Be successful – be male and masculine? On the influence of gender roles on objective career success

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/EBHRM-10-2012-0014
Date07 October 2013
Pages147-168
Published date07 October 2013
AuthorDorothea Alewell
Subject MatterHR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM
Be successful – be male and
masculine? On the influence
of gender roles on objective
career success
Dorothea Alewell
School of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Hamburg,
Hamburg, Germany
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of the paperis to analyse the influence ofindividual gender role specifications
on objective career success (measured by gross yearly income) in the context of different gender job
contextswhilst controllingfor human capital and workingtime variables.Typical economic,sociological
and psychological variables are combined to improve explanations of the gender wage gap.
Design/methodology/approach – Starting from Eagly and Karau’s role incongruity theory, the
paper derives hypotheses on the influence of gender role specification, gender job context and
biological sex on gross yearly income. These hypotheses are analysed by logistic regressions with a
data set from Germany.The p aper presents resultsof a quantitative empirical survey of employees on
wages, gender role-related self-descriptions and human capital variables.
Findings – The paper results show that even in this highly qualified sample, male biological sex,
masculine gender roles and non-female job context have a positive effect on individual income. The
results hold true when the paper controls for human capital, wo rking time, professional experience
and jobs in the public sector.
Research limitations/implications – Because of the limited size of the data set and some problems
with selectivity, the research results lack generalizability. Researchers are thus encouraged to test the
propositions with other data sets.
Practical implications – The paper includes implications for wage design and for reac hing wage
equality in firms. An important implication for policy and practice is that under a gender and equal
opportunityperspective, ensuring non-discriminating behaviourwith regard to women may be onlyone
(albeitan important) element of equalopportunity activities. Equal wagepolicies should furtherconsider
the gender characteristics of the job context, which may influence job-related roles and thus role
incongruities. Additionally, individual interpretations of gender roles might have effects on wages.
Human resource (HR) managers could support such policies byshaping job descriptions carefully with
regard to gender role aspects, by influencing the gender composition of job contexts and by paying
attention to the individual development of gender role interpretationsin HR development programmes.
Originality/value – The paper fulfils an identified research need to study simultaneously the
influence of human capital variables and gender roles on wages. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the
first study, which studies the influence of gender roles as defined by Born (1992) on income in a
German context of highly qualified individuals while controlling for human capital, working time and
professional experience. The existing lack in the literature with regard to empirical analyses on the
combined influence of economic, sociological and psychological variables is mitigated.
Keywords Gender roles, Gender stereotypes, Gender wage gap, Objective career success
Paper type Research p aper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/2049-3983.htm
Received 26 October 2012
Revised 21 December 2012
Accepted 30 December 2012
Evidence-based HRM: a Global
Forum for Empirical Scholarship
Vol. 1 No.2, 2013
pp. 147-168
rEmeraldGroup Publishing Limited
2049-3983
DOI 10.1108/EBHRM-10-2012-0014
The author would like to thank Susi Kusche for invaluable help in preparing and implementing
the data collection, and Sven Hauff, Volker Wagner and Miriam Beblo for helpful comments on
earlier versions of the manuscript. The Hamburg University Gender Research Funds has
provided financial sponsorship. He would also like to thank the funds for this support.
147
Influence of
gender roles on
career success
1. Introduction
Research on gender equality in the labour market produces two very stable, often
repeated results (compare e.g. Busch and Holst, 2009, 2011; Wolf et al., 2012). First,
women earn less than men, and the wage differential cannot be fully explained by
differences in working time and human capital endowment. For example, in Germany,
there is a gross gender wage gap of about 20-25 per cent, and an essential part of this
gap is not explained by working time, human capital or labour market segregation.
Second, women are under-represented in typically high-income positions (such as
positions in management) and this result, too, cannot be fully traced back to human
capital endowments and working time.
Other, especially psychological research concepts start with explanations for
differences in career success, which focus on personality traits, expectations and
gender stereotypes (see e.g. Ku
¨pper, 1994). Two central concepts are role (in)congruity
theory (Eagly and Karau, 2002) and the closely related think-manager-think-male-
hypothesis (Schein, 2001). The core of these explanations for differences in career
success relates to stereotypes and gender roles, especially feminine gender roles on the
one hand and management or leadership roles on the other hand which are incongr uent
to each other. Role incongruity may result in less favourable evaluations, selection
disadvantages and lower wages for women in qualified jobs.
However, only very few research papers combine these two strands of research
empirically and analyse the effects of more “psychological” variables such as
stereotypes and gender-effects in the context of a job on the one hand while controlling
for “economic” variables such as human capital and working time on the oth er hand
(for an exception, compare Schneidhofer and Mayrhofer, 2008; Strunk and Her mann,
2009 with analyses for Austrian university graduates, utilizing data from the Vienna
Career Panel).
This is where we contribute to the existing literature: we analyse empirically the
combined effect of biological sex, gender roles and gender effects in the job context on
gross income as an indicator of career success, using data from Germany and
controlling for human capital and working time variables.
Our work is strongly related to research by Schneidhofer and Mayrhofer (2008) and
Strunk and Hermann (2009), but the samples and data of the analyses differ: we use a
cross sectional data set with a more heterogeneous sample of mostly German and on
average highly qualified respondents, while the aforementioned authors use a mo re
homogenous panel data set of Austrian university g raduates.
Our results show that male biological sex, an individual self-description of a
masculine gender role and a non-female job context all have a positive effect on
individual income. This result holds true even when we control for human capital,
working time, professional experience and jobs in the public sector.
An important implication for p olicy and practice is that under a gender and
equal opportunity perspective, ensuring no n-discriminating behaviour with regard to
women may be only one (albeit an imp ortant) element of equal opportunity activities.
Equal wage policies should further consider the gender characteristics of the job
context, which may influence job-related roles and thus role incongruities.
Additionally, individual interpretations of gender roles might have effects on wages.
Human resource (HR) managers could support such policies by shaping job
descriptions carefully with regard to gender role aspects, by influencing the gender
composition of job contexts and by paying attention to the individual development of
gender role interpretations in HR development programmes.
148
EBHRM
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