The Authority Attainment of Women: Competitive Sector Effects

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). 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). …