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Women are better off in non-male dominated industries

Women earn more in industries where men do not dominate the workforce, according to new research carried out at Warwick Business School.

Out of 20 countries surveyed, women in Slovenia were the only group who earned more than their male colleagues, with a pay gap of 0.177.

The study showed that women who choose to follow a career where men do not dominate are much more likely to earn a higher wage.

This claim is backed up by figures in Mexico, Brazil, Sweden and Hungary, which all had the widest segregation between the sexes in aspects of work, and almost equal pay between these two groups.

In countries where women are more likely to work in the same industry as men, such as the Czech Republic, Austria and the Netherlands, they are also more likely to earn less than their male counterparts.

Research at Warwick was done in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and Lakehead in Canada, and found a correlation between segregation and gender pay gaps.

Last month, The Telegraph reported that women are less likely to ask for higher wages than men, indicating that this could be the reason for financial inequalities.

An investigation into salary negotiations from the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that gender pay gaps were much wider in industries where wage negotiations are ambiguous.

Andreas Liebbrant and John List, who led the research at NBER, said: “We find that when there is no explicit statement that wages are negotiable, men are more likely to negotiate than women.

“However, when we explicitly mention the possibility that wages are negotiable, this difference disappears, and even tends to reverse.”

Research carried out by academics at Warwick, Cambridge and Lakehead may give this study credence, as it showed that within industries with equal numbers of men and women, men are more likely to have higher paying jobs.

Dr Girts Racko, who worked on the research as teaches at Warwick Business School, indicated that in a non-male dominated profession, women have more chance to climb the career ladder.

He commented: “Higher overall segregation tends to reduce male advantage and improve the position of women.

“The greater the degree of overall segregation, the less the possibility exists for discrimination against women and so there is more scope for women to develop progressive careers.

“For instance, within nursing men disproportionately fill the senior positions…but the fewer the number of male nurses, the more the senior positions must be filled by women.

“Perhaps our most important finding is that, at least for these industrially developed countries, overall segregation and the vertical [pay gap] dimension are inversely related.

“The higher the overall segregation, the lower the advantage to men. This is directly contrary to popular assumptions.”

Dr Racko’s research was published in Sociology today, and was carried out alongside Prof. Robert Blackburn of the University of Cambridge, and Dr Jennifer Jarman of Lakehead.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Miranda Dobson .