Comments on Articles by Eli Ginzberg and Manley Irwin and Kenneth B. Stanley

Financial institutions engage in financial innovation to increase profits. The resulting increases in consumer debt, however, make low income groups vulnerable to declines in income; households headed by women are particularly vulnerable. Consumers are disadvantaged given the asymmetry between business and consumer choices. Consumers use credit for many reasons including pecuniary emulation and supporting others, support that often falls to women. The paper examines the ratio of debt to financial assets, the ratio of debt to income, the ratio of dept payments to income, and the rate of bankruptcy as indicators of the fragility of household balance sheets.     

Industrial Policies: International Restructuring and Transnationals

We investigate the way structural change (measured in terms of the composition of production) affects the female employment to population ratios in thirty-nine least developed countries. We use random and fixed effects estimation techniques on a panel data from 1991 to 2010. Our findings highlight the importance of structural change on female access to employment. Specifically, we find that, while positive changes in the agriculture sector output tend to significantly favor female absolute and relative employment, those in the services as well as the manufacturing and non-manufacturing industry sectors tend to have negative effects where significant. In addition to sectoral effects, the increased access to education, industrialization, and the decreased reproduction responsibilities are important in enhancing female production responsibilities. Nonetheless, the role of infrastructure development in lessening the unpaid care burden of women, and consequently increasing their employment opportunities in both absolute and relative terms, cannot be underestimated.     

Educational Attainment and the Gender Wage Gap: A Comparison of Young Men and Women in 1984 and 2007

This study pools data from two sources to investigate the role of educational attainment in determining the gender wage gap. The empirical analysis reveals that the returns to education remained largely unchanged for young men but declined significantly for young women over the period 1984–2007. We find significant evidence of a decline in the returns to a Bachelor's degree for young women as well as evidence of increasing wage inequality over time among young men and women with a Bachelor's degree. Also, in 2007, the gender wage gap between young men and women was largest for those with a Bachelor's degree. Further, our analysis suggests that young women with a college education may confront more discrimination in the labor market than young women without a college education. We conclude that promoting educational attainment among young women may be a necessary but not sufficient condition for addressing the gender wage gap.     

Gender Composition and Gender-based Employees＇ Turnover： An Empirical Study among Women and Men in China＇s Organization

With the disappearance of rigid employment contract and the-intenseness of competition of human resources, turnover has become a great obstacle to firm＇s well-runned development. From the point of firm＇s gender composition, the influence of gender composition on gender-based turnover in each level including leading post remains unclear. The paper explores this issue by using statistical methods on the basis of 332 individual sampling data in 65 different enterprises. The results show that proportion of male to female in high and first-line level has significantly positive influence on employee turnover for both male and female. But the proportion of male to female in middle level has significantly negative influence on employee turnover for both male and female. The whole proportion of male to female in organization has positive influence on turnover. The leader＇s gender has negative effect on turnover of male employee. Most of the above correlations are consistent with foreign researches. Referred to our results, enterprise could control turnover and improve the organization efficiency by adjusting the proportion of male to female in different levels when we make decisions on human resources management in order to attract female employees.     

Research on gender structure of accounting profession in China

One of the most striking phenomena in recent years has been the increasing proportion of women in the labour force, enabling women in many fields to use their potential and to achieve economic independence. So the gender structure analysis becomes more and more important to society and economic development. Accounting research lacks the study of gender issues. This paper intends to summarize the gender structure of accounting profession in China, and aims to explore the critical factors such as economic system of government, traditional characteristics of women, glass ceiling and psychological factors which take a great influence on the gender structure of accounting profession. A conclusion can be made that the proportion of women participation in accounting profession is higher than men, but the majority of senior accounting professionals in China are still men.     

Feminism in Transition: Chinese Culture, Ideology and the Development of the Women's Movement in China

This study is concerned with transitional gender roles and relations, illuminated through an examination of the status of women in China from the Mao era to the post-Mao era. The study reveals that the socialist state has maintained a high degree of control over gender construction in order to legitimise its historical achievement of revolution and liberation, assuming given gender identities within the official discourse of socialism. Liberation meant creating a fundamentally new and more democratic socialism within a male hegemony. This is derived from the core philosophy Confucianism in which human role relations are cultivated and developed within a male-centred world. Consequently, this discourse opens up an authoritative normalisation process that hinders women's progress in the state, in the household and in organisations. Women's new identity involves aspects of biologically given features, internalisation of the patriarchal family and social relations. Collective relational construction therefore emphasises the feminine/maternal principles of identity, denouncing separation and independence. This phenomenon seems to be pushing the whole of gender politics in China back towards more traditional sex role differences and power imbalances.     

Measurement Invariance Across Gender and Major: The Love of Money Among University Students in People’s Republic of China

This study investigates measurement invariance of the 17-item-4-factor Love of Money Scale (LOMS) (Rich, Motivator, Success, and Important) across gender and college major among university students in People’s Republic of China. Results revealed configural (factor structures) invariance across gender. Metric (factor loadings) invariance across gender was not achieved based on chi-square change, but achieved based on fit indices change between unconstrained and constrained multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA). Both configural invariance and metric invariance (chi-square change and fit indices change) were achieved across college major (law, sociology, and political science). Results of this study suggest that the Love of Money Scale, developed in the U.S., has achieved measurement invariance in this student sample in China. Future researchers will have some confidence in using this measurement when they examine the love of money in Chinese management and organizational studies.Linzhi Du is an Associate Professor of management in the Department of Management, Business School, Hohai University, in Nanjing, People’s Republic of China. Currently, he is conducting his post-doctoral research at Nanjing University in Nanjing. He received his Ph.D., degree in Social Psychology from Nankai University in Tianjin, China. His primary research interests are in the areas of organizational behavior, research method, measurement and evaluation, money attitudes, social psychology, and cross-cultural issues. He has published more than 10 journal articles and presented many papers at several international conferences around the world. He received the First Place Award of Research Excellence from the Ministry of Personnel, Jiangsu Province, China (2004).Thomas Li-Ping Tang (Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University) is a Full Professor of Management in the Department of Management and Marketing, Jennings A. Jones College of Business, Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) in Murfreesboro, TN USA. He has taught Industrial and Organizational Psychology at National Taiwan University and at MTSU. His primary research interests are in organizational behavior, the love of money, unethical behaviors in the financial domain, work motivation, compensation decisions, satisfaction, turnover, OCB, and cross-cultural issues. He has published more than 93 journal articles (e.g., Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Human Relations, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Management, Journal of Business Ethics, etc.), presented more than 160 papers in many countries, and reviewed papers for 24 journals around the world. He has received two Outstanding Research Awards (1991, 1999) and the Distinguished International Service Award (1999) at MTSU and the Best Reviewer Award form the International Management Division of the Academy of Management in Seattle, WA (2003).