Particularly Adults Work Comprise

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Work has been put into various categorizations by several authors. Padavic and Reskin (2002) categorizes work into three main forms known as forced work, paid work (also known as market work) and unpaid work. According to them, forced work is work performed under compulsion which provides little or no pay or any form of support. A typical example of forced work is the work performed by slaves or prisoners.

Paid or market work is the type of work that generates earnings, for example the work of a company secretary. Most people consider this form of work as ‘real’ work.

The third form of work is the unpaid work, also referred to as non-market work. It includes the work that people perform for themselves and others like cooking for the family.

The distinction between these three forms of work is believed to be an aftermath of industrialization because for a large part of history, most people then considered their work to be a continuation of their lives and not a discontinuous unit from other segments of their lives. In other words, life to them was work, just as it was rest and recovery from work (Padavic & Reskin, 2002). After industrialization and the development of capitalism, work became equated to paid activity such that as the number of workers increased in "paid jobs" people began to treat paid work as the only "real work" devaluing the unpaid work that people did in their homes (Bullock, 1994; Padavic & Reskin, 2002).

Most women before World War Two had been engaged in unpaid work. Their task was mainly to take care of the home and support their husbands’ career fulltime (Schwartz & Zimmerman, 1992). Women first entered the world of paid work in large droves during the Second World War when they had to serve as replacement workers for the active working age males who had then been called into military duty. Now, before the integration of women into the workforce, women working at that time were considered temporal workers. Their work was second place to marriage and childbearing which were considered to be their primary responsibilities (Gutek & Larwood, 1987). Jobs such as teaching, nursing and clerical work were in the 19th century considered to be appropriate only for single women (Nieva & Gutek, 1981). Thus less than 3% of married women in 1890 worked outside the home. By the late 1970s however, almost half of all married women and 40% of all women over age 16 were working (Domenico & Jones, 2006) though they still viewed employment as secondary to their domestic responsibilities (Tinklin, Croxford, Ducklin & Frame, 2005).

The ensuing result of the continuous increase and bloat in the number of women workers all over the world has carved a niche for the "working woman" to be accepted as a norm and not a social oddity (Catalyst, 2002). This "growth spurt" has been on a constant high in most countries worldwide. For instance, the European Commission (2010) reports that female employment rate has been constantly rising and in 2008 hit 59.1%. The number of women employees in Britain has also increased by 2 million (Lahtinen & Wilson, 1994). Again in 2001, in Hong Kong, statistics indicate that there has been a 39% growth in women participation in paid work as compared to their men. In Ghana, also, out of the 51.2% females that forms the population, 48% of women are in the paid workforce.

Besides, the growth rate of women in paid work has overflowed its traditional restrictions to cut across sectors. In the field of science for instance, between 2002 and 2007, the growth rate of women scientists and engineers as compared to men was averagely 6.2% as against 3.7% respectively. Furthermore, in traditionally male domains such as accounting, business and law for instance, women have been found to constitute about half the graduates of these professional schools (Catalyst, 2002; Davidson & Burke, 2004) although a lot of women are still overrepresented in traditionally female domains such as teaching, nursing and clerical domains.

The tremendous growth in women’s numbers in employment has not been in isolation of some variables. It has been instigated by a number of changes that has characterized society and the labour market. Prominent among these structural factors are decline in fertility rates, increased female education, expansion of the tertiary sector, consolidation of welfare systems (Poggio, 2010), more industrialized economies, expansion of financial services, opening up of the service sector, growth in public sector and political and legal changes (Davidson & Burke, 2002). Goldin (1990) has asserted that the combination of educational opportunities for women and the increasing number of clerical jobs in the US economy for instance has instigated the steady nature of increase in female workforce participation following the post-World War Two decade.

1.1. 1. Women in Management

Despite the tremendous feats that women have attained by breaking into paid workforce and professional arenas, their pace of growth toward top management has been slower than that of a snail. Wirth (2001) describes this pace as slow and uneven depending largely on the country and culture. Consider countries such as Norway, US and Canada, where there seems to be a widespread of gender equality (OECD Observer, 2005), the percentage of working females as against the percentage of managers worldwide are [26%], [45%] and [35%] respectively (Burke & Davidson, 2004). On the local scene, of the 48% female working force in Ghana, only 8% are in managerial positions (Ghana Living Standards Survey, 2000) with below 10% in policy making positions (Ofei-Aboagye, 1996). These figures echo global trends where only 2% of women worldwide occupy top managerial positions (Burke & Davidson, 2004).

The great disparity between the number of women in top management or senior management and the number beneath this level, specifically, lower levels leaves an impression that in-between the lower rank and the topmost rank of women’s career ladder, there is an occurrence that inhibits women’s growth. According to Bullock (1994), at some point around the middle of most career ladders there appears to be a ‘glass ceiling’ which prevents all but a few women from getting to the top (p.28) and this is responsible for fewer women being in top management.

Earlier assertions made revealed that, this occurrence was as a result of women lacking job relevant skills, education, or experience (Carli & Eagly, 2001). However, findings from Powell and Butterfield (1994) and the US Department of Labour (1995) have disproved this assertion. Contrarily, women in recent times have obtained requisite qualifications and experience that they need on the job but in spite of that, women continue to be marginal at the top ranks of management (Catalyst, 2003). In fact, in 2002, data circulated by the US Bureau of Labour revealed that of all the executive, administrative and managerial positions held in the US, female leaders held about 46% and this was an indication of women’s zest for amassing required management or line experience that was initially thought to be missing or lacking (Weyer, 2007). Again in the US, women comprise almost half of the graduates of professional schools such as accounting, business and law (Burke & Davidson, 2004; Catalyst, 2003) disputing the assumption that the lack of education that makes women unable to progress in their careers.

Attempts made by researchers to theoretically explain men and women variances in managerial experiences and career advancement have emphasized the following levels of analysis: Individual (such as personal attributes), Situational, Organizational and Societal barriers (Lyness & Terrazas, 2006). Early studies focused on person-centred theories or individual level of differences in men and women’s attributes. According to person-centred theories, gender disparities experienced by men and women when advancing their careers are as a result of deficiencies in women’s human capital, qualifications, or other relevant attributes in comparison to their fellow male counterparts (Ward, Orazem, & Schmidt, 1992). These explanations were however not accepted because of lack of empirical support unlike explanations on external barriers as the basis of gender gap in managerial outcomes (Lyness & Terrazas, 2006; Morrison & von Glinow, 1990).

1.1.2. The Glass Ceiling Explanation

The glass ceiling was adopted as an alternative explanation to describe women’s lack of representation in upper management. Coined in the mid-eighties (1986) by a Wall Street journal article, the glass ceiling phenomenon has been defined by the US Department of Labour (1991) as "those artificial barriers based on attitudinal or organizational bias that prevent qualified individuals from advancing upward in their organization". The word ‘strong has been used to describe this barrier because even though it is not physical or visible, it appears to have a persistent capability of directly or indirectly preventing women from moving into senior levels in the organization. Unlike formal career barriers such as education or requisite work experience, this barrier, is known to be artificial and less tangible, secured or anchored in culture, society and psychological factors (Neera & Shoma, 2010). According to Foley, Kidder and Powell (2002), the glass ceiling barrier is subtle enough to be transparent and yet strong enough to cut members off from upper management positions where high pay and other rewarding benefits abound.

In 1995, the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission in its report concluded that three types of barriers confront managerial women’s advancement namely: organizational, societal and governmental.

The organizational barrier also known as the internal business barrier comes about as a result of the variance between what corporate leadership says it wants to happen and what is actually happening. The report enumerated the following organizational barriers: outreach and recruitment practices that do not seek out or reach or recruit minorities and women; corporate climates that alienate and isolate minorities and women; pipeline barriers that directly affect opportunity for advancement; initial placement and clustering in staff jobs or in highly technical and professional jobs that are not on the career track to the top; lack of mentoring; lack of management training; lack of opportunities for career development, tailored training, and rotational job assignments that are on the revenue-producing side of the business; little or no access to critical developmental assignments such as memberships on highly visible task forces and committees; special or different standards for performance evaluation; biased rating and testing systems; little or no access to informal networks of communication; and counterproductive behaviour and harassment by colleagues. The internal structural barriers are believed to be within the direct control of business.

Second, there are societal barriers. These barriers, according to the report may be outside the direct control of business and is in two main types. They are the supply barrier and the difference barrier. The supply barrier refers to the lack of qualified women and minorities because of inequities in the nation's educational system (Federal Glass Ceiling Commission report, 1995). The difference barrier also refers to the stereotypes, prejudices, and biases that individuals harbour about cultural, gender, or racial differences (Federal Glass Commission report, 1995). The supply barrier relates to educational opportunity and attainment whilst the difference barrier relates to conscious and unconscious stereotyping, prejudice, and bias founded in gender, race, and ethnicity. Of all the types of barriers identified in the report, prejudice was found to be principal.

Lack of vigorous, consistent monitoring and law enforcement; weaknesses in the formulation and collection of employment-related data (making it difficult to ascertain status of groups at the managerial level and disaggregate the data); inadequate reporting and dissemination of information relevant to glass ceiling issues are the governmental barriers responsible for women’s low numbers in managerial positions (Federal Glass Commission report, 1995).

The glass ceiling barrier precludes women from top level jobs on the basis of their status as women. As a result, women are denied the opportunity to be senior managers. This limited opportunity for promotion or mobility experienced by women managers is what Baron, Davis-Blake and Bielby (as cited in Lyness & Terrazas, 2006) explains as being differential from men’s. According to them, men’s promotion into leadership positions is based on their potential as leaders whereas women’s promotion is adjudged on the basis of performance (Van der Boon, 2003). This difference in the criteria selection encountered by men and women for the same position (managerial) puts women at a disadvantage because of this uneven playing field.

Apart from the differential criteria in promotion for male and female managers, limited promotion opportunities has also been said to be due mainly to organizational restructuring or delayering of management positions (Broadbridge, 2010). This leads to fewer positions and levels to rise to in the organization known as the bottleneck effect (Broadbridge, 2008).

Furthermore, women are faced with limited opportunities in organizations because they occupy the secondary jobs which are less important, offer low pay, and have more limited promotional opportunities (Lyness & Terrazas, 2006). Two structural barriers are to blame for this: horizontal segregation and vertical segregation.