Gender, Professions and Management in the Public Sector

This article examines the location and status of women professionals in the public services, noting their small numbers in the élite sectors and at the highest levels. It also charts the rise in managerialism in the public sector, particularly in those areas where women dominate, and argues that the rise in managerialism is a gendered phenomenon which ensures that women remain in roles and occupations subordinate to men. Equal opportunities policies will have little effect while occupations numerically dominated by women remain devalued and continue to be controlled by men from outside the profession.     

Extreme jobs: the dangerous allure of the 70-hour workweek

Today's overachieving professionals labor longer, take on more responsibility, and earn more than the workaholics of yore. They hold what Hewlett and Luce call "extreme jobs", which entail workweeks of 60 or more hours and have at least five often characteristics-such as tight deadlines and lots of travel--culled from the authors' research on this work model. A project of the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force, a private-sector initiative, this research consists of two large surveys (one of high earners across various professions in the United States and the other of high-earning managers in large multinational corporations) that map the shape and scope of such jobs, as well as focus groups and in-depth interviews that get at extreme workers' attitudes and motivations. In this article, Hewlett and Luce consider their data in relation to increasing competitive pressures, vastly improved communication technology, cultural shifts, and other sweeping changes that have made high-stakes employment more prominent. What emerges is a complex picture of the all-consuming career-rewarding in many ways, but not without danger to individuals and to society. By and large, extreme professionals don't feel exploited; they feel exalted. A strong majority of them in the United States-66%-say they love their jobs, and in the global companies survey, this figure rises to 76%. The authors' research suggests, however, that women are at a disadvantage. Although they don't shirk the pressure or responsibility of extreme work, they are not matching the hours logged by their male colleagues. This constitutes a barrier for ambitious women, but it also means that employers face a real opportunity: They can find better ways to tap the talents of women who will commit to hard work and responsibility but cannot put in over-long days.     

Are men better investors than women? Gender differences in mutual fund and pension investments

The majority of consumers lack awareness of how their financial situation will be when they retire. Women face a particularly severe situation. One reason is that reformed retirement systems are disadvantageous for women. Another reason is that women are much less interested to manage their money and to make long-term investments. This paper reviews prior studies on gender differences for financial consumers. Results are inconclusive and more research is needed to clarify when and why there are gender differences. This paper also analyses how the Swedish population has allocated their pension investments within the state pension system as well as the results from a nationally representative sample of consumers. There are less significant differences between expert men and women. Most differences are between novice men and women. Men are both more profit-oriented and more motivated to make financial investments than women are.     

A content analysis of financial services magazine print ads: Are they reaching women?

The financial services industry has undergone what can only be called a ‘transformation’ over the last 25 years. Deregulation has increased competition in all sectors. Thus, firms must understand the needs of their customers. The number of women as financial services decision makers has been rapidly growing, and it is estimated that within 15 years women will represent over 65 per cent of top wealth-holders. This study looks at how the financial services industry communicates with potential women customers through print advertising. The most frequently used appeals when advertising in women's magazines are similar to those used in men's magazines, but they differ from those used in general magazines. Surprisingly, advertisers, however, do not seem to tailor their ads differently to women than to men, despite evidence that women respond to different approaches.     

Off-ramps and on-ramps: keeping talented women on the road to success

Most professional women step off the career fast track at some point. With children to raise, elderly parents to care for, and other pulls on their time, these women are confronted with one off-ramp after another. When they feel pushed at the same time by long hours and unsatisfying work, the decision to leave becomes even easier. But woe to the woman who intends for that exit to be temporary. The on-ramps for professional women to get back on track are few and far between, the authors confirm. Their new survey research reveals for the first time the extent of the problem--what percentage of highly qualified women leave work and for how long, what obstacles they face coming back, and what price they pay for their time-outs. And what are the implications for corporate America? One thing at least seems clear: As market and economic factors align in ways guaranteed to make talent constraints and skill shortages huge issues again, employers must learn to reverse this brain drain. Like it or not, large numbers of highly qualified, committed women need to take time out of the workplace. The trick is to help them maintain connections that will allow them to reenter the workforce without being marginalized for the rest of their lives. Strategies for building such connections include creating reduced-hour jobs, providing flexibility in the workday and in the arc of a career, removing the stigma of taking time off, refusing to burn bridges, offering outlets for altruism, and nurturing women's ambition.     

Executive women and the myth of having it all

When it comes to having a high-powered career and a family, the painful truth is that women in the United States don't "have it all." At midlife, in fact, at least a third of the country's high-achieving women--a category that includes high wage earners across a variety of professions--do not have children. For many, this wasn't a conscious choice: Indeed, most yearn for motherhood. So finds economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who recently fielded a nationwide survey to explore the professional and private lives of highly educated and high-earning women. Other findings are similarly disturbing. Many of these women who are raising children have suffered insurmountable career setbacks. In addition, today's young women will likely experience even starker trade-offs. In general, Hewlett's data show that, for too many women, the demands of ambitious careers, the asymmetries of male-female relationships, and the difficulties of conceiving later in life undermine the possibility of combining high-level work with family. By contrast, Hewlett's research reveals that high-achieving men continue to "have it all." Of the men she surveyed, 79% report wanting children, and 75% have them. Indeed, the more successful the man, the more likely he is to have a spouse and children. The opposite holds true for women, particularly the highest-achieving women in Hewlett's survey: At age 40, 49% of these ultra-achievers are childless, while 19% of their male peers are. The facts and figures are bleak but, the author contends, could be liberating if they spur action. Hewlett urges lawmakers and corporations to establish policies that support working parents. But recognizing that changes won't happen overnight, she exhorts young women to be more deliberate about their career and family choices.     

The economic woman in Africa

A common theme in traditional African cultures is that God made women the custodians of fire, water, and earth (the elements). Modern African cultures are still based on this belief. African women are responsible for firewood collection, water fetching, and food production. However, there are 2 distinct types of African women that are beginning to evolve as the influences of Western culture begin to set in. Westernized African women are those women who have completed at least 2 years of post secondary school training in a Western educational setting. When these women return to their native cultures, rather than taking positions of power and influence like their male colleagues, they end up working as clerks, telephone operators, and teachers. These Westernized African women rarely return to rural areas to take on the role of custodian of the elements. In cases where modernization does reach the rural areas, women are commonly excluded. Tractors are driven by men, dams and water systems are designed and built by men, trees are cut down by men, trees are cut down by men, and men make the furniture. Technology is having a marginalization effect upon the women of Africa similar to the Westernization of African women. This is not to say that Western education is something to be avoided; however, policies must be put in place to tap this great resource instead of holding it back. Rural women need to gain access to the technology that will help ease their burdens and they must be allowed into planning and decision making process since, after all, they are the custodians of the elements.     

Women as builders of the future

This article suggests that as the industrial society is in a transition crisis, women have a major role to play in building a peaceful, post-industrial society. It outlines how women have been marginalized by industrial society, and how this has allowed them to develop and work with their own sets of values and priorities. These values, which are in conflict with those of the industrial society, make women more adaptable to change and more able to facilitate change.     

Women accountants: Is the grass greener outside the profession?

Studies of professional accountancy firms have indicated a complex process of internal socialisation which shapes the professional and organisational identities of the chartered accountants working within them. These processes have acted as a mechanism for excluding women, hindering their progress and facilitating their exit. Previous evidence suggests that women leave professional accountancy firms in order to accommodate more flexibility, experience less pressure, achieve consistency of hours and hence attain a better work/life balance.In this paper we seek to examine whether the gendered work practices of professional accountancy firms influence female choice to seek alternative employment outside the professional accountancy firm environment. Specifically the paper seeks to answer two research questions (1) why and when do women leave professional accountancy firms? (2) is the working environment outside professional accountancy firms less gendered?Data was collected by means of a postal questionnaire distributed in 2005 to women who had qualified in the years 1990–1995 (n = 1022). Responses were received from 370 women, of whom 100 were employed with professional accountancy firms and 270 employed within industry. In depth interviews were also conducted with 7 partners in professional accountancy firms and 6 women who had left the professional accountancy environment to pursue employment elsewhere.Whilst there was evidence that professional accountancy firms continue to reflect gendered working norms practices, rather than compound the dominant view, this study suggests that the primary reason women leave professional accountancy firms is to seek more interesting work as opposed to obtaining more flexibility in their working lives. In addition, the experiences of the women, the working patterns, and rates of progression were similar irrespective of employment type.     

Ways women lead

Women managers are succeeding not by adopting the traditional command-and-control leadership style but by drawing on what is unique to their experience as women. According to a study the author conducted for the International Women's Forum, men and women in similar managerial jobs make the same amount of money and experience roughly the same degree of work-family conflict. But when they describe their leadership styles, vast differences arise. Men are much more likely than women to view leadership as a series of transactions with subordinates, and to use their position and control of resources to motivate their followers. Women, on the other hand, are far more likely than men to describe themselves as transforming subordinates' self-interest into concern for the whole organization and as using personal traits like charisma, work record, and interpersonal skills to motivate others. Women leaders practice what the author calls "interactive leadership"--trying to make every interaction with coworkers positive for all involved by encouraging participation, sharing power and information, making people feel important, and energizing them. In general, women have been expected to be supportive and cooperative, and they have not held long series of positions with formal authority. This may explain why women leaders today tend to be more interactive than men. But interactive leadership should not be linked directly to being female, since some men use that style and some women prefer the command-and-control style. Organizations that are open to leadership styles that play to individuals' strengths will increase their chances of surviving in a fast-changing environment.     

Locating women's rights in the Blue Revolution

This paper explores the role of water in women's lives, and the impact that a Blue Revolution would have on them. The article is about women who have managed and conserved water resources but whose voices go unheard, and whose knowledge is ignored. It explores the system related to water, which is blind to the needs of women and continues to be inclined in favour of male technologies and ideologies. The paper concludes that a Blue Revolution as envisaged by a male designed and implemented policy in the market place would keep women out. The initiation of recent polices which have started to treat it as a product in the market economy and not a service, is endangering women's choices for a better life. Planning based on technocratic and bureaucratic groups without the people who have lived and coped with nature, it ascertains will intensify gender-based differences. It suggests that any future hydrological regime maintenance must acknowledge women's rights. It concludes that an emphasis on both men and women's participation and a decentralised policy planning which encourages the use of local knowledge, would bring about a Blue Revolution that is close to people.     

Multidimensional Screening in a Monopolistic Insurance Market

We consider a population of individuals who differ in two dimensions, their risk type (expected loss) and their risk aversion, and solve for the profit-maximising menu of contracts that a monopolistic insurer puts out on the market. Our findings are threefold. First, it is never optimal to fully separate all the types. Second, if heterogeneity in risk aversion is sufficiently high, then some high-risk individuals (the risk-tolerant ones) will obtain lower coverage than some low-risk individuals (the risk-averse ones). Third, because women tend to be more risk averse than men (in that the risk aversion distribution for women first-order stochastically dominates that for men), gender discrimination may lead to a Pareto improvement.     

Global work force 2000: the new world labor market

Just as there are global markets for products, technology, and capital, managers must now think of one for labor. Over the next 15 years, human capital, once the most stationary factor in production, will cross national borders with greater and greater ease. Driving the globalization of labor is a growing imbalance between the world's labor supply and demand. While the developed world accounts for most of the world's gross domestic product, its share of the world work force is shrinking. Meanwhile, in the developing countries, the work force is quickly expanding as many young people approach working age and as women join the paid work force in great numbers. The quality of that work force is also rising as developing countries like Brazil and China generate growing proportions of the world's college graduates. Developing nations that combine their young, educated workers with investor-friendly policies could leapfrog into new industries. South Korea, Taiwan, Poland, and Hungary are particularly well positioned for such growth. And industrialized countries that keep barriers to immigration low will be able to tap world labor resources to sustain their economic growth. The United States and some European nations have the best chance of encouraging immigration, while Japan will have trouble overcoming its cultural and language barriers.     

Businesswomen and financial management: Three eighteenth-century case studies

This article considers how three English businesswomen managed the financial aspects of their enterprises in the 'long' eighteenth century. The discussion focuses on two areas: their ability to keep adequate records and their management of trade credit. Whereas earlier studies of women's credit transactions have argued for its specifically 'feminine' nature, it will be demonstrated that men and women conducted business credit dealings on gender neutral lines. Three case studies are presented to show that the success or failure of a woman's business depended on her commercial competence, not her gender.     

货币政策的非对称性:基于前景理论的解释

利用前景理论及其扩展研究不同货币政策下人们的行为选择及其变化,结果表明:不同的货币政策下,收入水平和边际利得的不同会促使人们相应地调整参考点和权重,使总价值函数处于不同的位置(税收和通胀也都对参考点和总价值具有重要的影响),使人们呈现出不同的风险偏好,并采取不同的应对措施,从而导致了货币政策的非对称性.     

Irish women accountants and career progression: a research note

This article presents the findings of research into the career progression of Irish Chartered Accountants which compares the career progress of men and women and examines the obstacles to progression encountered by women. The research indicates that women face obstacles that are not encountered by their male counterparts and that career progression is frequently made at substantial cost to their personal lives.     

Regulating Wall Street: The Dodd–Frank Act and the New Architecture of Global Finance,a review

This article is a review of a 531 page book that in turn is a review and evaluation of the 2319 page Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed by Congress on July 16, 2010. The overriding theme of the book is to pose two approaches to attaining financial stability in the future. One approach is to establish a council of wise men and women supported by an army of highly skilled professional financial economists to formulate and implement regulations designed to prevent future financial crises that wreak havoc on the real economy and require financial support from taxpayers. This is the approach of the Dodd–Frank Act. The second approach proposed by the authors of this book is to design a taxing system that taxes systemically important financial institutions on the basis of their contribution to systemic risk. Borrowing ideas from the literature on the taxation of negative externalities their view is that financial institutions that create crises should pay for the clean-up. They also argue that requiring the financial polluters to pay for the creation of systemic risk will reduce the supply of systemic risk. The reader is invited to decide which approach is best.     

Women as a business imperative

In 1989, Felice N. Schwartz's HBR article "Management Women and the New Facts of Life" generated a huge debate over the rules established by corporations in their handling of women executives. Now in "Women as a Business Imperative," Schwartz follows up with practical insights about the costs companies incur in passing over qualified businesswomen. In the form of a memo to a fictional CEO, Schwartz describes how the atmosphere within most companies is corrosive to women and must change. Preconceptions harbored by male senior managers about women are so deeply ingrained that many men are not even aware of them. Yet senior managers must help women advance. Those companies that accept their responsibility to make radical change--both in women's treatment and in family support--can improve their bottom lines enormously. Treating women as a business imperative is the equivalent of creating a unique R&D product for which there is great demand. Most companies ignore child care and other family concerns. Many companies hire women to ensure mere adequacy and avoid litigation. Women's ambitions and energies are stifled by such businesses at the same time that women have demonstrated their competence and potential in the best business schools. High turnover results. However, the restraints that now hold women back can be loosened easily. CEOs and other senior managers must support their female employees by (1) acknowledging the fundamental difference between women and men--the biological fact of maternity; (2) allowing flexibility for women and men who need it; (3) providing training that takes advantage of women's leadership potential; and (4) eliminating the corrosive atmosphere and the barriers that exist for women in the workplace.     

Two-earner households and housing demand: The effect of the wife's occupational choice

This article analyzes the impact of the occupational choice of married women in two-earner households on the level of housing expenditures. In recent years married women have chosen professional and managerial occupations with increasing frequency. Because entry and exit from such occupations is costly, households will tend to view the incremental income as permanent. To analyze the housing market impact of this trend, a housing expenditure function is estimated using a national data set for the 1979 to 1987 period. The results indicate that households in which the wife is employed in a professional or managerial occupation spend considerably more on housing for given levels of current income. Furthermore, the effect is most pronounced among move-up homebuyers. To the extent that recent trends in female occupational choice continue, the impact on the housing market may be substantial.     

Recessions and Health: The Long-Term Health Consequences of Responses to the Coronavirus*

The lockdown measures that were implemented in the spring of 2020 to stop the spread of COVID-19 are having a huge impact on economies in the UK and around the world. In addition to the direct impact of COVID-19 on health, the following recession will have an impact on people's health outcomes. This paper reviews economic literature on the longer-run health impacts of business-cycle fluctuations and recessions. Previous studies show that an economic downturn, which affects people through increased unemployment, lower incomes and increased uncertainty, will have significant consequences on people's health outcomes both in the short and longer term. The health effects caused by these adverse macroeconomic conditions will be complex and will differ across generations, regions and socio-economic groups. Groups that are vulnerable to poor health are likely to be hit hardest even if the crisis hit all individuals equally, and we already see that some groups such as young workers and women are worse hit by the recession than others. Government policies during and after the pandemic will play an important role in determining the eventual health consequences.