Are women naturally less ambitious than men?

Sleepy

In the midst of all the bull$hit threads on AH about Irish women being absolutley horrible money grabbing demon spawn from hel, b3t4 posted the following article:

www.esri.ie wrote:

Degrees of Equality: Gender Pay Differentials Among Recent Graduates - this survey shows that women graduates three years after leaving college are earning 11% less than men but as they work fewer hours than male graduates there is no overall hourly pay gap. The public sector attracted 41% of female graduates compared to only 26% of males. In the private sector men are more likely than women to receive bonuses and the bonuses they receive are larger.

This is interesting to me. We occasionally see the fact that women, on average, earn less than their male counterpart given as "evidence" that gender discrimination is still alive and well in Ireland. This report would appear to contradict that.

If women are working less hours than men and heading for the public, rather than private sector is this indicative of the fact that Irish women simply aren't as ambitious as their male counterparts?

Obviously it's difficult to analyse this without access to the methodoloy used by the survey and the data it returned but the suggestion would certainly seem to be there. What do the people of boards think?

Please, please, keep the childish "all men are bastards / Irish women are gold-digging bitches" crap to yourself, it's doesn't reflect well on anyone in AH and I'm sure Amp will ban you for it here.

imeddyhobbs

Some might say that education is wasted on women,the go to school for years then they go to 2nd and 3rd level education then they have babies and stay at home for the rest of their lives,but i dont agree with this at all:rolleyes:

Zombrex

Sleepy wrote:

If women are working less hours than men and heading for the public, rather than private sector is this indicative of the fact that Irish women simply aren't as ambitious as their male counterparts?

Not following ... how are women working less hours than men? I have never hear of a job that let women clock off an hour earlier than the males.

Or do you mean that more women move into jobs with fewer working hours?

hepcat

Public Sector employment has better working conditions for mothers (i.e. paid maternity leave / workplace creches / paid sick lieave). 3 years after college seems a bit early to be taking this into account, but perhaps it would partially explain overall statistics?

Zombrex

imeddyhobbs wrote:

Some might say that education is wasted on women,the go to school for years then they go to 2nd and 3rd level education then they have babies and stay at home for the rest of their lives,but i dont agree with this at all:rolleyes:

True, but then the same could be said of men due to something like 90% of male (and female) employees never moving beyond the lower levels of most companies (ie only 10% of the work force reach upper levels of management).

But I wouldn't, since that would be completely missing the point of education :rolleyes:

seamus

The whole problem is that few of these surveys compare like with like. In fact, without each inidivdual case being examined, it's difficult to definitively say "Men earn more than women for the same work".

From my own experience, I would say the difference between the genders at entry level is minimal, if it exists at all. Once children come along, women's ability to work changes, there is no avoiding that. Women with children are more likely to be working only half days say on Thursday and Fridays, and rushing out the door at 5pm on the dot to pick the kids up from the creche/minders.
Men on the other hand, in general won't do these things. They will keep the capacity to work an extra hour's overtime at the drop of a hat, and to spend an entire week doing 12 hour days to get a project finished. No wonder then that they receive more and bigger bonuses.

There may also be an element of work become "just a job" to women after children. We're genetically predisposed to our gender typecasts, so it may be a case that women's focus shifts onto spending the maximum amount of time with the children, whereas men's focus shifts to maximising their kill from the hunt (i.e. their salary) in order to provide for the family.

I've made some huge generalisations there, obviously some people wouldn't fit the examples. I do believe though that inequality in modern workplaces (in terms of pay) simply doesn't exist, except in the extreme minority of cases.

Sleepy

Wicknight wrote:

Not following ... how are women working less hours than men? I have never hear of a job that let women clock off an hour earlier than the males.

Or do you mean that more women move into jobs with fewer working hours?

Presumably it's that women are taking jobs with lower hours/working less over-time than men. It's not my report but that of the The Economic and Social Research Institute in Ireland

hepcat wrote:

Public Sector employment has better working conditions for mothers (i.e. paid maternity leave / workplace creches / paid sick lieave). 3 years after college seems a bit early to be taking this into account, but perhaps it would partially explain overall statistics?

Well, given that few women of this generation would be looking to have children in the first three years after graduation than men, I'd be surprised if this was a factor. Most college leavers are around 22/23 and few people I know think that far ahead at that age.

The department I work for deal almost exclusively with the public sector and from my experience, the people drawn towards that sector are attracted by the low hours, flexi-time, holiday entitlements and generally "cushy" position rather than the chances for advancement.

ESRI

ESRI wrote:

Degrees of Equality: Gender Pay Differentials Among Recent Graduates - this survey shows that women graduates three years after leaving college are earning 11% less than men but as they work fewer hours than male graduates there is no overall hourly pay gap. The public sector attracted 41% of female graduates compared to only 26% of males. In the private sector men are more likely than women to receive bonuses and the bonuses they receive are larger.[/SIZE]

Some ideas on why women work less hours:

- The average public sector worker probably work less hours than one in the average private sector.
- In a home with two working parents, more of the burden of childcare will fall on the mother, so they'll probably be less capable of working long hours doing overtime etc.
-The construction industry works longer than average hours (a lot of sites start at 8am). It also has a tiny number of women working in it. Alot of guys on sites in management/engineering/qs etc are college graduates.
- Shift work hours can really add up over the course of a week. I'd reckon that type of work has more men than women.
- A lower proportion of working age women than men are generally employed and of those who do work, more are in part time work. This is assuming the study is taking into account all college graduates, not just those working

You really need more detailed stats though

Earthhorse

Sleepy wrote:

If women are working less hours than men and heading for the public, rather than private sector is this indicative of the fact that Irish women simply aren't as ambitious as their male counterparts?

I'm of the opinion that we can analyse behaviour readily enough but analysing the motivation for that behaviour is far harder.

Maybe more women enter the public sector because they're less ambituous. Or maybe it's because they are more civic minded. Or perhaps it's that they prefer the benefits. We can speculate but never know.

I have no doubt that gender based pay discrimination occurs on occasion but there are instruments in place for addressing this.

rubadub

Of course women are paid less, I hate this topic since it is so blatantly obvious. On average they work less hours. So on average they have LESS EXPERIENCE, this point is rarely mentioned and on e of the fundamental reasons as to why they are paid less. Forget what sex they are. Say I started in a job with another guy on the same day, same qualifications and he only did half the time I did per week. After a year my pay increase should be more, I am more valuable to the company as I have more experience. A woman leaving on maternity leave in a similar job also has less experience than a similar colleague be they female or male so should not expect the same pay rises, neither should a man who chooses to take several months off to mind a new born child, or takes a career break or something else. There is nothing sexist about this, it just turns out that women work less, if it was the other way around men would be paid less and I would have no problem at all with it. It makes perfect business sense to discriminate in wage levels on account of experience, reliability etc.

rubadub

rubadub wrote:

Of course women are paid less, I hate this topic since it is so blatantly obvious. On average they work less hours. So on average they have LESS EXPERIENCE, this point is rarely mentioned and on e of the fundamental reasons as to why they are paid less. Forget what sex they are. Say I started in a job with another guy on the same day, same qualifications and he only did half the time I did per week. After a year my pay increase should be more, I am more valuable to the company as I have more experience. A woman leaving on maternity leave in a similar job also has less experience than a similar colleague be they female or male so should not expect the same pay rises, neither should a man who chooses to take several months off to mind a new born child, or takes a career break or something else. There is nothing sexist about this, it just turns out that women work less, if it was the other way around men would be paid less and I would have no problem at all with it. It makes perfect business sense to discriminate in wage levels on account of experience, reliability etc.

ESRI wrote:

Degrees of Equality: Gender Pay Differentials Among Recent Graduates - this survey shows that women graduates three years after leaving college are earning 11% less than men but as they work fewer hours than male graduates there is no overall hourly pay gap. .

..

Zombrex

Earthhorse wrote:

I'm of the opinion that we can analyse behaviour readily enough but analysing the motivation for that behaviour is far harder.

I agree ... we can look at what is happening in the work place, determine if women are being discriminated against or not etc.

But you started getting into dodgy area when you start inferring a rational to the statistics, like saying women might be less "ambitious" than men.

There are a number of problems with that proposal.

How do you define "ambition" in the first place? If a woman leaves work to raise a family does that mean she is not ambitious? You have to know what her ambition is in the first place. If it is to be a wonderful mother then it would be rather ridiculous to say she is not ambitious.

If a woman becomes a health service social worker instead of a private sector computer software designer does that mean she is less "ambitious" than a man would goes into the private sector. This womans ambition might be to help people in serious need, compare that to a software designer she is infitiately more ambitious than the designer.

To me it would be impossible to scale out such a personal thing as ambition to such a general area as men/women.

Ideas of ambition would vary hugely inside these groups (one mans idea of ambition could be to be rich, another would be to be feared by co-workers, anothers could be to well respected), let alone between the groups (as has been mentioned, women tend to put much more importance in their lives to their children. Is that not a form of ambition)

This idea only works if you assume the only ambition of humans is to make loads of money. And that is such a narrow defintion to be largely irrelevent to any serious assessment of meaning behind these statistics.

rubadub

Deleted User wrote:

.no overall hourly pay gap.

Then in my mind women are paid more! since they getting paid the same amount for a job they have less experience at. I would be rightly pissed off if somebody joined my job and got the same wage I am on straight away.

I agree with Wicknight's point on ambition, more women tend to take vocational work too. It reminds me of the old quote "cannabis robs you of your ambition, except if your ambition is to get high and have a good time". I value my lack of stress (and subsequent health) more than the money the stressful jobs I am capable and qualified to do could earn me.

Nevyn

Even if you have a man and a woman living together in the same job same stresses and hours the woman still ends up doing most of the household chores and running the house and even if there are not children to be considered there is the care of family and eldery/sick parents that falls to a lot of women.

Thaedydal

Thaedydal wrote:

Even if you have a man and a woman living together in the same job same stresses and hours the woman still ends up doing most of the household chores and running the house and even if there are not children to be considered there is the care of family and eldery/sick parents that falls to a lot of women.

Very True, a lot of the output that's not accounted for in economic mesurements is carried out by women.

I agree on the vocational work thing too. Courses on things like social policy/work tend to predominantly female. Different ambitions ≠ Less ambitious. Ambition doesn't have to been concerned totally with income. If it is there is something amiss.

Zombrex

rubadub wrote:

Then in my mind women are paid more! since they getting paid the same amount for a job they have less experience at. I would be rightly pissed off if somebody joined my job and got the same wage I am on straight away.

Well its a bit of a stretch to say they are less experience simply because they work slightly less hours, I would be sceptical of an employer who measures experience in total hours worked, it sounds lke something they would do back in the Ford factory in the 1930's

If I work for 5 year on Linux administration for a company with 9am-5pm working week and my mate works for 5 years at another company that does Linux admin 9am-5.30pm, I still wouldn't expect him to say he is more experienced than me (and therefore should get a higher salary) in Linux administration because he works on it 2.5 hours more than me a week.

rubadub

Wicknight wrote:

Well its a bit of a stretch to say they are less experience simply because they work slightly less hours, I would be sceptical of an employer who measures experience in total hours worked, it sounds lke something they would do back in the Ford factory in the 1930's

AFAIK most airlines pay pilots according to actual flight time (amongst other factors too of course). Of course some people will work better than others, but these are statistics on millions of people so if I was a gambling man I would put my money on the bet that if you got the average hourly wage of the 50% of people who have worked more hours in their life that it will be higher than those others. The difference may not be huge but I would expect it to be there.

Wicknight wrote:

If I work for 5 year on Linux administration for a company with 9am-5pm working week and my mate works for 5 years at another company that does Linux admin 9am-5.30pm, I still wouldn't expect him to say he is more experienced than me (and therefore should get a higher salary) in Linux administration because he works on it 2.5 hours more than me a week.

Over 5 years that adds up to several months more work. At what point would you expect him the think he is more experienced than you? 5 hours a week more? 20?

AngryBadger

I think a lot of this may be taken out of context. And there's very little allowance being made for the differing objecatives of the two genders. There are a lot of women who want to have kids, and be homemakers. Which is perfectly legitimate. Also in families where one parent needs to stay at home, or wants to, odds are it will be the mother, and there are numerous perfectly valid reasons for this. Women are generally better with young children than men are. A lot of men simply wouldn't want to stay at home.

I'm not saying these are irrefutable roles for the two genders, I'm just observing the reality for a lot of people. A reality which will have a huge impact on the demographic of the labour force.

hepcat

Another way of looking at this would be that rather than being less ambitious, women are less egotistical than men. I know one couple, where the woman was almost at the top of her game, work-wise. However an opportunity arose for him in another part of the country, which they had always thought of moving to, and for the sake of family and quality of life she quit her job. She will probably never have the same opportunity again in her career. She had been really ambitious and justifiably proud of her achievements, but her career still did not matter more than family and quality of life. Perhaps you could say "she was not as ambitious as her male counterpart would have been" but that may not represent the overall situation.

The Corinthian

Thaedydal wrote:

Even if you have a man and a woman living together in the same job same stresses and hours the woman still ends up doing most of the household chores and running the house and even if there are not children to be considered there is the care of family and eldery/sick parents that falls to a lot of women.

That’s quite a sexist statement and I would not be even close to convinced that it is true anymore.

simu

I think that some men may be pushed by family and school into talking up "high status" careers that require long hours and so on just because they are men whereas they might only push women into these types of jobs if they seem genuinely suited to them. I remember a past bf of mine who wanted to do teaching but was persuaded to do business at uni instead because teaching "doesn't pay well enough for a man", according to his teacher. This was actually rather sad as it was obvious he would be far better suited to teaching (and in fairness, their pay isn't all that bad). Only an ancedote, though, but perhaps it reflects a wider trend. Thoughts?

Zombrex

The Corinthian wrote:

That’s quite a sexist statement and I would not be even close to convinced that it is true anymore.

Its true in my family, and most of my friends families (all my friends as far as I know).

I would imagine it would be different with more modern families (my parents were married in the early 80s), as I don't think women put up with it as much crap these days as they did, especially now both men and women tend to live longer away from the family before getting married or moving in together.

But then I still know a lot of young couples where the woman is "responsible" for things like the dinner and washing. The idea being that the man is "responsible" for other chores around the house, though if wheter these chores are equal or not is a matter of opinion.

Nevyn

The Corinthian wrote:

That’s quite a sexist statement and I would not be even close to convinced that it is true anymore.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/TimeUse/summary_results/how_do_we_use_our_time.asp#mf

http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/bhps/2001/docs/pdf/papers/kan.pdf

The Corinthian

Wicknight wrote:

I would imagine it would be different with more modern families (my parents were married in the early 80s), as I don't think women put up with it as much crap these days as they did, especially now both men and women tend to live longer away from the family before getting married or moving in together.

How said this was not the case? I said anymore.

But then I still know a lot of young couples where the woman is "responsible" for things like the dinner and washing. The idea being that the man is "responsible" for other chores around the house, though if wheter these chores are equal or not is a matter of opinion.

I’d accept that.

Thaedydal wrote:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/TimeUse/summary_results/how_do_we_use_our_time.asp#mf

That survey does not back up what you said about "man and a woman living together in the same job same stresses and hours the woman still ends up doing most of the household chores" - it may agree that women may do more household chores, but not that they're in the same job.

http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/bhps/2001/docs/pdf/papers/kan.pdf

Her findings seem to contradict those from your first link, TBH.

rubadub

Also on the issue of different experience levels, (some?) women were forced to quit work once they got married (or was it pregnant), I am not sure but I know my mother had to leave work at one or the other times. This was years back of course, not sure when it ended or if every company did it. Point is some women were forced to give up work so lost many years of possible experience. She is working these days, and most men her age are on higher salaries since they are in the job years. The gap should close once this generation gap is closed too.

Vangelis

This is an interesting discussion. I'm not Irish myself and don't live in Ireland so I can't participate. But it could be a good idea if all of you asked your mothers, girlfriends, wives, sisters and so forth about their experiences. Stastisics is nothing like personal experience in my opinion.

simu

^^^

Well, it doesn't have to be Irish women, specifically. It would be interesting to hear about other countries too.

I think it begs the question to compare the types of jobs that men and women aim for when they graduate from college......

Looking back over the years, I've heard alot of comments from women about inequality in the workplace, and moreso on these boards. The problem though is that rather than looking at each individual industry statistics, people look at the whole country regardless of the numbers actually working there.

For example, while there is a fair representation of both sexes in the teaching industry, women are more likely to apply for primary school teaching. This is due to the benefits of shorter working hours, longer holidays, and a good starting wage to begin with. The numbers of males entering the primary school teaching industry is a fair bit lower (I don't have links, but I've observed this from having 3 teachers in my family). Secondary School teaching seems more balanced.

I don't see it as being a lack of ambition. My mother wouldn't have become the principal of a large primary school if she hadn't been ambitious. She wouldn't have achieved her Masters (with the subsequent wage increase) if she hadn't been as ambitious.

Whereas if you look at some service industries like Waste Management, or even Drivers for Bus Eireann, the numbers of women looking for positions compared to men, is much lower. I saw my first female Bus driver in cork about 3 weeks ago, as opposed to men all those other years. Perhaps there is some resistance to women entering these job sectors, but I expect its more likely because these areas aren't as appealing to women as they are to men.

Again, if you look to County Enterprise boards, see how many of the Directors are women, and you'll see that women when they choose to enter a sector, can be just as ambitious as men. :rolleyes:

I think its just that women are alot more selective about the types of jobs they will apply for, and when talking about inequality will choose to ignore their own sexes' lack of investment in less appealing industries.

Zombrex

Deleted User wrote:

This is due to the benefits of shorter working hours, longer holidays, and a good starting wage to begin with.

Would it not be that women are more interested in teaching younger children than men? I mean if it was due to shorter working hours why would men not like the idea of that? Do men want to work longer?

It still doesn't invalidate that there are more women working in an industry with shorter working hours and longer holidays than most other jobs that men enter in large numbers...... which would influence the results of the original study.

Would it not be that women are more interested in teaching younger children than men? I mean if it was due to shorter working hours why would men not like the idea of that?

As for being more interested in teaching younger children, I have no idea.

And some men do enter this industry, just not in the comparable numbers to that of women.

Zombrex

Deleted User wrote:

It still doesn't invalidate that there are more women working in an industry with shorter working hours and longer holidays than most other jobs that men enter in large numbers...... which would influence the results of the original study.

True, i wasn't questioning the validity of the statistics, just your reasoning behind it, that women enter primary school teaching because it has shorter working hours. To me that reason doesn't make much sense, since I would imagine men would be as interested in a job with shorter working hours as women if that was the only issue