men leaving their occupations. As the change in the percent female decreased, the percentage of men leaving the occupation increased. However, occupation was a critical factor in this relationship. While men from nonmanufacturing occupations followed a pattern similar to that found in the entire labor force (described above), men in manufacturing occupations left occupations that feminized the most. Men who changed occupations, in fact, often entered occupations that feminized. In the wake of these findings, I discuss how occupational sex segregation may be maintained.     

Employment discrimination in upscale restaurants: Evidence from matched pair testing

White and racial minorities with equal qualifications applied simultaneously for 43 waiter/waitress jobs in New York City fine dining restaurants. Applicants of all demographic backgrounds were treated with equal courtesy, but minorities were only 54% as likely as whites to receive a job offer. This discrimination, either conscious or unconscious, was documented in 31% of restaurants tested. Post-hiring differences appear even more widespread, with front of the house minority restaurant servers averaging 12% lower earnings than their equally qualified white peers. Ensuring equal treatment in hiring would expand minority access to good jobs in Manhattan fine dining by 3500 positions but not make it universal.     

Labour Markets,Care Regimes and Foreign Care Worker Policies in East Asia

This article analyzes the politics of foreign care worker policies in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. In the face of socio‐demographic challenges, these countries have responded differently to the increasing demand for hiring foreign care workers, creating distinct policies with respect to the origins of the foreign care workforce, the size of the foreign care workforce in the labour market, and job specifications. In this article, I argue that the interaction of female employment patterns, the public provision (or lack) of social care, and labour market policies in the care service sector determines the diverging political pathways of foreign care worker policies in these three countries over the past two decades.     

Regime change: gender, class, and the invention of dieting in post-bellum America

"Regime Change" argues against commonly held interpretations that see dieting as a practice established in the 1920s to control women at a time when they gained suffrage and greater economic independence. This article offers an alternative reading, arguing that diet advice literature arrived in the US in the 1860s and originally targeted a male, white, middle-class audience. While the hegemonic beauty ideal for the female body was at its heftiest, men started to build muscle and reduce weight. The ideal of the slender male body was associated with white superiority, social mobility and the national ambition for an American empire. When white middle-class women eventually started dieting in greater numbers in the 1890s, it was because they claimed the same mastery over their bodies as men—and demanded the same privileges as their male peers over immigrants, African Americans and working-class people, who were increasingly imagined as overweight. Revising the history of dieting to show its origins as a masculine practice appropriated by women to stake a claim to class and race privilege invites a rethinking of power and resistance in the disciplining of the female body.     

Job Satisfaction: A Study of Sydney Adults

About one quarter of the 20,434 men and about one fifth of the 17,211 women who had a Medicheck screening expressed dissatisfaction with their job. Single men and single women were the least satisfied. The most positive aspects of work for men and women were that the job was interesting and that there was independence and freedom. Boredom, as well as not using one's potential, discriminated clearly between those satisfied with their job and those not, for both men and women. Job dissatisfaction was closely associated with other psychosocial problems and in particular with life dissatisfaction.     

The Role of the Group in Peer Group Entry

This study explored psychological conditions affecting children's receptiveness to a newcomer (the guest) in a peer group entry task. Subjects were 93 host dyads (48 male) of 7- to 9-year-old children. Hosts played a word-naming game for 5 min before being joined by a male or female guest. The hosts' pre-entry interaction was coded to reflect an orientation toward the game (agentic) or toward each other and toward experimental setting demands (communal). Hosts' psychological orientation predicted entry outcomes. Specifically, hosts of excluded children verbally competed with each other (an aspect of agency) more than hosts of children who entered. Male hosts competed more than female hosts and female hosts helped and encouraged each other (aspects of the communal orientation) more than male hosts. These findings suggest that the strategies and effort required by children to achieve group entry may depend on prior psychological conditions attending the interaction of the peer group.     

Women and Work: An Attitudinal Study

While much has been written about the increasing rate of female participation in the workforce, Australian research has seldom explored the motivation of women to remain at work after marriage or return to the workplace after their responsibilities have declined. The results of a survey of 150 women in an outer Melbourne suburb highlight the complex nature of women's attitudes towards work, which vary with employment status, occupational background and age. Although only the latter was found to be statistically significant, the former were also shown to be influential. Furthermore, while economic necessity emerged as the dominant factor in motivating women to work, the need for social contact and the nature of the job itself were also of importance.     

How Can You Pull Yourself up by Your Bootstraps, if You Don't Have Boots? Work-Appropriate Clothing for Poor Women

Clothing plays a role in impression formation and may affect poor women's ability to obtain a good job. Style of dress affects perceptions of, expectations for, and responses to job applicants. Clothing worn by a job applicant is a sign of status, power, and ability and may determine success on the interview and/or on the job. Most poor women lack the financial resources necessary to enhance their outward appearance as an impression management technique. A number of programs have been designed to help poor women obtain job-appropriate clothing, but these programs are limited in scope. This study reports on a convenience sample of women (N =10) from a state program that provides clothing to women entering the job market. Comprehensive services that take into account the multiple challenges faced by poor women entering the workforce have yet to be developed. Recommendations for corporate and individual action are provided.     

Ethics of care and social policy

Care work is to a high degree equivalent with female work and has not, to any great extent, been of interest to traditional social sciences. Women's studies has however changed this, and today there is a broad academic discussion about care work as well as about the concept of care itself. This article reviews this discussion; the concepts of care and ethics are linked and given feminine content. With reference to studies within the authors' research programme: "Care for the elderly: conditions and everyday realities", results are then reviewed that show how organizational, political and ideological relationships affect the content and quality of care. Finally, European social policy trends and the consequences of new systems of paying for care are discussed from a gender perspective. The authors warn against a context-free coupling between women and an ethic of care, and show how neoliberal politics can use feminist "struggle concepts" to put women "back in their place".     

女领导的临界规模与组织性别歧视现象——基于第三期中国妇女社会地位调查数据的实证研究

本研究利用第三期中国妇女社会地位调查数据,从配额制的有效性问题出发,探讨组织领导团队中的女性比例与性别歧视现象之间的关系,对临界规模理论的假设,即团队里某一社会特征的人数达到一定比例将给该社会类别的境遇带来具有显著意义的改变进行了检验。研究发现,组织领导团队中的女性比例达到30%能够有效减少性别歧视现象,这种作用在政治、经济和研究领域以及体制内外组织中均存在,但有程度上的差异。此发现不仅从实证角度检验了临界规模理论,而且为在政策设计中增加领导团队中的女性比例提供了支持。     

Better job prospects or an imperative to ‘just work’? A cross-national study on social investment and women's employment

Social investment policies advocate for more and better jobs by supporting families' work-life balance and investing in human capital. But do they really help to boost employment prospects for women? Earlier literature suggests a positive relationship, but not enough attention has been paid to the type of employment, or to who the actual beneficiaries of these measures are. This article combines ISSP survey data with OECD and national data in a multilevel analysis to determine whether social investment policies benefit female employment, improve job prospects, and apply to all women irrespective of their educational level. We find that training and childcare policies are associated with higher employment levels, however, the claim that social investment increases chances for better job prospects finds little empirical support. These findings suggest that active labour market and childcare policies are associated with more women's employment, but they might still be following a push to ‘just work’.     

Agentic or Communal? Associations between Interpersonal Goals,Popularity, and Bullying in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence

This study investigated whether perceived popularity mediates and/or moderates the association between agentic goals and bullying, and whether sociometric popularity mediates and/or moderates the association between communal goals and bullying. Age and gender differences were also examined. Participants were 276 fourth and fifth graders (middle childhood sample) and 196 seventh and eighth graders (early adolescence sample). Peer status and bullying were assessed with sociometric measures, interpersonal goals with self‐reports. The theoretical model included both mediation and moderation effects. An age‐related reversal was found in how status mediated the associations between goals and bullying. Sociometric popularity mediated the association of agentic goals with bullying in middle childhood but of communal goals with bullying in early adolescence. Perceived popularity mediated the association of communal goals with bullying in middle childhood but of agentic goals with bullying in early adolescence. In middle childhood, perceived popularity also moderated the effect of agentic goals on bullying. The results were discussed in terms of the role of bullying as a means to enhance status in early adolescence.     

Transitions to employment from labour market enterprises in Norway

In this article we analyse a labour market programme for partially disabled workers that involves the transition from labour market enterprises to a job in the ordinary labour market. We found that the percentage of these people who found jobs after a maximum two-year programme period increased over time. In 1995, 28 per cent became employed in the ordinary job market after leaving the programme. Exit rates to employment increased to 36 per cent in 1998 and to 39 per cent in 1999. We also found heterogeneity in the job transitions. Employment ratios for men were relatively stable over time, varying between 30 and 40 per cent over the period 1995–1999. For women, however, we found a significant change in employment ratios, with 21 per cent finding a job in 1995 and 40 per cent in 1999. In 1995, employment ratios for female participants were below those of male participants, although there was no difference over the whole period studied (1995–1999). In 1999, the average transition rate to employment was higher for female than for male participants.     

The effect of characteristics of human service workers on subsequent morale and turnover

The authors examine the relationship of sociopsychological characteristics of human services workers to their subsequent morale and continuance on the job. Eighty-two intensive case managers (half of them social workers) who had caseloads of clients with severe mental disorders were invited to participate in a four-wave panel study. Explored are the relationships between 16 predictors (general background, prior work experience and training, and social psychological variables) and worker outcomes (beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and turnover). The major finding was that better personal well-being at the time of hiring was the most consistent and significant predictor of lower burnout, higher job satisfaction, and generally higher worker morale at later points in time. Those from higher social class backgrounds and those with lower starting salaries were more likely to leave the job. Those workers with more experience had a tendency to perceive greater client improvement.     

Prisoners of Love? Job Satisfaction in Care Work

Previous research has established that paid care work is typically undertaken by women and that this work is often poorly rewarded in terms of pay and promotion opportunities. Much less is known about the reasons why women enter these jobs or their experiences of this work. This paper examines the motivations and experiences of two groups of care workers: childcare workers and dental assistants in Queensland in 2009 (N=1,767). We examine intrinsic, extrinsic and overall job satisfaction and the effects of job characteristics, work experience and demographic characteristics on job satisfaction. We find that childcare workers are less satisfied with their jobs than dental assistants on all three measures, despite a greater proportion nominating intrinsic reasons for entering the occupation. The most important factors predicting job satisfaction for both groups are day‐to‐day work experiences such as control over weekly rosters and entitlements that enable work‐family balance. We conclude that although love of the job may be a strong drawcard into care occupations for some women, experiences may not live up to expectations. Moreover, there is considerable diversity across these groups in motivations and outcomes indicating that it is impossible to view all care occupations as similar in terms rewards, outcomes and experiences.