May 2005

Gender Identity Affects Career Choices

Are women still at a disadvantage when it comes to attaining career success? Yes and no, says a new study. Women across the board seem to be enjoying greater parity with men except in “good-old-boy companies,” where a woman’s personal style and needs for work/family balance may clash with organizational expectations, values, and demands.

Business School professor Charles O’Reilly and doctoral student Olivia O’Neill have teased out this subtle distinction by looking at the relationship of careers not only to people’s biological sex but also to their preferences in workplace environment and work style. The researchers looked specifically at gender “identity”—that is, how their subjects’ goals and behaviors compared to certain society-wide stereotypes of “feminine” and “masculine” behavior and goals. They found subtle interactions between biological sex and learned gender behavior in particular organizational settings.

The researchers began their analysis in 1987 by separating 100 MBA students from the University of California at Berkeley into four “gender” groups: women who were “masculine” or “feminine” identified, and men who were “masculine” or “feminine” identified. “Masculine-identified” people were defined as those who wished to work for firms characterized by aggressiveness, while “feminine-identified” people were those who preferred companies that valued supportiveness and solidarity. Trained researchers observed the subjects and affirmed that individuals tended to exhibit behaviors similar to those they said they desired in firms, O’Neill says.

Four and eight years after the MBA’s graduation, the researchers checked in with them to compare their salaries, promotions, and major life changes such as marriage, divorce, health, and shifts in employment status. Those who fared the best overall were masculine-identified men. This is not surprising, say the researchers, given that the business world in general still tends to promote and reward aggressive behavior by males.

Women who sought cooperative, supportive “feminine” firms and career paths seemed to do pretty well across the board. Although their salaries started out lower overall, this group eventually earned as much as masculine-identified men—even while they worked 13 percent fewer hours. This suggests that there are now working environments that not only validate women’s preferences for supportiveness and flexibility but also reward women financially.

It is widely assumed that ambition and assertive behavior always win out in the workplace, regardless of an employee’s biological sex. However, the researchers found the lowest salaries were earned by masculine-identified women. O’Neill cautions that the correlations in the study cannot necessarily be used to determine causes, but she does hazard an explanation.

“Gender incongruity—that is, acting more like the opposite biological sex—is basically not rewarded, particularly in women,” O’Neill says. Masculine-identified women sometimes experience a “backlash” in male-oriented workplaces, she explains. That is, their aggressive style can rub their male counterparts the wrong way and can lead to fewer promotions.

Also, many women in masculine-oriented firms eventually face child-rearing and family demands, a potential deterrent to their careers. Women with families may be less willing to relocate or put in as many hours as men and so are unable to compete equally for the highest level jobs in these aggressive firms.

Feminine-identified men also go against the grain of cultural expectations, but they do not seem to suffer as much as masculine-identified women. Their salaries at the end of eight years were on par with those of masculine-identified men, and they worked 10 percent fewer hours. In short, the study suggests that women and men who do not want to compete on masculine terms now have valid options.

“One way to think about careers in organizations is as a series of tournaments at which employees at lower levels compete with each other for promotion to higher levels,” O’Reilly says, reflecting on the results. “Gaining a promotion—winning a round in the tournament—enables a person to compete in the next round. Over the years, those with less motivation and ability are eliminated, and the remaining participants compete for the top-level positions in the firm.

“What we see in this study is that those who choose to enter the tournament and put in more effort and sacrifice seem to be traditional males,” O’Reilly continues. “But others may choose not to play the game, including men and women who want more balance in their lives. Since we find no differences across groups in terms of satisfaction, it appears as though differences in career attainment are the result of choices rather than discrimination. However, the story for more aggressive women may not be so straightforward. This group seems to be opting out—perhaps because they don’t fit the traditional gendered model. In the end, this study uses a very modest sample and, while we find the results provocative, we hardly want to claim that this is anything more than suggestive.”

—MARGUERITE RIGOGLIOSO

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