Introduction: The Changing Status of Women

Abstract

One of the most dramatic changes in economically advanced countries during the second half of the twentieth century was the rapid increase in women's labor force participation. The proportion of women who were employed increased substantially in all European and North American countries. By 2002, the percentage among those between ages 15 and 64 reached 75.6%in Denmark and Sweden and 76.8% in Norway while even in the 3 European countries where women were least likely to be employed the proportion was no less than 52.9% in Spain, 50.4% in Greece, and 48.4% in Italy. During the same period the labor force participation of men declined in virtually all these countries1 to 72.1% in Belgium, 75.0% in Greece, and 75.8% in Italy2 (Blau/ Ferber/Winkler 2006: 376). The main reason for the decline in male labor force participation has been the increase in the age when young men leave school and this is at least equally true for women. In fact, has been a more rapid increase among women going on to post-secondary education than among men. This suggests that the increase in their labor force participation during their prime years has been even greater than the above data indicate. At the same time, however, women have made only slow progress entering most male dominated occupations and even less in reaching the top ranks of the hierarchies within occupations, notably including the professions. In Beyond Economic Man Nobel Laureate Robert Solow (1993: 153), after noting that occupational segregation by gender has been changing only slowly and specifically commenting on the fact that women's slow progress in economics is often ascribed to gender differences in intellectual style, said am not sure about that, because I have doubts about those cognitive differences and their basis. What is true, I think, is that until very recently, and may be even now, has been a tendency for male economists to patronize women, and that is just as damaging as keeping them out of the club.3 The attitude Solow describes is not, of course, unique to economics but rather permeates the other professions as well4 and helps to explain why in addition to the well-documented high degree of occupational segregation is also substantial vertical segregation within occupations, with men occupying the top positions and women clustered in the lowest ranks. In their introduction to a volume devoted to women in management published more than a decade ago Burke and Davidson (1994: 1) painted a rather more rosy picture, reporting that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of women who are pursuing managerial and professional and that have prepared themselves for careers by undertaking university education where they now comprise almost half of professional schools. Further, they reported that the graduates enter the workforce at levels comparable to their male colleagues. They too, however, go on to quote Morrison et al. (1987) that women's and men's corporate experience and career paths begin to diverge soon after this point. Further, in the second volume they published about half a decade later (Davidson/Burke 2000) they conclude that although more women have entered managerial positions, progress has been slow, that job segregation by gender within management persists, with women dominating such areas as human resources, public affairs, communications and the law, routes that rarely reach the executive level, and that male cultures continue to dominate, particularly in the industrial sector (Davidson/Burke 2000: 5-6). This issue of Management Revae examines to what extent women have made progress in management and in academia, focusing specifically on the EU countries and North America. These traditionally male occupations are of considerable interest because they are among the most prestigious and well rewarded. Beyond that, they invite study because they tend to have well-established hierarchies, for the most part associated with generally recognized titles. …