male-female power differences at work: a comparison of supervisors and policymakers

Male-Female Power Differences at Work: A Comparison of Supervisors and Policymakers"

Marina A. Adler, University of Maryland

This study estimates differences in access to power positions and the degree to which supervisors and policymakers exercise work power among women and men. The relative importance of sex and other relevant characteristics in determining the acquisition of supervisor and policymaker positions is assessed. Furthermore, the attainment of supervisory authority and strategic power of male and female supervisors and policymakers is analyzed. The results of logistic regression analyses suggest that regardless of other characteristics men have significantly more access to supervisor and policymaker positions than women. Nevertheless, ordinary least squares regression analyses demonstrate that once individuals are in supervisory or policy-making positions, sex is not an important determinant of the degree of work power. Additional results indicate that occupational status (evaluated by Duncan's Socio-Economic Index) but not sex segregation by occupation affects the acquisition of work power.

Introduction

Despite the fact that women make up more than 45 percent of the U.S. work force, they remain greatly underrepresented in decision-making positions. In 1988, women held only about 39 percent of all executive, adminis- trative, and managerial jobs combined (US Bureau of the Census, 1990). Furthermore, women in the higher organizational ranks are largely segmented in the lower-paying and less powerful occupations. Variations in the work experiences and the occupational segregation of women and men in general have been well documented in the literature (Rosenfeld 1983; Blau 1984; Coverman 1986). In addition, career advancement in the contemporary workplace is often based on rather undefined and arbitrary criteria, such as networking capabilities, potential managerial qualities, personality characteristics, and perceived loyalty (Kanter 1977; Kluegell978). These standards may facilitate discriminatory practices that deny women equal access to authority positions or entail less work power for women than for men within higher ranks. Consequently the central empirical questions of this investigation are whether women indeed (a) have less access to supervisory

Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 64, No. 1 , February 1994:37-55 "1994 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819

38 MARINA A. ADLER

and policy-making positions, and/or (b) exercise less work power within those positions. Answers to these questions may point to avenues for reducing gender inequality at work.

The hierarchical nature of the work setting often defines the ability to control resources along the lines of ascribed status (Kluegel 1978); thus, women tend to be disadvantaged in terms of their access to and attainment of authority positions (Kanter 1977; Wolf and Fligstein 1979; Jaffee 1989). While workplace stratification is a major determinant of structural inequality, power in the workplace (or control over subordinates and organizational resources) is an essential component of work stratification (Spaeth 1984). Nevertheless, the conceptualization of the degree of power at work in continuous terms (degrees) in addition to an exclusively categorical analysis (class) has received scant attention in the literature. Although there is ample evidence that women are generally disadvantaged in terms of power in the workplace, competing hypotheses about the nature of that power and possible explanations for gender differences persist. In order to investigate whether women lack access to power positions and/or whether women have less power within supervisor and policymaker positions, this study empirically estimates the power gap between U.S. women and men in the work setting.

For the analysis of power at work, Wendy Wolf and Neil Fligstein (1979, p. 236) have defined authority as “legitimated control over the work process of others,” while Joe Spaeth (1985, p. 603) specified job power as “control over organizational resources.” When specifically addressing women’s power in the workplace, Dorothy Remy and Larry Sawers (1984, p. 167) emphasized women’s “capacity to shape their work environment.” In a similar vein, Rosabeth Kanter (1977) considered power in terms of the individual’s ability to mobilize resources and people. She saw “empowerment” as crucial for women because it generates “more autonomy, more participation in decisions, and more access to resources” (Kanter 1977, p. 166). According to Kanter, power “is associated with the exercise of discretion, the chance to demonstrate out-of-the-ordinary capacities in the job, handling uncertainties rather than routine events; with access to visi- bility; and with the relevance of the job to current organizational problems” (1977, pp. 275-276).

Studies have shown that men generally have more power at work than women (Wolf and Fligstein 1979; Parcel and Mueller 1983; Spaeth 1985; Jaffee 1989). Occupations that have traditionally led to power positions and high rewards, such as professional or managerial jobs, have until recently been out of reach for women. The types of work women have historically engaged in were often jobs that are not in direct contradiction

MALE-FEMALE POWER DIFFERENCES AT WORK 39

to the normative female role, such as occupations involving care for the ill, children and homes. Such work is characterized by a lack of unionization, low wages, and limited opportunities for advancement to power positions (Hareven 1982; DiPrete and Soule 1988). In general, women are overrepresented in lower-paying, lower-authority occupations that lack job ladders (Kanter 1977; Coverman 1986).

Wolf and Fligstein’s (1979, p. 244) research has demonstrated that “the lower the level of authority considered, the more egalitarian is the process of acquiring that level of authority, at least with respect to education.” These authors found that when human capital and family characteristics are controlled for, women’s access to higher levels of authority, as measured by the ability to hire and fire, was restricted. The qualitative distinction between higher- and lower-power positions is of relevance to the present study. Policymakers occupy higher-power positions in the organizational structure than supervisors (Jaffee 1989). Consequently one might expect the gender gap in power to be more pronounced among policymakers than among supervisors. Wolf and Fligstein (1979) have argued that generally most of the sex differences in authority returns are due to differences in job characteristics such as occupational status and sex-typing. Even though different indicators of authority were used, both Patricia Roods (1981) and Wolf and Fligstein’s (1979) studies concluded that, despite similarity of occupational status (Duncan’s Socio-Economic Index- SEI), men had more authority than women. Moreover, the finding that women are overrepresented in the working class is also consistent with women’s lower likelihood to be in positions of authority than men (Wolf and Fligstein 1979; Wright, Costello, Hachen, and Spraegue 1982; Parcel and Mueller 1983).

Although the need for increased attention to intraclass variation in power has been recognized (Robinson and Kelley 1979; Kalleberg and Griffin 1980), particularly with respect to gender (Thomas 1982), remark- ably little research has focused on the power gap at work based on sex. Since Wolf and Fligstein’s (1979) ground-breaking study, the impact of sex on the exercise of power in the workplace has not been investigated exten- sively. However, Charles Mueller and Toby Parcel (1986) have documented gender differences in authority and earnings among supervisors. David Jaffee’s (1989) analysis also found evidence for a persistent gender gap in the degree of supervisory and decison-making authority among employees that could not be attributed to differences in human capital. However, the question remains whether these patterns also pertain to the exercise of power among supervisors and policymakers.

Overall, the literature on gender differences in work power reveals

40 MARINA A. ADLER

that work power is a function of educational and occupational attainment (Wolf and Fligstein 1979; Jaffee 1989). Although women have made educational and occupational status gains in recent years, occupational segregation remains instrumental in limiting the status of women in the labor market (Jaffee 1989). James Baron and William Bielby (1984) demonstrated that firms are highly sex-segregated and that the nature of the work performed by employees varies by sex. Although men and women may have similar SEI scores on average, sex segregation by occupation results in men’s higher authority and income (Roos 1981). Since occupational status per se does not distinguish among the different specific work activities and tasks performed by women and men, similar SEI scores mask the distributional power and income differences (England and McLaughlin 1979). Research has also shown that women’s human capital does not translate into work power and income in the same manner as men’s, even when other characteristics are controlled for (Wolf and Fligstein 1979; Roos 1981). It is evident that educational and occupational differences do not explain away the gender gap in work power. Women clearly face a different opportunity structure than men in regard to constraints, such as those posed by family responsibilities. Given the current occupational structure, one can expect that women have less access to power positions than do men and that working part-time or in a female-dominated occupation lowers the degree of supervisory authority and strategic power.

Model and Hypotheses

It is generally agreed that work power is not a one-dimensional phenomenon (Aiken and Hage 1970; Hage 1980; Spaeth 1984, 1985; Mueller and Parcel 1986). Spaeth (1985) argued that organizations consist of a hierarchical structure of positions, which in turn correspond to jobs. Consequently, “a job is the set of work activities associated with a position in an organization . . . and the work activities characteristic of the positions manifest authority” (Spaeth 1985, p. 605). Spaeth’s conceptualization regards work power as being ultimately located in the work activities of employees in organizations.

Previous studies have operationalized supervisory authority dichoto- mously: that is, whether an individual does or does not supervise others, hire and fire, or decide on the work tasks and pace of others (Wright and Perrone 1977; Robinson and Kelley 1979; Wolf and Fligstein 1979). Other researchers use these measures as ordinal scales, indicating the extent to which a person exercises these forms of authority (Tannenbaum and Rozgonyi 1986), or as an index of authority (Aiken and Hage 1970; Kluegel 1978; Jaffee 1989). Erik Olin Wright (1980, 1985) developed “authority”


and “manager” indices by combining separate measures of various forms of authority. The present research relies on several components of Wright’s indices.

For the present study, power in the workplace is defined as the degree to which an individual controls (a) the entire organizational structure (here termed strategic power) and (b) the work situation of subordinates (here termed supervisory authority). A key feature of this conceptualization is control over resources at work (Spaeth 1984, 1985). The two forms of work power relate to supervision and/or sanctioning of personnel, to regulating subordinates’ work situation, or to decision-making at the organizational level. Whereas supervisory authority relates to direct involvement with the work process and tasks of subordinates, strategic power denotes decision- making at the organizational level. The latter is more far-reaching, more remote, and less easily attained than supervisory authority.

The power structure of the workplace is assumed to be a multidimen- sional system that parallels and interacts with class-based and gender-based stratification. Access to power position varies within class categories by sex. Thus, the probability that an individual possesses a specific type of work power is not random. Furthermore, the degree of control over particular work-related factors also varies by sex, authority position, and sex-typed occupation. Therefore, if women and men have similar individual resources, under similar structural market conditions, yet the women are less likely to be supervisors and policymakers than the men, sex is a determinant of access to work power. In addition, sex and occupational segregation de- termine the degree of work power among supervisors and policymakers.

This research investigates sex differences (a) in obtaining a supervisory or policy-making position; and (b) in the determinants of work power among supervisors and policymakers. There are three competing explanations for women’s disadvantaged status in respect to power at work: (1) Women have less access to power positions; (2) despite similar access to power positions as men, women attain less power in those positions; or (3) women lack both equal access to power positions and equal work power in those positions. To assess these arguments, the following hypotheses are tested. H1: Men have a higher probability of being supervisors and policymakers

than women. This is expected even after taking various other factors (race, marital status, children, work experience, firm size, occupational prestige, full-time employment, percentage females in an occupation) into account.

H2: Employment in a female-typed occupation and part-time employment reduce the probability of being a supervisor and policymaker.

42 MARINA A. ADLER

H3: Among supervisors and policyrnakers, men have higher levels of supervisory authority and strategic power than women. This is expected even with control for other individual and employment-related factors.

H4: Employment in a female-typed occupation and part-time employment reduce the degree of both forms of work power among supervisors and policymakers.

Methodology

The Sample

The data for this study (N = 1,150; 531 women and 619 men) are drawn from the 1980 Class Structure and Class Consciousness Study U.S. Survey (Wright 1985). Retired, unemployed, and self-employed workers, full-time homemakers, and farmworkers, were excluded from the analysis, since this study focuses on power in wage labor employment. The data include post hoc weights that adjust the sample characteristics to the 1980 Current Population Survey “occupation by education” table for the employed population because of the unintentional oversampling of high-status respondents (Wright 1985).

Dependent Variables

The power measures refer to (a) supervisor position and policymaker position, and (b) the degree to which supervisors and policymakers have control over resources at work. Two dichotomous variables indicating respondents’ supervisory and policymaker position (yes = 1; no = 0) serve as dependent variables in the logistic regression analyses. The strategic power index measures the organizational policy decision-making capacity of the respondent (see Appendix 1). All five items solicited either yes (1) or no (0) responses, which were then summed. Thus, the index ranges from 0 (no strategic power) to 5 (very high strategic power). The supervisory authority index is composed of seven items measuring both sanctioning and task authority (Appendix 1). These items form an index ranging from 0 (no supervisory authority) to 7 (very high supervisory authority).

Factor analysis with principal oblique rotation resulted in two factors, representing supervisory authority and strategic power, respectively. The principal components analysis, based on the Kaiser criterion, created two factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 .OO, which together account for about 68 percent of the total variance in work power. The final homo- geneity coefficient, Cronbach’s alpha, is .88 for strategic power and .92 for supervisory authority.


Independent Variables

Sex is coded 0 for females and 1 for males and education is defined as the number of years of schooling completed. In consonance with Jaffee (1 989), a variable indicating percentage of females in an occupation is used to account for sex segregation of the labor market. This variable was con- structed by assigning the corresponding percentage of female incumbents to each three-digit census occupational category. The dichotomous full- time variable designates thirty-five or more hours usually worked per week on the main job, including paid and unpaid overtime.

Race, marital status, children at home, work experience, socioeconomic status, and firm size serve as control variables. Race controls for whether the respondent is nonwhite (0) or white (1). Marital status is coded 1 for currently living with a spouse or partner and 0 for all others. Childcare responsibilities are measured by a dummy variable that indicates whether the respondent had children under age 16 living at home (1 = yes; 0 = no). Work experience combines self-reported years spent at current and former two jobs.' The SEI is based on Duncan's three-digit classification of the 1970 occupational census codes. Size of establishment2 indicates the number of employees in the entire organization or corporation the respondent works for, including those in multiple locations. This variable is used in its logged form (natural logarithm) to adjust its skewed distribution.

Logic of Analysis

The bivariate analysis of sex differences involves chi-square for categorical variables and t for continuous variables. Two separate logistic regression procedures are used to assess the determinants of supervisor or policymaker position. Next, logistic regressions were performed for women and men separately to examine the probability of holding a supervisory or policy-making position by sex. Sex interactions with the independent variables were also tested. Finally, the effects of the individual and employment-related characteristics on levels of supervisory authority and strategic power are estimated by ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression analyses for supervisors and policymakers separately with sex in the equations.

Results

The means and standard deviations of the variables in the analysis (Table 1) reveal not only that men are more likely to be supervisors and policymakers, but that they also have on average higher levels of supervisory authority and strategic power than women. These findings support

Table 1 Means and Standard Deviations for the Sample Characteristics by Sex

(N = 1,030)

Variable Women Men Gender gap

(N = 485) (N = 551) P <

Supervisor

Policymaker

Supervisory authority

Strategic power

Education (years)

Full-time

070 Female occupation

SEI (Duncan)

White

Married

Children at home

Work experience (years)

Firm size (employees)

Firm size (logged)

.35 (-48) .25

(.43) 1.38

(2.30) .57

(1.24) 12.65 (2.41) .80

(.40> 62.25

(30.28) 44.12

(21 .oo) .85

(-36) .49

(30) .53 (30) 9.89

(8.41) 7,137

(14,630) 7.01

(2.71)

.48 (-50) .35

(-48) 2.02

(2.64 .93

(1.62) 12.72 (2.50)

.93 (-26)

17.03 (20.21) 39.66

(23.79) .85

(-35) .65

(-48) .54

(.50) 13.15

(10.43) 9,005

(1 7,932) 7.15

(2.72)

.001

.001

.01

.01

NS

.001

.001

.01

NS

.001

NS

.001

.05

NS

Note. Sample size based on respondents with information on both supervisor and policymaker status; significance for sex differences is based on ~2 and t; standard deviations in parentheses.


Hypotheses 1 and 3 at the bivariate level. While 48 percent of the male respondents and only about 35 percent of the female respondents are supervisors, the numbers for policymakers are much lower for both sexes: 35 percent for men and 25 percent for women. These patterns confirm that policy-making happens at a higher organizational level and thus is less common than supervising.

Table 2 contains the results of the logistic regression estimates for access to supervisor and policymaker positions, and since sex is a significant determinant of power positions, separate logistic regression estimates also are presented for women and men in Table 3. In support of the first hypothesis, men are significantly more likely than women to be supervisors as well as policymakers, even when education, full-time employment, occupational segregation, SEI, race, family responsibilities, work experience, and firm size are taken into account. Furthermore, this sex effect is much stronger for access to policymaker positions (.312; p < .001) than to supervisor positions (.197; p < .05).

Partial support is found for the second hypothesis. Table 2 shows that being employed in a female-dominated occupation has a negative effect on the probability of becoming a supervisor (- .003, p < .05), but not on that of becoming a policymaker ( - .OOOl; ns). Thus, sex segregation is less of a problem in the higher organizational ranks. There is no significant effect of occupational segregation among women and men (see also Table 3). Because the measure of occupational sex segregation used here does not isolate segregation at the firm or particular job level, this variable may underestimate the actual extent of the problem. However, sex and percentage females in an occupation are highly correlated (r = .66). Full-time employment seems to be more of an asset for gaining supervisory status (.383; p < .01) than for policymaker status (.141; ns). Thus, time committed to the job is a factor in gaining access to supervisory positions but has no relevance for higher organizational positions. Neither part-time employment nor occupational segregation seem to selectively prevent women’s access to power more than men’s.

Education seems more important for the attainment of policy-making positions (. 109; p < .001) than attainment of supervisory positions (.022; ns). This effect is stronger for women than men, in that the interaction effect between sex and education is negative and significant (t = - 2.186; p < .05). Thus, when women attain higher levels of education, their entry into policymaker positions is less restricted. Occupational status clearly increases the probability of gaining a power position in general. Nevertheless, men’s probability of attaining policymaker status based on occupational prestige is higher than women’s (t = 3.932; p < .001). Minority status does not

Table 2 Logistic Regression Coefficients for Supervisor and Policymaker

Status, with Control for Other Characteristics

Variables Supervisor Policymaker

Sex (male = 1)

Education

Full-time

070 Female occupation

SEI

White

Married

Children

Work experience

Firm size (logged)

Intercept

Goodness of fit ( ~ 2 )

Number of cases

.197* (. 087) .022

(.018) .383**

(.112) - .003* (.001) .011***

(.002) .035

(.095) .OOO8

(. 073) .133

(.07 1) - .om1 (.ow - .026 (.014)

3.924

1,058.67 p = .43

1,063

.312***

.log*** (. 020) .141

(.117) '-.OOol

(-001)

(.ow

(.095)

.012***

.268* (.113) .024

- .003 ( .077) .002 (.ow - .056***

(. 090)

(.015)

2.513

1,056.67 p = .24

1,057

Note. Standard errors are presented in parentheses; the interaction effect for sex and education is statistically significant for policymakers (t = - 2.186); the interaction effect for sex and SEI is statistically significant for policymakers (t = 3.932). *p c .05. **p < .01.

***p < .001.

Table 3 Logistic Regression Coefficients for Supervisor Status and

Policymaker Status by Sex

Supervisor Policymaker

Variable Women Men Women Men

Education .026 ( .027)

Full-time .373** (.140)

Vo Female - .003 occupation (.006)

SEI .007* ( .003)

White .185 (. 146)

Married - .017 (.101)

Children .086 (.101)

Work .005 experience (.006)

Firm size - .022 logged (.021)

Intercept 3.913

Goodness of 484.62 fit (~2) p = .370

Number of 486 cases

.018 ( .024) .445* (.195) - .003 (-002)

(*003) .014***

- .lo5 (.132) .022 (.111) .186 (.l06) - .004 (.005) - .034 (.OM)

4.167

572.37 p = .417

577

.159*** (.032) .265 (.152) - .001 (.ow .002 (a0031 .274

(. 168)

(.113) - .113 (.113) - .ow1 (-007) - .067** (.023)

2.491

- .116

482.87 p = .343

482

.069** (. 026) .062

( .204) .0002

(.002) .019*** (-003) .25 1 (.157) .164

(. 123) .079 (.116) - .001

- .065** ( -005)

(. 020)

3.063

580.90 p = ,302

575

Note. Standard errors are presented in parentheses; all parameter estimates are adjusted for missing cases on firm size.

*p < .05. **p < .01.

***, < .001.

48 MARINA A. ADLER

inhibit individuals from becoming supervisors (.035; ns), but it does pose a barrier to becoming a policymaker (.268; p < .05) in general. Although larger firm size decreases the probability of being a policymaker ( - .056; p < .001), it has no such effect for supervisor status (- .026; ns).

The OLS regression coefficients of the models predicting the degree of supervisory authority and strategic power for supervisors are shown in Table 4. Contrary to the third hypothesis, it seems that once an individual has attained supervisor status, the effect of sex on the degree of work power is less pronounced, when all other factors in the model are taken into account. Although men do not attain higher degrees of supervisory authority (.189, ns) than women, they do have an advantage in terms of strategic power (.448; p < .05). This finding only partially supports the hypothesis that among individuals in power positions men are able to gain higher levels of work power.

The results in Table 4 also do not support Hypothesis 4: Working full- time and percentage female occupation have no significant effect on the supervisory authority and strategic power of supervisors. Once individuals become supervisors, time spent at work does not enhance supervisory or organizational work power, which implies a ceiling for strategic power attainment. The lack of an occupational segregation effect on power attainment implies that the sex composition of supervisory jobs does not explain much of the sex differences in work power. In general, SEI is the most important predictor of supervisory authority (beta = 2 8 ) and strategic power (beta = .260). In both cases, however, male supervisors benefit more from status in terms of power than do women (t = 2.798 for supervisory authority, p < .01; and t = 2.377 for strategic power, p < .01). Education is a positive predictor of both supervisory authority (.161; p < .01) and strategic power among supervisors (.188; p < .OOl), but male supervisors and policymakers do not gain more work power for their education than do their female counterparts. In the model for strategic power several additional variables, such as race, having children at home, and firm size, have statistically significant effects. Thus, minority group status (389; p < .05), having children (.404; p < .05), and firm size (- .159; p < .001) affect the attainment of strategic power but not that of supervisory authority (coefficients are not significant). Overall, this model explains more variation in the degree of strategic power (21 percent) than in degree of supervisory authority (13 percent) among supervisors.

The OLS regression results for policymakers are in Table 5 . Even more pronounced than in the case of supervisors, this analysis indicates that sex does not affect the degree of supervisory authority and strategic power among policymakers. Although women and men have unequal access to

Table 4 OLS Regression Coefficients for a Model Predicting Supervisory

Authority and Strategic Power Among Supervisors

Supervisory authority Strategic power

Variable b Beta b Beta

Sex

Education

Full-time

070 Female

SEI

White

Married

Children

Work experience

Firm size logged

Intercept

Adj. R2 Number of

cases

(male = 1)

occupation

R2

.189 (.272) .161**

(.057) .601

(.428) .0007

.025*** (. 006) .191

(. 308) .063

(. 225) .385

(.217) .012

(.012) - .016

- .226 (.042)

.151***

.129 442

.040

.160

.064

.011

.248

.028

.014

.084

.050

- .019

.448* (.210) .188***

( * O W .474

(.332) - .001 (.003) .021***

(-004) .589*

(.236)

(.174) .404*

(.169) - .010 6009) - .159*** (.033)

- 2.304 .232*** .212 436

- .037

.i19

.232

.063

- .024

.260

.109

- .010

.109

- .049

- .240

Note. Standard errors are presented in parentheses; all parameter estimates are adjusted for missing cases on firm size; the interaction effect for sex and SEI is statistically significant for supervisory authority (t = 2.798) and strategic power (t = 2.377).

*p c -05. **p < .01.

***p c .001.

Table 5 OLS Regression Coefficients for a Model Predicting Supervisory

Authority and Strategic Power Among Policymakers

Supervisory authority Strategic power

Variable b Beta b Beta

Sex

Education

Full-time

To Female

SEI

White

Married

Children

Work experience

Firm size logged

Intercept

Adj. R2 Number of

cases

(male = 1)

occupation

R2

- .178

- .048 (.415)

(.086) 1.491** (S71) - .017** (.oo6)

(.009) 1.111* (.523) .276

(. 345) .521

(. 329)

(.018)

(.060) .941 .175*** .147 328

.037***

- .018

- .088

- .029

- .048

.138

- .181

.270

.110

.048

.088

- .056

- .085

.231 (.233) .156**

.167 (.330) - .004

(-049)

(-004) .014**

.594 (.292) .188 (.194) .459* (.190) - .014 (.010) - .110** (.034) - .448 .189*** ,159 311

.069

.222

.027

- .080

.183

.108

.057

.141

- .079

- .194

~~~ ~ ~ ~

Note. Standard errors are presented in parentheses; all parameter estimates are adjusted for missing cases on firm size; the interaction effect for sex and SEI is statistically significant for supervisory authority (t = 2.001).

*p < .05. **p c .01.

***p < .001.

MALE-FEMALE POWER DIFFERENCES AT WORK 5 1

policymaker positions (see Table 2), these positions bestow similar amounts of work power on incumbents of both sexes (see Table 5) . Full-time employment is more relevant for supervisory authority (1.491; p < .05) than for strategic power (. 167; ns). Employment in a female-dominated occupation clearly lowers supervisory authority (- .017; p < .01) but not strategic power (- .004; ns) among policymakers. Thus, while the sex composition of the policymaker’s occupation has a negative effect on the degree to which he or she performs direct supervisory tasks, it does not decrease policy decision-making authority. It seems as though policymakers in female- dominated occupations may not emphasize their role as supervisors as much as those in male-dominated occupations. Before sex was controlled for, the occupational segregation effect was strong for both forms of work power. Once a person has obtained a policy-making position, sex and occupation do not affect the degree of policy decision-making power.

While education increases strategic power (.156; p < .Ol), it does not affect supervisory authority (- .048; ns) among policymakers. SEI is a strong positive influence on both forms of work power. Furthermore, male policymakers gain more supervisory authority from status than women ( t = 2.001; p < .05). That is not the case for strategic power, however. Being white is an asset for gaining policymaker status and it also increases policymakers’ degree of supervisory authority. As in the case for supervisors, none of the other control variables affect the degree of supervisory authority among policymakers. As in the case of supervisors, the degree of strategic power of policymakers is affected by firm size and having children at home. The amount of explained variance in the degree of strategic power among policymakers is similar to that for supervisory authority (16 percent and 15 percent, respectively).

Conclusion Competing explanations propose unequal access to power positions,

unequal amounts of work power in those positions, or both unequal access to and amounts of power to be responsible for women’s disadvantages in the workplace. The findings presented here clearly support the hypothesis that women have less access to power positions at work than men. The results indicate that sex determines the likelihood of attaining supervisory and policymaker positions.

Only limited support was found for the hypothesis that women in power positions exercise less power at work than their male counterparts. The data show that after gaining access to policymaker positions, men and women generally attain similar amounts of strategic power and supervisory

52 MARINA A. ADLER

authority. In addition, factors relevant to women’s status at work, such as being employed in a female-dominated occupation and working part-time, do not restrict women’s access to authority positions. They tend to have a negative effect on the degree of supervisory authority among policymakers, Education seems to be one avenue for women to increase their chances for entry into power positions at the higher echelons of organizations.

It is reaonable to assume that part of the lack of sex differences in work power among incumbents in power positions is due to differences in self- reports of work activities. Once women are in a position of authority, they may perceive their work activities as very similar to those of men, even when the tasks are qualitatively different and entail different amounts of power. It has also been suggested that women’s and men’s “power styles” vary (see Colwill 1982). The possibility that women are more tolerant of decision sharing with subordinates may have implications for their self-reported access to and exercise of work power. Another important issue relates to the kind of subordinates female-dominated occupations entail. In many professions (such as teachers, nurses), the subordinates tend to have low status (children, the ill). It is possible that the subordinates of female- dominated managerial occupations also have lower status than those of male-dominated jobs.

The findings underline the qualitative variation between supervisory and policy-making activities at work. Future research is needed to specify the exact mechanisms that establish the barriers to increased degrees of work power, and movement between the two forms of work power. In particular, the interplay between occupation, level of authority position, and the degree of work power in its various forms as it accounts for gender inequality calls for further investigation. Efforts should be directed at an empirical and theoretical specification of the pockets of inequality in which women’s disadvantages may manifest themselves in everyday experiences at work. The relatively low amounts of variation explained by the present model indicate that a large share of the determinants of work power remains unexplained.

The evidence presented here directs attention to the need for more eclectic approaches in the area of work stratification. The conceptualization of work power as a categorical as well as a continuous phenomenon enables researchers not only to predict a worker’s probability of being a member of a powerful group (supervisor or policymaker) or class (owner) per se, but facilitates the explanation of the inequality in work power in the modern organizational context. With respect to empowerment of women these results show that the main problem seems to be categorical exclusion of women from power positions at work. After overcoming that major


barrier, women generally have levels of supervisory authority and strategic power similar to men’s.

Equal access to and membership in a class or position alone may not entail equal amounts or benefits of power for women as those accruing to men. Since women experience a different opportunity structure than men in regard to occupational segregation and family responsibilities, they continue to be disadvantaged. With respect to work stratification, this points to the need for the specification of organizational and occupational contexts in which work activities are assigned to men and women differently. Since work activities carry varying degrees of power within jobs, occupational statuses, and positions, the rationales guiding employer policies and work assignments by gender need to be further analyzed. In addition, more scholarship should focus on the various gender-related barriers to career advancement that are external to the workplace, for example, culturally determined restrictions such as caring for children and housework.

ENDNOTES

*A version of this article was presented at the 1991 American Sociological Association annual meeting. The author thanks April Brayfield and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions on earlier drafts. The Computer Science Center at the University of Maryland provided the support for the quantitative analysis. Editor’s note: The reviewers were Wanda I. Griffith. Kenneth Mackintosh, and Jeffrey Riemer.

‘Since this variable generated a high number of missing cases (about 21 percent of the total sample), a means substitution strategy was employed. For each age/sex category, the corresponding mean value for work experience, as calculated from the available part of the sample, was assigned to respondents with missing values. The error incurred by over- or under- estimating work experience was considered less problematic than the loss of a large part of the sample.

2This variable is a general proxy for the scale and resources of the corporation. To prevent bias due to the substantial reduction in sample size based on the inclusion of establishment size (by 226), it was decided to assign the overall mean of the available cases to the missing cases. To control for bias, a dummy variable indicating whether respondents did not have size of establishment data was included in all regression analyses.

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APPENDIX 1

The following survey questions were used to construct the strategic power index: 1. Are you personally involved in decisions to increase or decrease the total number of people

2. Are you personally involved in policy decisions to significantly change the products,

3. Are you personally involved in decisions to change the policy concerning the routine pace

4. Are you personally involved in policy decisions to significantly change the basic methods

employed in the place where you work?

programs, or services delivered by the organizations for which you work?

of work or the amount of work performed in your workplace as a whole?

or procedures of work used in a major part of your workplace?

The following survey questions were used to indicate supervisory authority: 1. Can you influence granting a pay raise or promotion to a subordinate? 2. Can you influence preventing a subordinate from getting a pay raise or promotion because

3. Can you influence firing or temporarily suspending a subordinate? 4. Can you influence issuing a formal warning to a subordinate? 5. Are you directly responsible for deciding the specific tasks or work assignments performed

6. Do you decide which procedures, tools or materials your subordinates use in doing their

7. Do you decide how fast they work, how long they work, or how much work they have to

of poor work or misbehavior?

by your subordinates?

work?

get done?

male-female power differences at work: a comparison of supervisors and policymakers

Documents