Values of Men and Women, Part 2

Last week I blogged about differences between the career-related values of men and women. I used data from the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, which was conducted by the Census Bureau on behalf of the National Science Foundation. Respondents were asked about the importance of various factors (which may as well be called values) that they consider when they think about a job.

Last week I looked at which values male and female respondents most often identified as very important. This week, I’m looking at what the different college major choices of men and women indicate about their value differences.

Of course, the values that the survey covers are not necessarily the only considerations that men and women bear in mind when they make the choice of a major. Some of these values, such as salary and job location, are expressed in job-related terms and therefore can influence the choice of a major only insofar as students consider the relationship between their prospective major and their future job. On the other hand, the job-major relationship is a very significant (often paramount) influence on many students’ major decisions, so it’s understandable that men’s and women’s feelings about careers would be related to their preferences for certain majors. Furthermore, some of these values, especially intellectual challenge, apply equally well to a major as to a job. Therefore, it seems likely that any male-female differences choosing between these values will be reflected in their choices of majors.

I thought it would be useful to look at the correlation between (a) the percentage of graduates of a major who say a value is very important and (b) the percentage of male and female graduates of a major. In other words, I’m asking which values tend to be rated highest by graduates of the majors with the most female graduates and lowest by graduates of the majors wit the least female graduates (and the same question for men). This is another way of getting at the question of which values characterize each sex. It may even be more meaningful than the results I looked at last week, which were based solely on professed preferences. This time, I’m also looking at behaviors--the college majors that were chosen and completed.

Here are the results for women, in descending order. Keep in mind that a score of 1.0 would mean a perfect correlation.

• Contribution to Society: 0.60
• Benefits: 0.17
• Location: 0.12
• Security: 0.11
• Responsibility: 0.05
• Challenge: –0.01
• Independence: –0.20
• Advancement: –0.53
• Salary: –0.59

Now, compare this to the very different order I found last week, looking only at expressed opinions:

• Benefits: 64%
• Security: 62%
• Challenge: 59%
• Independence: 59%
• Location: 59%
• Salary: 54%
• Contribution to Society: 53%
• Responsibility: 43%
• Advancement: 37%

Next, here are the correlations for men. These are actually the same as for the women but in the opposite order. That is, the minus signs change to plus signs and vice versa.

• Salary: 0.59
• Advancement: 0.53
• Independence: 0.20
• Challenge: 0.01
• Responsibility: –0.05
• Security: –0.11
• Location: –0.12
• Benefits: –0.17
• Contribution to Society: –0.60

Finally here are last week’s very different results for men, in descending order:

• Benefits: 65%
• Security: 61%
• Independence: 59%
• Salary: 58%
• Challenge: 55%
• Location: 48%
• Advancement: 45%
• Responsibility: 44%
• Contribution to Society: 38%

What strikes me is that when the two sexes are compared, the rankings I compiled last week (the percentages saying a value is very important) are a lot more similar than the rankings I compiled this week (the correlations). Specifically, the values associated with the majors that the men and women chose (and completed) adhere much more closely to the stereotypes of women as nurturers and men as strivers.

What explains these different findings? Last week, I created only two pools of graduates, one male and one female. Taking the averages of the two pools, as I did last week, washed out a lot of the differences that were present among subpopulations within each pool. But I was able to tease out some of these hidden differences by breaking up these large pools into smaller sets based on their past behaviors--the majors that they chose and completed. In addition, using correlations allowed me to detect the values profiles of those graduates who had gravitated toward majors that were dominated by one sex or the other. These grads may have been a minority--their opinions are hard to detect when you look at overall averages--but they show that the sex-stereotypical values profiles remain a reality for a significant group of people.

The larger lesson to take away is that the simple percentages one sees in many survey results (for example, what percentage of voters is currently backing a certain candidate) can disguise some information that would valuable to know about subpopulations in the sample.

Work-Related Values of Men and Women

One topic that never gets stale is the difference between the career-related values of men and women. The group that I worked in at Educational Testing Service had done some research on that topic in the 1970s, before I arrived, and a graduate student intern did some further research while I was there in the 1990s. Each time this was studied, the general finding was that, on average, men tend to be strivers and women tend to be nurturers.

I recently became acquainted with a dataset that has the potential of providing another look at this question. Ever since late July I have been working on creating the third edition of  College Majors Handbook with Real Career Paths and Payoffs. I turned in the manuscript this week. The book is based on the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, which was conducted by the Census Bureau on behalf of the National Science Foundation.

One set of questions on the survey form asks respondents, “When thinking about a job, how important is each of the following factors to you….” The values (factors) are the following:

• Salary
• Benefits
• Job Security
• Job Location
• Opportunities for Advancement
• Intellectual Challenge
• Level of Responsibility
• Degree of Independence
• Contribution to Society

Respondents are asked to score each value as very important, somewhat important, somewhat unimportant, or not important at all.

I thought it would be interesting to see how men and women scored these values differently, so I looked at what percentage of each sex scored each value very important.

Here are the results for women, in descending order:

• Benefits--64%
• Security--62%
• Challenge--59%
• Independence--59%
• Location--59%
• Salary--54%
• Contribution to Society--53%
• Responsibility--43%
• Advancement--37%

And the results for men, in descending order:

• Benefits--65%
• Security--61%
• Independence--59%
• Salary--58%
• Challenge--55%
• Location--48%
• Advancement--45%
• Responsibility--44%
• Contribution to Society--38%

You won’t notice a great amount of difference between the two sexes, but a few things stand out. The biggest difference is their attitude toward Contribution to Society; 15 percent more women than men rated this as very important. Another large difference applies to Job Location; 10 percent more women than men rated this as very important. The priorities of the sexes are notably reversed regarding Opportunities for Advancement, which 7 percent more men than women rated as very important.

You can find slight differences in their attitudes toward Salary and Intellectual Challenge. The former was very important to more men than women by a margin of 4 percent, and the latter more important to women than men by the same margin.

All other differences were trivial--1 percent or less.

These results largely confirm the traditional images (confirmed by the ETS research) of men as strivers and women as nurturers, although the difference of opinion on Salary is not as great as I expected from the ETS research. It may be that women in 2003 perceived themselves as playing a more vital role as wage-earners than they did at the time the ETS research was conducted in the 1970s and 1990s.

The difference in the ratings for Job Location may have a connection to the nurturing role; women may place more importance on working near home so they can more easily respond to family emergencies. However, that’s just speculation on my part. Location may be a stand-in for some other need, popular among women, that I don’t recognize.

Let me stress that these are averages and don’t describe every man or woman. In fact, the ETS research found that in each sex, there was a subset of respondents whose constellation of top values closely matched the one that was characteristic of the opposite sex.

If this general topic interests you, you may want to see what I learned from my research on the work-related values of male students in Saudi Arabia in 2002.

New Insights into the Mommy Track, Part 2

This is another blog about women's career issues, prompted in part by my recent research for Quick Nontraditional Careers Guide: Eight Steps for Defying Traditional Gender Roles, which will be published in June. Last week I wrote about a study that found high-skill women suffer a greater wage impact from the mommy track than do low-skill women. This week I’d like to discuss another study, this one showing that highly educated women face different levels of wage damage from the mommy track depending on their occupation.

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, economists at Harvard, in “The Career Cost of Family”(PDF), find that the earnings penalty of the mommy track is decreasing in many high-end careers. Specifically, many of these careers, especially in health care, have become more family-friendly than they were in the past, perhaps because of the increased presence of women in them. Corporate and financial occupations, on the other hand, are not progressing as rapidly.

Like last week’s study, this one is based on longitudinal research. In this case, the subjects were a very high-powered group: graduates of Harvard College between 1969 and 1992. The study found that although women are increasing their presence in high-level occupations, they are tending to choose professions and specializations within professions that offer the greatest flexibility of work hours.

The really interesting part of the report, called “Occupational Vignettes,” explains how and why women are moving into certain professions and specializations.

Among the fields of medicine, women account for 42 percent of workers under 45 years of age. In the specializations ob-gyn, pediatrics, dermatology, child psychology, and medical genetics, they account for more than half of all practitioners. “They exceed their average of 42 percent but are less than 50 percent in allergy and immunology, family practice, psychiatry, pathology, public health, general preventive medicine, internal medicine, and forensic pathology.” The general trend is that women are opting for specializations with fewer regularly occurring on-call, emergency, or night hours, and they’re avoiding those with the longest residency or fellowship requirements.

One of the most dramatic increases in female participation has been among veterinarians. In the 2007–2008 academic year, 77 percent of the DVM degrees went to women. Why? “Compelling evidence suggests that the increasing ability of many veterinarians to schedule their hours and reduce or eliminate on-call, night, and weekend hours has been a contributory factor.” Regional veterinary hospitals and emergency centers are serving this function, lifting the burden from veterinary practices. “About 40 percent of female veterinarians in private practice in 2007 (versus 27 percent of male veterinarians) stated that they put in no emergency hours.” It is also becoming more commonplace for veterinarians in a private practice to be employees rather than partners, an arrangement that encourages greater job flexibility.

Women with MBAs have a very different experience. The researchers find that these women “have the lowest labor force participation rates, the longest periods of job interruption when they have children, and forfeit the largest fraction of their income when they take time off.” Although they start out with pay equal to that of male MBAs, a decade later they are earning 55 percent of the men’s earnings. The researchers found three roughly equal factors that account for the bulk of the difference: different training prior to receipt of the MBA (e.g., fewer courses in finance), career interruptions (usually the mommy track), and shorter work hours (also usually the mommy track). Those MBA mothers with high-earning husbands are most likely to quit working or opt for self-employment; the others tend to cut back on work hours. The reduction in participation and work hours is actually greater three or four years after the first birth than in the first couple of years. “It is as if some MBA moms try to stay in the fast lane but ultimately find it is unworkable.”

In pharmacy, women account for almost 70 percent of new degree recipients. Like veterinarians, pharmacists have shifted from being stakeholders in a business (more than 35 percent were self-employed in 1970) to being employees (0.6 percent were self-employed in 2008). Optometry has made the same shift, and women are now 66 percent of new degree recipients.

The report ends with a chart (below) that shows the 87 highest-paid occupations from 2006–2008, with different shapes representing different industries. (The chart is based on data from the Current Population Survey.) Horizontally, the further to the right, the higher the earnings. Vertically, the further below the zero line (which is near the top), the greater the earnings gap between men and women. You’ll note that, as a group, the business occupations (red squares) have the biggest gap.

Note also that the technology occupations (green triangles) have the smallest gap. As an explanation, the authors of the report speculate, “One possibility is that the technology occupations are so recent that their work organizations are structured to deal better with a labor force that needs greater work flexibility.” Regardless of the reason, this small gap is one more reason why women should consider STEM careers. For more on this topic, see Quick STEM Careers Guide: Four Steps to a Great Job in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math, due out next month.

New Insights into the Mommy Track, Part I

Women’s career issues are a frequent topic of this blog, and I have been thinking about them again while putting the finishing touches on a manuscript, Quick Nontraditional Careers Guide: Eight Steps for Defying Traditional Gender Roles, due to be published in June. I also wrote about these issues in the volume about nontraditional careers that is part of Progressive Careers. This week I also learned about two new research studies that cast additional light on this subject, showing that the consequences of the mommy track vary greatly. More highly skilled women, particularly in certain fields, suffer a greater penalty for choosing to have children.

David Ellwood, Elizabeth Ty Wilde, and Lily Batchelder, in “The Mommy Track Divides: The Impact of Childbearing on Wages of Women of Differing Skill Levels” (PDF), wanted to know why childbearing by female college graduates has declined so much. Among those born in the early 1940s, nearly 50% of them had borne children by age 25, and only 18% were childless at age 40. Among the cohort born 20 years later, only 20% had borne children by age 25, and more than 25% remained childless at age 40. By comparison, in both generations, women who were not college graduates bore children earlier in life, with little generational difference in their timing.

The researchers hypothesized that the college grads were postponing childbearing to allow themselves time to establish a career and thus minimize the wage impact of the mommy track.

The researchers used data from a longitudinal study, dividing the women into low-skill and high-skill groups based on their performance on the Armed Forces Qualification Test. (They used that rather than college attendance, because early childbearing clearly can and does influence education.) They then compared the income trajectories of the two groups and found that the low-skill group had a trajectory that not only was flatter (as would be expected) than that of the high-skill group but also less affected by child-bearing. Having children later or not at all improved their earnings only modestly. For the high-skill women, however, the income rise was steeper but leveled off when they bore children, a mommy penalty that persisted even a decade after childbirth. But by postponing childbirth, the high-skill women had achieved a higher pre-child earning level and therefore leveled off at a higher plateau. In other words, for high-skill women it pays to establish a career before having children (if ever). This would explain the historical fertility and timing differences mentioned earlier.

Another interesting question is why women’s earnings suffer after child-bearing. Is it because they shift to part-time work or a less demanding occupation, leave their employer (thus losing human capital), or drop out of the workforce entirely (thus forgoing work experience)? The researchers found that all these behaviors have an impact, but there is additional impact that can’t be explained by these. Even women who stay full-time in the same occupation with the same employer suffer a 14% loss in earnings. Evidently, some other factor, such as discrimination or a perceived loss of career commitment, is depressing earnings.

It’s useful to note what the researchers found about high-skill men’s earnings. Like the high-skill women, those who postponed parenthood had higher earnings, but the arrival of parenthood had a much smaller impact than it had on the women. Most interesting was the finding that men who remained childless had the lowest earnings of all in the high-skill group. There’s a chicken-egg problem here: Does fatherhood make men strive more, or do low-earning men make less attractive partners for starting a family?

Apart from its findings about the wage penalty of the mommy track, this study produces two disturbingly different portraits of child-bearing behavior. One, among low-skill women, consists of child-bearing at a young age, much more often outside of marriage, with low earnings and little prospect of a large increase in earnings later on. The other behavior, among high-skill women, consists of child-bearing by a typically married couple in their peak earning years. You can imagine very different outcomes for the children in these two scenarios.

In next week’s blog I’ll write about a different study that looks at how, among highly educated women, different occupations cause the mommy track to have different impacts.