Reports that women do have higher job-turnover rates than men, not
because they are less-committed workers, but rather, because they are
given far less meaningful work than men. Jane Giacobbe Miller and Kenneth
G. Wheeler's duo report in a recent issue of the 'Journal of
Organizational Behavior'; Study description; What may account for women's
dissatisfaction with advancement opportunities.
By
PT Staff, published on July 01, 1993
Working Women
The traditional argument against hiring women holds that they have
higher job-turnover rates than men. And indeed, that turns out to be the
case.
But the reason is not because they are less-committed workers, a
new study finds. It's because they're given far less meaningful work than
men.
In the wake of depressed birth rates of the baby boomers,
management experts everywhere are concerned about looming labor
shortages, especially among female employees, later in the '90s. But
until Jane Giacobbe Miller and Kenneth G. Wheeler looked into it, no one
knew why women, who comprise almost half of today's workforce, bail out
in the first place.
Lack of overall job satisfaction-particularly the chance to do
meaningful work and the opportunity for promotion- compels more women
than men to hand in a letter of resignation, the duo report in a recent
issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior.
In a survey of 595 male and female executives, managers, and
professionals from a city government, a university, and a large publicly
held corporation, the researchers measured the employees' intentions to
leave and then examined 13 possible motives for resignation. Among them:
job security, wages, tenure, working conditions, benefits, and paid
vacation.
Women were twice as likely as men to admit that they "definitely
would" or "probably would" leave their organizations within two years.
Only 12.2% of the men indicated an intention to quit, while 22.2% of the
women said they were ready to resign.
What's the hurry? Female employees were far less content than their
male counterparts with their chances for advancement and the
meaningfulness of their everyday duties. In addition, the researchers
found that the longer women had toiled at their jobs, the more they
wanted to quit-an "alarming" finding that contradicts previous
studies.
"This result...suggest[s] that the women managers, executives, and
professionals in this sample are frustrated with the career opportunities
in their organizations-a frustration that intensifies over time," says
Miller, of the University of Massachusetts, and Wheeler, of the
University of Texas.
The scientists suggest that discrimination, high expectations,
underlying performance problems, or differential treatment in the
appraisal process may account for women's dissatisfaction with
advancement opportunities-a subject for further research.
In the meantime, companies that want to have a cadre of workers at
the end of the decade may want to consider starting programs in career
development and job enrichment for their female employees. Gender Wars,
continued
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female executives,
gender,
hurry,
job satisfaction,
job security,
male counterparts,
management experts,
meaningful work,
motives,
women,
work,
working conditions,
working women
