Constraint In Womens Employment And Careers

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

The issue of women’s employment and careers has been high on social and organization agendas recently. This is the result of an increase in surplus labor force combined with females who are placed on a vulnerable status. At the same time, the labor market has undergone tremendous changes, more and more women take part in the entrepreneurial revolution to pursuit the realization of their own value. Women’s employment is a basic guarantee for their personality’s independence and economic independence as well as an important symbol of social change.

However, in realistic society, the problems of women’s employment and careers were not going well, the discrimination of women’s employment is a universal existence. The constraints and choices are reflected in all aspects during the women’s careers. Exploring the constraints and choices in women’s employment and career is not only to resolve the realistic problems for females but also to promote the sustainable development of society, as well as to promote the progress of the political civilization and the status of women.

This article represents some reflections following research into the three arguments made by Hakim (2000), McRae (2003) and Evetts (2000) on choice and constraint in women’s employment and careers. They have different emphasis on which constraints and choices are more important than the other. Furthermore, they all have the solid evidence to support their arguments. The purpose of this article is to find which theory is most convincing from my own point of view. The advantages and limitations of these three arguments will be interpreted separately, and then compared to get the final conclusion.

Analysis

The gender disparity in the workforce is always the social focal point. Men and women having equal rights in employment is an important part of the EU [1] social policy. And this policy has been written in law in European countries. However, it is difficult to achieve gender equality. The most people think that inequality between men and women exists is mainly reflected in four aspects, such as wages, position, occupational sphere, and employment rate (Rake, 2000).

One obvious indicator of inequality between male and female is income. The gender segregation in industry and occupational post lead directly to the income gap between men and women. At the same time, women also change their work structure during their whole life. For example women usually work full-time before marriage and then work part-time when they have children. Consequently, in the pyramid of incomes, most males gather in the top and upper-middle class. On the contrary, the group of females are often at the bottom of the pyramid (Rake, 2000).

Another clear indicator of imparity is the proportion of women in the corporation leadership. As Vinnicombe et al (2010) has noted in an earlier paper, there were just two chairmen and five CEOs that are women in all FTSE companies, only 135 women in the management hierarchy in all FTSE 100 firms, and most of them are non-executive directors, furthermore it still 21 FTSE companies only have male boards. We can see from the above data that the proportion of females in the management class is very low. It is the most common pattern which is called the glass ceiling effect in women’s employment. It means that at all stages of a woman's career she is less likely than her male colleagues to be promoted.

About the occupational sphere, which is another constraint for women’s employment, females’ professions are often limited in some narrow field, such as nurse, teacher, and salesman. There are very little women in engineering and science. Why these occupations are connected with female and others are not. This professional predicament will be explained in more detail later in this article and then the most efficient way to avoid the above obstacles will be discussed.

The inequality between men and women can also be presented by the employment rate. Although the employment ratio of females has increased rapidly, then is still a large gap between men and women. Women’s employment rate will show different features at different time. According the ECO (2005), the employment rate can reached approximately 67% for women without children but mothers with a child who are under five can only achieve fifty percent (ECO 2005). However, men’s employment rate is rarely influenced by children. It illustrates that only women’s employment is effect by the family life.

Through the analysis, it can be found that there are many constraints and choices in women’s employment and careers. The reasons for the obstacles in women’s employment come from all different aspects. In order to have a comprehensive and deep analysis about this problem, in the next part, the perspective of constraint and choice from some sociological theories will be discussed, such as the preference theory (Hakim 2000), and theories that emphasise on social, cultural and structural constraints, for example McRae (2003) and Evetts (2000), will be compared separately, and then the most convincing argument will be found. The Preference theory put forward by Hakim (2000) will be discussed first.

In the 21st century, the genuine choice is equally provided for women in all social classes under the new scenario, which is produced in the prosperous modern societies (Hakim, 2000). Hakim (2000) claims that the differences in men and women employment outcomes are interpreted by women’s different orientations to work: choice rather than constraint. However the most important choice for women is between a life focus on family work, and a life focus on work or other social activities. In her view, women’s employment choices are predominantly driven by preferences. Preference theory is centred on the distinctive choices women make.

There are four central tenets of preferences theory (Hakim, 2000 p.7):

A new scenario is produced through five separate historical changes in the flourishing modern society such as the UK and USA. These changes provided more options and opportunities for women’s lifestyle. The five causes include the contraceptive revolution, the equal opportunities revolution, the expansion of white-collar occupations, the creation of jobs for secondary earners and the increasing importance of attitude, values, and personal preferences (Hakim, 2000 p.3).

Women are heterogeneous in their preference and it is the main reason for their various employment patterns and work histories. As usual, it can be divided into three different groups as can be seen in Table1 (Hakim, 2000): work-centred, adaptive and home-centred. Work-centred women, for whom the main priority in their life is employment, and in order to pursuit their career, most of them are childless. On the contrary, the home-centred women only focus on their children and family life. The same point can be seen between these two types in that they all have a high loyalty index to their choice. However, adaptive is a diverse group in which women in this pattern want to combine work and family life. They can change their orientation during different periods throughout their whole life, such as before marriage and having children (Hakim, 2000 p.7).

Pattern

Work-centred

Adaptive

Home-centred

Proportion

(varies)

20%

10%-30%

60%

40%-80%

20%

10%-30%

Characteristics

Employment or social activities are the main priorities throughout life, most of them are childless

A diverse group including some women who want to combine work and family life

Main priority in their life is children and family, as well as they don’t want to work

Responsive area

Only Sensitive to employment policies

Very sensitive to all policies

Sensitive to family polices

Table A classification of women's work-lifestyle preference

The conflict of interest between the three groups has been created because of the heterogeneity in women’s preference. But it need to be known that it is difficult to maintain a dividing line in the three groups , as a result, it pose a main obstacle for women to form a consolidated group which can present all women’s interests. The men’s interests, however are relatively homogeneous, consequently, it produce a disproportion success in men’s employment (Hakim, 2000 p.8).

Because of the heterogeneity, women have various responses to social policies. And it has a mutual effect between social policies and women’s choice. The preference theory can make the prediction of women’s choice and public policy research more accurate (Hakim, 2000 p.8).

In short, the emphasis in preference theory is on what women wants to do. It reinstates that there is no major constraint limiting women’s employment choice. Furthermore, personal preference play an important role in women’s employment behaviour, and also illustrate that values, attitude and preference are becoming increasingly important for women’s choice in prosperous modern societies (Hakim, 2000). However, there also exist some limitation in preference theory, such as it ignore other factors except preference, which may have a significant impact for women’s choice, such as some women have similar preferences but they have different employment, because their capacities for overcoming constraints are totally different (McRae, 2003).

Based on this debate, McRae did an analysis of Hakim’s preference theory. This analysis paper came up with a complete explanation of women’s employment choice after childbirth, and through a serious of longitudinal data analysis find that understanding the constraints are equally as important as understanding women’s preference (McRae, 2003).

In this paper, data analysis is given first from three different aspects, such as the continuity of women’s employment after childbearing, mothers’ work history, and women’s sex-role preference. With the continuity of women’s employment, it can be seen from the figure1 that there has been a sharp increase of the proportion of women who return to work within one year after having children from 1979 to 1996. The same situation also emerges in mothers with children less than five years of age (McRae, 2003). All this data reflects a fact that more and more women have a strong intension to return back to work quickly after childbirth.

Figure The proportion of mothers return who to work (McRae, 2003)

The second study was about mothers’ work history, which divided women into four different groups, which can be seen from table 2. The first type is about work-centred mothers, who want to have a career and children, and still have a full-time job after their first baby, as well as being eager to go back to work in a very short time. The job category of these women is always professional or managerial job, and their partner’s job levels are often the same with them. However, in terms of emotional life, they always experience marital disruption (McRae, 2003). The next group is women who are always employed in a part-time job, no matter that they have children or not. They want to combine their family and jobs through this life-style pattern. The motivation of back into labour market is only because of the financial needs or wanting to get out of the house after having a child. Women in this group have a happy life because their family life is the most stable one in these four groups. But their work categories are usually further down the white-collar occupational class (McRae, 2003). The third group is mothers with mixed work history. In their mind family comes first. Although women in this group have some similarities with the second group, such as most of them are engaged in a part-time job, for the most part they want to remain at home after having a baby. Another obvious difference with the continuously working part-time job mothers is that their marriages are not very stable. The last group is family centred mothers who give up their jobs, and keep their mind on family life. Consequently, their partnership is relative stable (McRae, 2003). The description about the four groups are completely based on the external features, that is, even without considering preference, women can be divided based on different labour market relationships (McRae, 2003). The study about the women’s role attitudes is interpreted on that women cannot be distinguished only according their preference, because it is difficult to keep an apparent line in different groups.

Type

Feature

Work-centred

mother

Part-time job

mother

Mixed work

mother

Family centred mother

Values

Career and children

Children and job

Family comes first

Family is

Work type

Full-time employment

Continuously part-time job

----

----

Returning expectation

All expect quickly return

Only half expect return within 12month

Remain at home

Give up paid employment

Job class

Professional and managerial

Further down white-collar

----

----

Partnership

Marital disruption

Stable

Not stable

Relative stable

Table A type of mother's employment after their first child

A very important part of this article is analysing the constraint on family-work lifestyle preferences (McRae, 2003). It states that all women experience normative and structural constraint, the former emphasize the internal constraint, such as the husbands’ or partnerships’ preference. Most of the husbands prefer women not to work after having a child. This constraint focuses on "who I am" (McRae, 2003). However, the structural constraint often refers to external constraint, which usually includes job availability, the cost of childcare and social origins usually. Therefore, preference is only one small part in the internal factors of constraints; other factors will also sharply curtail women’s employment choice.

Another research about women’s changes in careers has been done by Julian Evetts (2000) from three aspects: culture, structure and action dimensions. These three dimensions are linked with each other, and are regarded as the most important determination and choice in women’s employment. The position of three aspects is equally important, culture and structure belong to determinations and action dimensions are choice element. This explanatory theory focuses on the diversity, variety, and complicacy of women’s employment decisions (Evetts, 2000). The three constraints will be interpreted in this article separately.

Firstly, Female ideologies and organizational culture are the main contents in the cultural dimension. Two factors include belief system and social attitudes are often used to explain the cultural constraints, such as some stereotype ideologies has been deeply embedded in women’s life which force them to make an opposite choice. In addition, cultural analysis often connects with the management in organization; female behaviours must keep pace with the culture expectation of the work organization. Women’s employment are limited in a narrow field, where most women work in nurse and teaching positions but only a little engage in science and engineering. All of the cultural expectation and ideological forces have a controlling effect on women’s employment choice (Evetts, 2000).

Secondly, the structural dimensions usually include family structures and organizational processes. It focuses on the pattern and forms of family and organization. The main task of this dimension is dividing the member in the family and labour in the organization. Such as the women’s positions in different family patterns where a patriarchal family has a great impact on women’s employment. In addition, women are generally practitioners in organization, with only a few in management level. Therefore the structural dimension emphasise the difficulties for women’s employment (Evetts, 2000).

The last dimension is action dimension, which refer to the women’s choices and strategies. It puts to the point in women themselves, as well as it having some similarities with McRae’s study, which also states that women will encounter different choice and constraints even if they belong to the same social groups. It emphasizes the individual behaviour, where women will use different methods to deal with constraints, such as adaptation and resistance (Evetts, 2000). Therefore, the action dimension is concerned with the rational choice when women confront various and complex constraints.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be know from the above analysis that the most convincing argument is the Evetts analysis, which contains all aspect of constraints and choices that may influence women’s employment, it emphasises that all factors are equally important, that is, not one is important than the other, including the internal and external factors, such as the social context, structure, organization, family and preference. The dominant factors will be determined by different situations, and women’s consciousness is always the predominant factor which can promotes others development. However the other arguments all emphasizes only one or several aspects, like preference, and ignore the other factors. Therefore, these theories can only be used under a large number of hypotheses and some special historical terms, such as the preference theory, which even though are widely used in the prosperous modern society, are not suitable for some developing countries. This can be considered a great limitation.

Therefore, we must realise that there are nature differences between male and female, such as psychological, ideological and physical elements. As a result, we must recognise objectively that the whole equality cannot be achieved. However, what we should do is to break through the definition of gender in the traditional society, to adjust the division of labour in society and the employment patterns which have heavy gender bias, as well as to promote women’s self-confidence and their employment expectations. All these changes may produce a flexible, equitable and reasonable mechanism in regards to the social division of labor and will supply more freedom of choices and opportunities for women’s employment and careers, also extend the occupational sphere immensely for women’s employment and career development.