Author: Chen Siyu (Assistant Professor, Institute of Economics and Social Studies, Jinan University)
In the economic and commercial sector, the proportion of women in management decision-making has always been low; in politics, female leaders are also very few. According to the "2021 Global Gender Gap Report" just released in March this year, although China's gender equality index has ranked first in the world in terms of professional and technical practitioners and higher education enrollment rates, it is facing many challenges in the field of economic participation, with only 11.4% of women on China's board members and about 16.7% of female executives.
According to a report recently released by the BOSS Direct Employment Research Institute, in 2020, the average salary of urban employed women is 6847 yuan, which is 75.9% of the average salary of men; and the higher the salary level, the greater the difference between men and women' salaries. Why is it so difficult for women to advance professionally? Some people think that this is determined by the differences in personality and preferences between men and women; others think that the differences in personality and preferences between men and women are actually shaped by acquired social culture and norms, which in the final analysis is a gender stereotype.
On the question of women's career advancement, research from many disciplines also provides answers from different perspectives. Below, we have combed through the recent information and research results in related fields in recent years. These results reflect the contradictions and entanglements of women in the workplace, family, and childbirth, and provide some references for how we can solve the problem of women's career promotion.
Workplace executives "shadow is hard to find"
Entering 2021, the popularity of "funds" has reached its peak. In this industry that competes intelligence, willpower and even physical strength, although the performance of female fund managers is not inferior to that of their male counterparts, even in some segments of the industry, they are better because of the characteristics of women. However, according to Wind, only a quarter of the fund managers who manage this "money bag" are women.
In fact, around the world, it is still difficult to find women at the top of business, technology, scientific research and other fields. According to Bloomberg's 2013 statistics, only 10.8% of S&P 500 listed companies are women's CFOs, and women's CEOs are about 4%. In China, the proportion of women involved in politics in 2020 is about 15.4%, and the proportion of corporate executives is 20.1%, compared with 15% and 20% in 2010.
Although the gap between men and women in the average level of education has decreased significantly, "gender differences in the workplace" still exist, such as "unequal pay for equal work" and "high barriers to promotion". Whether it is "women's limited ability" or "sexism in the workplace" has aroused the thinking and debate of many sociologists and economists.
The "roadblock" of workplace promotion
As women's levels of education have increased significantly, human capital has fallen short of a good explanation for today's "gender differences in the labor market," so researchers have been looking for more potential causes.
First, many studies have found that women are more risk-averse than men, which can be a "stumbling block" to high-income earners in high-risk workplaces like the fund industry. A large body of laboratory or empirical evidence suggests that women are more conservative in making high-yield related decisions (Barber and Odean, 2001), more likely to avoid competition (Niederle and Vesterlund, 2007), and more likely to perform less than expected under high pressure (Cai et al., 2019). High returns are high risks, so in the pursuit of high returns in the workplace, women's risk-averse and competitive attributes will inevitably become a "stumbling block" for their job search/promotion.
Second, career "disruptions" in giving birth and caring for newborns have left women less experienced and missed promotion opportunities than men of the same age (Bertrand, Goldlin, and Katz, 2010). The graph below from a research paper by scholars such as Kuziemko shows the potential impact of fertility on young women's employment, and they found that "fertility" significantly reduces the participation of the British and American women in the labor market. Panel (a) shows that young women in the UK have a 91% employment rate in the first two years of childbearing, similar to that of men of the same age; but their employment rate has decreased by almost 30% in the "year of production"; importantly, their labour market participation rate has not returned to the level at the beginning of maturity in the five years after childbirth. Panel (b) The situation with regard to the United States is also broadly similar, with the labour force participation rate of young mothers falling sharply after childbirth and remaining low for a long time.
Source: Kuziemko, Pan, Shen and Washington (NBER working paper, 2018)
So, are women's decisions to sacrifice their careers in order to take care of their families active or passive? Betrand (2013), a scholar in the field, first proposed and validated the "active choice" hypothesis, and some women valued the family more, so they voluntarily gave up career promotion in exchange for more energy to take care of the family. However, Bertrand, Kamenica, and Pan (2015) later validated the "passive selection" hypothesis using U.S. community survey data and U.S. Census data. They found that when women earned more than 50 percent of the total household income (wives earned more than their husbands), the divorce rate rose sharply; highly educated and well-paid women reduced their working hours and labor force participation, and took on more housework to increase marriage rates and reduce divorce rates. Therefore, "Gender identity" is one of the important reasons that affect women's career advancement.
Social Capital Bias
In fact, in many high-end industries, most of the practitioners are highly screened, and there is no obvious difference between men and women in terms of human capital, resilience, risk preference and family preference. Still, we observed a higher probability of male advancement. Why?
A 2017 paper by Fang and Huang in The Review of Financial Studies, the top international financial journal, explains the rate of return on social capital, which they studied with Wall Street analysts. Only very competitive women can pursue this profession, so they can match male analysts in terms of both personal ability and psychological qualities. However, they found that the gap between male and female sex analysts in the return on social capital was 2-3 times: faced with the same social resources, men were more likely to obtain valuable information from it to improve the accuracy of stock forecasts, and obtained higher subjective evaluations (recognition of ability) and thus promotion.
While Fang and Huang don't reveal the different effects and influences of social relationships on male and female analysts, they provide new evidence that even with the same human and social capital, their impact on men and women in the workplace is different. Men are more likely to get positive affirmations, while women need to work several times harder to achieve the same effect.
"Workplace equality" has a long way to go
The World Economic Forum predicts that if the fight for gender equality is waged at the current pace, it will take another 135.6 years for the world to reach gender equality. In the area of economic participation, it is expected that another 267.6 years will elapse the gender gap be completely closed. As far as China is concerned, although the gender equality index ranks first in the world in terms of higher education enrollment and professional and technical practitioners, only 16.8% of women enter legislative and executive positions, ranking 132nd in the world.
Translating © orange umbrellas, data source: Global Gender Gap Report 2021
Gender equality is not only a necessary condition for social progress, attracting and releasing more female labor to participate in economic production activities will bring huge economic dividends.
On the one hand, society should help women gain more opportunities for human capital and skills training, thereby helping them to meet the needs of market positions; on the other hand, employers should be encouraged to provide diversified recruitment mechanisms (e.g., flexible employment hours) and create an inclusive workplace culture (e.g., reduce gender stereotypes and form objective cognition and evaluation of women's vocational ability); finally, family members should fully respect women's right to choose in childbirth and occupation, and encourage them to realize the value of diversified life.
The original article was published on the public account "Serious Demography Gossip"