Barriers to Women's Career Success: Human Capital, Career Choices, Structural Determinants, or Simply Sex Discrimination

Don't Give-Up: Why some intervention schemes encourage suboptimal behavior

Many social challenges stem from individuals' tendency to prefer immediately rewarding but suboptimal behaviors ("Give-Up" options) over more costly endeavors that yield much better outcomes in the long run ("Try" options). For example, many people forgo the long-term benefits of formal education, healthy diets, learning new technologies, and even finding true love. This paper examines various incentivization programs that combine external rewards and punishments to discourage such counterproductive behaviors, which often result in only temporary behavioral change. Our findings suggest that some interventions' limited impact may be due to their focus on only shifting behaviors from "Give-Up" (e.g., dropping out of college, avoiding the gym) to "Try" (e.g., attending college, exercising regularly), without promoting sufficient exploration of these "Try" options. Yet exploration of the long-term benefits of "Trying" may be crucial to increase the chances of long-term learning and commitment. Using a simplified abstraction of this dilemma, our results show a high tendency to choose "Give-Up" options prior to intervention. Examination of four different incentivization strategies suggests that only rewarding exploration of new "Try" options is a straightforward strategy to increase exploration and optimal choice. Punishing both the selection of "Give-Up" options and the choice to exploit suboptimal "Try" options produced similar results. Other common guidance strategies were less effective, as these strategies simply tended to replace one suboptimal behavior with another. Surprisingly, punishments seemed to be a relatively more successful incentive than rewards. We discuss how these insights can help guide policy aiming to improve long-term outcomes through incentivization.

The Covid Shift: working women's punctuated equilibrium

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework for examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on working women.

Design/methodology/approach

This conceptual paper on women in the formal workforce is grounded within the leadership and organization development literature.

Findings

The authors posit the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent instability in the US workforce, particularly among women and mothers, is effectively examined through the lens of punctuated equilibrium. Specifically, the widespread disruption initiated by the pandemic provides an opportunity for transformative change within organizations and society. Furthermore, working women impacted during this punctuated equilibrium are likewise positioned for transformation. The authors suggest the pandemic and its impact on the formal workforce can be leveraged for individual and organizational development as well as transformation, resulting in advancement toward self-authorship and increased equity within organizations, respectively.

Originality/value

This paper offers a novel integration and application of three leadership and organization development concepts: punctuated equilibrium, the self-authorship theory and Theory U, to better understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on working women.

Psychosocial Barriers to Female Leadership: Motivational Gravity in Ghana and Tanzania

Women continue to be underrepresented in management globally, including the so-called "develop ing" countries, where gender diversity is especially crucial to business development. From Ghana, 120 experienced employees and 83 future managers from Tanzania's University of Dar-es-Salaam, read scenarios depicting male or female achievers, and predicted what proportions of co-workers and bosses would display encouragement, discouragement, or apathy. In Ghana, male respondents predicted encouragement from males towards male and female achievers but discouragement from females towards female achievers, while female respondents predicted more discouragementgenerally. In Tanzania, male respondents also predicted discouragement from females towards female achievers, while female respondents predicted the exact reverse. Such similarities and differences, across culturally diverse contexts in West and East Africa, highlight both global and local barriers to women in development.

Career success of older workers: the influence of social skills and continuous learning ability

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the competencies social skills and continuous learning ability on career success and career satisfaction among workers aged 50 or over.

Design/methodology/approach

– A mixed methods approach consisted of 920 surveys and 11 semi-structured interviews with working individuals aged 50 or above, registered at a job agency specialized in older employees in the Netherlands. Multiple regression and content analysis were used to analyze the findings.

Findings

– The survey showed a positive relationship between the competencies and career success and career satisfaction However, the interviews revealed that not all older workers perceived the need to continuously stay up-to-date as positive, pushing them into retirement.

Originality/value

– The influence of competencies on career success and career satisfaction of older workers has received only little attention from researchers.

International-local remuneration differences across six countries: do they undermine poverty reduction work?

Despite the rhetoric of a single global economy, professionals in poorer countries continue to be remunerated differently depending on whether they are compensated at a local vs. international rate. Project ADDUP (Are Development Discrepancies Undermining Performance?) surveyed 1290 expatriate and local professionals (response rate = 47%) from aid, education, government, and business sectors in (1) Island Nations (Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands), (2) landlocked economies (Malaŵi, Uganda), and (3) emerging economies (India, China). Difference in pay was estimated using purchasing power parity, from the World Bank's World Development Indicators 2007. Psychological measures included self-reported pay and benefits (remuneration), self-attributed ability, remuneration comparison, sense of justice in remuneration, remuneration-related motivation, thoughts of turnover and thoughts about international mobility. We included control measures of candour, culture shock, cultural values (horizontal/vertical individualism/collectivism), personality (from the "big five"), job satisfaction and work engagement. Controlling for these and country (small effects) and organization effects (medium), (a) pay ratios between international and local workers exceeded what were perceived to be acceptable pay thresholds among respondents remunerated locally; who also reported a combination of a sense of relative (b) injustice and demotivation; which (c) together with job satisfaction/work engagement predicted turnover and international mobility. These findings question the wisdom of dual salary systems in general, expose and challenge a major contradiction between contemporary development policy and practice, and have a range of practical, organizational, and theoretical implications for poverty reduction work.

Perceived stress following race-based discrimination at work is associated with hypertension in African-Americans. The metro Atlanta heart disease study, 1999-2001

There is increasing evidence of an association between stress related to job strain and hypertension. However little data exist on stress from racism and race-based discrimination at work (RBDW). The objective of this study was to investigate whether blood pressure (BP) outcomes are positively associated with stressful racism towards African-Americans from non-African-Americans as well as RBDW from other African-Americans. The metro Atlanta heart disease study was a population-based study which included 356 African-American men and women, aged >/=21 years, residing in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia during 1999-2001. Perceived stress was self-reported by 197 participants for racism from non-African-Americans and 95 for RBDW from other African-Americans. Sitting systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) BP were taken at a clinic visit and was the average of the last two of three BP measures. Hypertension was self-reported as physician-diagnosed high BP on 2 or more visits. Logistic and least-squares linear regression models were fit accordingly and separately for each type of stress, adjusting for age, gender, body mass index, and coping abilities. The likelihood of hypertension significantly increased with higher levels of perceived stress following racism from non-African-Americans, but not from RBDW from other African-Americans; adjusted odd ratios (95% CI) were 1.4 (1.0, 1.9) and 1.2 (0.8, 1.5) per unit increment of stress. The adjusted magnitude of SBP and DBP increase between low and very high level of stress, conversely, was greater when RBDW originated from African-Americans than racism from non-African-Americans. Stressful racism and RBDW encounters are associated with increased SBP and DBP and increased likelihood of hypertension in African-Americans. Future studies with a larger sample size are warranted to further explore these findings for mechanistic understanding and occupational policy consideration regarding stress risk reduction.

Women and career development: a decade of research

This chapter reviews the vocational experiences of women as they have been revealed in the literature during the past decade. The review considers primarily empirical literature; findings are sampled relative to women's self-concept development, readiness for vocational choices, actual choices made, work-force entry, experiences at work, and retirement. Suggestions are made regarding the next generation of research on women and career development.