GENDER AND WORKPLACE ISSUES

Presented by J. B. Nangpuhan II (MPA student) for the class of Dr. D. T. Lim, Professor of Public Administration at Chonnam National University, South Korea. Course: Manpower Policy, November 18, 2011

 

GENDER AND WORKPLACE ISSUES (Summary)

(Mary E. Guy – University of Colorado, Denver; Susan Spice – Florida State University - 2009)

 

KEY TERMS:

o   Gender

o   Workplace

o   HR Issues

o   Women

 

INTRODUCTION

Do you agree to this statement: “Women are supposed to be wives and mothers, while men are supposed to be the breadwinners?”

(May I first remind everyone that most of the opinions and facts in this report originate from the United States and that these might not be in congruence in other countries.) This article discusses about the influence of gender in the workplace. It explains the effects of gender and how HR function tries to balance these effects. It includes career choices, job opportunities, mentoring networks, promotions, and salary.

First of all let us define gender. Gender means the state of being male or female[1]. In the workplace, women issues are always paramount in the past until today. In the year 1960, the workforce was predominantly male, with men comprising two-thirds or 66 percent of all workers. But in 2000, the male workforce was reduced to 52 percent. The remaining 48 percent are women.

 

I.        EMBEDDED PATHWAYS

The reason why there are differences in terms of gender in the workplace is because the organization is being viewed as an extension of the family. Roles in the home carry over to gender roles in the organization. They reflect the mores and cultural values of the people. These are called the embedded pathways in the workforce.

II.      JOB SEGREGATION

Job segregation denotes the fact that most workers work primarily with members of their own gender. That is why; there are de facto[2] “women’s jobs” and “men’s jobs.” This is the case both vertically and horizontally. Vertical segregation refers to the distribution of men and women in the status hierarchy such that men are more likely to hold jobs at higher ranks that afford more discretion. For example, women more often work as assistant directors while men more often work as directors. Horizontal segregation refers to the distribution of men and women across occupations, such that women are clerks and men are truck drivers.

It is rare that a job title will have about half women and half men. It is more likely to be skewed in one direction or the other. In some instances, an office will be predominately male or predominately female. Women dominate in clerical jobs and low-end service occupations. As professionals, they are more likely to be teachers, nurses, or social workers. Because women’s jobs pay less, they are more likely to work in men’s jobs than vice versa. Table 1 below shows the pattern of employment in states, counties, cities, and special districts in the U.S.

 

Table 1. State and Local Government Employment, 2005
Job Category	Percentage Held by Women
Administrative support Paraprofessionals Professionals Technicians Officials/administrators Service/maintenance Protective service Skilled craft Total	86 74 56 43 38 24 19 5 45
Source: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2005a.

Leadership is often equated with masculinity, and followership is often equated with femininity. Likewise, communication styles that accompany leadership such as directness, forthrightness, assertiveness – are congratulated in men but criticized when practiced by women. This makes it difficult by women to advance into leadership posts and excel. 

 

III.    GENDERED JOBS / GENDERED WAGES

In year 2004, women who work in public administration earn about 24 percent lower than the earning of men. This is lower compared to the average wage differential across all occupations[3]. In policy-making, women are typically accorded less discretion than men. Today, it is common to find agencies whose lowest paid workers are predominantly women. In the job market, women and men (ages 16 to 24) start out fairly even when they enter workforce but their paths soon diverge. By the time they reach their peak earning years (ages 45 to 54), women earn 73.5 percent of what men earn[4].

There are two reasons why this is the case. First, many HR practices were designed decades ago for married men whose wives did not work out of home, it started in the 1800s. Second, because of the thought that women are doing the work, their compensation is lower than men. The discussion about emotional labor will explain these reasons.

 

A.     Emotion Work in Public Service Jobs

Emotional labor is a work that requires the engagement, suppression, and/or evocation of the worker’s emotions in order to get the job done. The performance encompasses a range of personal and interpersonal skills, including the ability to evoke and display emotions one does not actually feel, to sense the affect of the other and alter one’s own affect accordingly, and to elicit the desired emotional response from the other. It is required in jobs that require face-to-face or voice-to-voice communication (i.e., street-level workers – counter clerks, caseworkers, call takers, police officers).

Emotional labor falls into two categories – the caritas[5] and macho[6]. Caritas represents expressions of caring, nurturance, empathy, and supportiveness. Macho represents “tougher than tough” emotional expressions. Macho is the typical characteristic of law enforcement and correction officers. Those jobs requiring macho expression most likely hire men and pay higher wages. While those jobs that require more caritas pay less because they treat feminine caritas as less worthy than masculine toughness.

Traditional “women’s work” (such as casework, education, and health care) has been undervalued in part because it is thought of as an extension of women’s family and household responsibilities and therefore does not require any special or additional skills. In other words, it is not included in annual appraisals because such work is “essentialized” and treated as a “comes with” rather than as a compensable job-related performance. Classification and compensation schemes reward men’s jobs with higher wages, more autonomy, and more discretion. While women’s jobs are accorded lower pay, less autonomy, and less discretion. Let us look into the history of U.S. civil service to understand more about the issue.

 

IV.    HISTORY OF WOMEN IN PUBLIC SERVICE

The first jobs held by women in the federal government were as postmistresses in small towns or as “female clerks” within agencies such as the Treasury Department[7]. In 1864, a legislation was passed setting the salary of female clerks at $600 a year, about half that of men’s salaries who performed similar work. During those times, this amount was considered positive social policy for preserving traditional family unit while still providing income for those women who would be destitute if not employed.

In 1883, the passage of the Pendleton Act established merit system employment based on competitive exams, tenure, and political neutrality. About this time, the typewriter was invented which allowed employers to standardize clerical duties and the job of typist was born[8]. By 1904, women employees in the federal civil service rose to 7.5 percent. During the World War I, women workers rose astonishingly to 20 percent. Consequently, the Civil Service Commission opened all civil service exams to both women and men. In 1923, the Classification Act was passed requiring men and women federal employees to receive equal salaries for doing the same work.

Despite the bubble of educated women, HR policies continued to relegate women to second-class status. Let us also look into the educational attainment of women.

 

V.      EDUCATION

The past forty years have seen an increasing number of women achieving bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In1985, the number of degrees awarded to women matched those awarded to men. Let us look in the table below: 

Table 2. Percentage of College Degrees Awarded to Women, 1960-2004.

Degree	Year
	1960	1965	1970	1975	1980	1985	1990	1995	2000	2004
Bachelor’s	35.3	42.8	43.1	45.3	49.0	50.5	53.2	54.7	57.2	57.5
Master’s	31.6	32.9	39.7	44.8	49.2	50.1	52.6	55.0	58.0	58.9

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, 1998; U.S. Census Bureau, 2006:183.

 

VI.    WORKPLACES DESIGNED FOR MEN BUT INHABITED BY WOMEN

Nowadays, there are women working on public works as crews, as police officers, as firefighters, and as agency heads. Women have inhabited workplaces designed for men. An exclusive example is that of bank tellers[9]. In 1950, bank tellers were 12 percent of all bank employees and increased to 22 percent by 1980. Although the bank teller job remained unchanged for a long time; changes in clientele, services, numbers of branches, and numbers of tellers may have affected the way the job was regarded. Because of these changes, bank telling became a female-dominated job. The scenario was different before World War II when men dominated the occupation.

In the workplace, the standard full-time workweek was arbitrarily defined as forty hours. Benefits packages, designed for men to support their families, were attached to full-time jobs to aid in recruitment and retention. These standards would favor women. In 2004, 65 percent of mothers in traditional families, where the fathers are present and there are children under age 18, were in the labor force. Additionally, increasing number of women are heads of households with children to support.  The table below demonstrates the rapid growth of mothers in the workforce.

Table 3. Percentage of Married Women in the Labor Force Who had Children, 1960-2004

Year
1960	1965	1970	1975	1980	1985	1990	1995	2004
27.6	32.2	39.7	44.9	54.1	60.8	66.3	70.2	72.8

 

A.      Glass Ceilings, Glass Walls, Sticky Floors, and Trap Doors

Metaphors[10] are best used to capture the dynamics that result in job, pay, and promotion disparities. These are glass ceilings, glass walls, sticky floors, and trap doors. Glass ceilings is a term used to capture the fact that although women and men entering the workforce start out relatively even, men rise in rank at faster rates than women. A similar term is plateau – where women remain in the same position for a long time.

Glass walls refers to job segregation that frequently detours women. For example, if a woman begins her career in a staff position and excels at it, she may believe that she is eligible for promotion into a post with administrative line authority. However, she will be turned down for promotion either because she does not have sufficient supervisory experience, or if not, she will be delegated to another kind of staff position in another department.

Sticky floors is a metaphor that captures the situation when a woman is excellent in a staff position or as a lower-level manager and is passed over for promotion because of it. Her excellence is viewed more as a team member and less of a leader.

Trap doors are those events that have a significant deleterious effect on a woman’s career.  Primary among these trap doors is sexual harassment. The effects of sexual harassment cases to women workers will definitely harm their career to go up the ladder. If a woman worker becomes victim, the most likely option for her to silence rumors and repair her reputation is to leave her work and go somewhere else.

To avoid these roadblocks on women, education serves as a ticket out of the glass ceilings, glass walls, and sticky floors. Legislation and case law attempt to bolt the trap doors. 

 

B.      Plenty of Laws, Too Little Enforcement

Since 1963, laws were passed by Congress to addressed problems faced by women workers such as unfair salary disparities, denial of promotion opportunities, penalties for pregnancy, childbearing and childrearing, and sexual harassment. Such laws include the following:

1.       ‘The Equal Pay Act of 1963’

2.       ‘The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII’ – makes it illegal for employers to refuse to hire or to discharge any person on the basis of gender.

3.       ‘Executive Order 11375 of 1967’ – extends protection to women. It requires nondiscrimination and positive action by federal contractors on behalf of women, including recruitment, training, employment, and upgrading.

4.       ‘The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972’ – amends Civil Rights Act of 1964. It strengthens the EEOC[11] and gave it the ability to go to court for direct enforcement action. It covers federal, state, and local governments, and most companies of at least fifteen employees.

5.       ‘The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978’ – prohibits discrimination on account of pregnancy.

6.       ‘The Civil Rights Act of 1991’ – sets standards for employers when they attempt to justify discriminatory actions or policies based on business necessity, shifts the burden of proof to the employer after the plaintiff has established a prima facie case[12], and provides the right to a jury trial, and compensatory and punitive damages.

7.       ‘The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993’ – covers all employers with fifty or more employees who are employed for at least twenty weeks during the year. It allows twelve weeks of unpaid leave during any twelve-month period for the recent birth or adoption of a child; to care for an ill child, spouse, or parent; or for the employee’s own health condition that precludes working.

 

Despite more than forty years of laws, disparities – denials – sexual harassments – and others still exist in the workforce. Most often, women are the victims.

 

VII.  PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS

Employers are pressed to make the workplace more attractive to women in order to recruit and retain them. Current efforts to implement more family-friendly policies include the following issues:

 

A.      Balancing Family and Work

Slowly but surely, HR policies are adjusting to accommodate employees who must balance family obligations with work demands. It started to the Family and Medical Leave Act signed by President Clinton in 1993. However, a study in 2000 shows that only 6.5 per 100 employees were taking advantage of it. Today, most employers expanded leave arrangements, dependent care, choice of benefits, telecommunicating, and flextime to both women and men workers.

 

B.      Part-Time Employment

Part-timers are usually ineligible for benefits such as paid vacation; personal and sick leave; health, disability, and life insurance; and retirement.  Women hold 68 percent of part-time jobs[13] so as to balance their time for office and home. Such law seeking to improve part-time employment is needed.

 

C.      Flexible Schedules

Greater flexibility in work schedules, with greater choices for where work is conducted and when the workday begins and ends, is becoming more common. The Internet has made these alternatives even more accessible nowadays. Every year, there was a remarkable increase in the number of full-time workers availing flexible schedules.

 

D.      Expanded Concepts of Paid Leave

On June 10, 2000, President Clinton announced family sick leave for federal employees. This would allow up to twelve weeks of sick leave each year for a family member with a serious health condition.  The definition of a family includes an employee’s spouse and parents-in-law; children and their spouses, parents, siblings and their spouses, and “any individual related by blood or affinity whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship”[14].

 

E.       Benefits

Benefits include the following: a) insurance options to couples who are both employed; and b) buffet line selections like child care and elder care costs, medical accounts, and pension alternatives.

 

F.       Childcare

Emerging concerns for public entities that provide day care services include training and compensation of childcare workers. Their salaries are notoriously low. An added dimension to childcare is the time that mothers take off from work immediately following childbirth.

 

G.     Eldercare

Eldercare is becoming a major concern for working adults and for women in particular. By the year 2030, the percentage of the population age 65 and older will rise to 20 percent of the total U.S. population[15].

 

H.     Work/Life Specialists

Work/life professionals are HR specialists who focus on workplace innovations that ease the tensions between family obligations of workers and the employer’s concern for productivity[16]. It is up to work/life specialists to assess the effectiveness of innovations and determine which have the greatest impact on retention and productivity. The prospect for full-scale accommodation to the difference that gender makes – and the time frame for reaching it – still awaits.

 

VIII.            CONCLUSION

Issues about men and women in the workplace have been discussed in this chapter. For several decades, women employed in the workforce increased tremendously. But issues such as pay gap, job segregation, sexual harassment, among others continue to occur in the workplace especially women as victims.

An important function of the HR department is to monitor patterns of employment in the agency and take note of those areas where job segregation is keen. Succession planning and staff development programs can be used to help promising workers advance out of less desirable jobs. Constant vigilance is required to ensure that the embedded pathways of women and men bring advantage rather than disadvantage.

 

References:

1.  Mary E. Guy, Susan Spice (2009). Gender and Workplace Issues. Public Human Resources Management: Problems and Prospects. 5^th Edition. United States: Pearson Education. pp.236-252

2. Claire Brown, Joseph A. Pechman (1987). Gender in the Workplace. Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution. pp.107-135. Available at <http://books.google.com/books?id=5oiHorzAUgMC&pg=PA132&lpg=PA132&dq=WORKPLACES+INHABITED+BY+WOMEN&source=bl&ots=UkIs48Jtc_&sig=mZugHPFp-AKWo6Q8KiG37jtM_5M&hl=en&ei=CCeTTsPFHOLhiAK6-InVDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false>. Accessed on October 11, 2011.

3. Oxford Dictionaries (2011). The World’s Most Trusted Dictionaries. Available at <http://oxforddictionaries.com>.  Accessed on October 4, 2011. Accessed on October 7, 2011.

4.  Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (2011). U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Available at <http://www.eeoc.gov/>. Accessed on October 10, 2011.

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[1] Gender. Available at http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gender>. Accessed on October 7, 2011.
[2] de facto means ‘in fact’, whether by right or not. de facto is often contrasted to de jure meaning ‘by right’. Available at <http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/de+facto>. Accessed on October 11, 2011
[3] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005:57.
[4] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007.
[5] Caritas means Christian love for human kind. It also means charity. From Oxford Dictionaries <http://oxforddictionaries.com>. Accessed on October 10, 2011.
[6] Macho means masculine in an overly assertive or aggressive way. From Oxford Dictionaries <http://oxforddictionaries.com>. Accessed on October 10, 2011.
[7] Van Riper, 1958.
[8] Goldin, 1990.
[9] This example is based on the book entitled: Gender in the Workplace (1987) by Claire Brown, Joseph A. Pechman. pp.107-135.
[10] Metaphors are figures of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. Available at <http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/metaphor>. Accessed on October 10, 2011.
[11] EEOC stands for Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by the United States. It enforces federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person’s race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. Available at <http://www.eeoc.gov/>. Accessed on October 10, 2011.
[12] A prima facie case means a plaintiff’s lawsuit or a criminal charge which appears at first blush to be “open and shut”. See more about prima facie at <http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1598>. Accessed on October 10, 2011.
[13] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007.
[14] Federal Time, 2000:10.
[15] Weinberg, 2000.
[16] Productivity means the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input. See more at <http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/productivity>. Accessed on October 11, 2011.