{"id":46024,"date":"2018-11-19T12:01:14","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T20:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=46024"},"modified":"2018-11-19T12:01:14","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T20:01:14","slug":"the-gender-qualification-gap-women-over-invest-in-workplace-capabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/the-gender-qualification-gap-women-over-invest-in-workplace-capabilities\/","title":{"rendered":"The gender qualification gap: women \u2018over-invest\u2019 in workplace capabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nIt took a\u00a0Nobel Prize<\/a>\u00a0before Canadian physicist Donna Strickland got promoted to a\u00a0full professorship<\/a>. As anecdotal evidence that women have to prove themselves even more than men to earn a job promotion, her story is hard to beat.<\/p>\n

Looking deeper, it\u2019s more complex than outright sexism. Strickland herself dismissed suggestions her career had ever been stymied by being treated differently to her male colleagues. Her explanation for why her intellect and achievements had not been recognised by promotion to full professor? \u201cI never applied.\u201d<\/p>\n

That she had to add a Nobel Prize to her CV before she considered applying for her promotion is likely to resonate among women. Many sense they need to do more than their male counterparts to prove their worth in the workplace.<\/p>\n

But is there any statistical evidence that women need higher credentials than men to be promoted and recognised in their own profession?<\/p>\n

Much research focuses on the gender gap in\u00a0absolute outcomes<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t help with this specific question. We need a way to compare men and women on the same rung of the career ladder.<\/p>\n

To do this, I have borrowed a methodology from productivity and efficiency analysis called\u00a0stochastic frontier analysis<\/a>. My findings: women have the equivalent of up to one-and-a-half year\u2019s extra education, and nearly a full year\u2019s extra workforce experience, than what is required for their job.<\/p>\n

Measuring over-investment<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The first thing is to measure the overall capabilities of each worker. This is captured by their qualifications, years of experience, cognitive ability, language proficiency, health and traits that are shown to enhance productivity such as\u00a0conscientiousness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Next, each worker\u2019s bundle of capabilities are benchmarked against workers at a similar rung on the career ladder. This position is captured by their workplace seniority, earnings and other entitlements (such as paid parental leave and flexible work arrangements).<\/p>\n

It is then possible to identify those workers who possess a higher bundle of capabilities than the minimum required to reach their current position on the career ladder.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey<\/a>\u00a0provides a broad sample of about 5,000 workers to study.<\/p>\n

Comparing everyone else to the \u201cmost economical\u201d performers \u2013 those who have achieved their position with the lowest capabilities to their name \u2013 I\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0men over-invest by up to 4%, while women over-invest by up to 11%.<\/p>\n

These percentages, generated by stochastic frontier methodology, provide a more sophisticated picture than simple averages.<\/p>\n

If we imagine the distribution curve for \u201ccapability over-investment\u201d, it\u2019s not neatly symmetrical. It\u2019s a lop-sided bell curve. At one end are the \u201cmost economical\u201d performers. Most other workers are clustered towards this end. At the other end of the curve \u2013 the \u201ctail\u201d \u2013 are workers who exceed the minimal requirements the most.<\/p>\n

The numbers indicate the distance between these most over-qualified workers and the \u201cmost economical\u201d performers, who reached their position with the bare minimum credentials.<\/p>\n

Uncovering implicit biases<\/strong><\/h4>\n

This technique allows us to test what factors are driving women\u2019s greater accumulation of credentials. Tellingly, this over-investment isn\u2019t directly connected to children and care responsibilities. Nor is it due to women\u2019s lower confidence, a hypothesis that I tested by including a variable called\u00a0\u201cachievement motivation\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Existing evidence steers us towards implicit biases woven throughout workplace dynamics that may create higher hurdles for women to clear along the career ladder.<\/p>\n

For instance, analysis using Australian Census data finds women earn\u00a0less from their university degrees<\/a>, even when comparing men and women within the same high-earning discipline such as law, economics, dentistry and medicine. Survey data also reveals that women, when they do ask for a promotion,\u00a0do not receive the same outcomes as men<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Internalising higher hurdles<\/strong><\/h4>\n

These findings, and Strickland\u2019s story, are consistent with women tuning into \u2013 and possibly internalising \u2013 the need to jump higher hurdles. It explains why women hold back from applying for a job until they are certain of fulfilling the criteria \u2013 a behaviour\u00a0much less apparent among men<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Organisations need to more rigorously scrutinise whether their systems for assessing the merits of their male and female applicants are truly\u00a0fair and equitable<\/a>. Failing to recognise each person\u2019s capability isn\u2019t just a loss for the individual. All of society potentially loses out.<\/p>\n

Take the case of\u00a0Carol Greider<\/a>. On the same day that American molecular biologist was jointly awarded the 2009\u00a0Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine<\/a>, the National Institutes of Health (NIH)\u00a0rejected<\/a>\u00a0her application for funding to pursue her research on cancer cells that won her the Nobel Prize. The NIH grants committee deemed her work \u201cnot worthy of discussion\u201d.<\/p>\n

If we are to fully benefit from society\u2019s entire pool of knowledge and talent, that\u2019s the sort of blindness we need to correct.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Leonora Risse is the Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow at RMIT University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took a\u00a0Nobel Prize\u00a0before Canadian physicist Donna Strickland got promoted to a\u00a0full professorship. As anecdotal evidence that women have to prove themselves even more than men to earn a job promotion, her story is hard to beat. Looking deeper, it\u2019s more complex than outright sexism. Strickland herself dismissed suggestions her career had ever been stymied […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":46025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[224505],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-46024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-career-ladders"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe gender qualification gap: women \u2018over-invest\u2019 in workplace capabilities - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/the-gender-qualification-gap-women-over-invest-in-workplace-capabilities\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The gender qualification gap: women \u2018over-invest\u2019 in workplace capabilities - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It took a\u00a0Nobel Prize\u00a0before Canadian physicist Donna Strickland got promoted to a\u00a0full professorship. 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