Margaret F. Reid

A National Study of Gender-Based Occupational Segregation in Municipal Bureaucracies: Persistence of Glass Walls?

Affirmative action policies and voluntary hiring decisions have increased the presence of women at all levels of government (Eribes, et al., 1989; Kelly, et al., 1991; Bullard and Wright, 1993; Stivers, 1993; Crum and Naff, 1997). Still, strong evidence exists that women continue to find it difficult to break into male-dominated fields despite nearly three decades of affirmative action policies (Leonard, 1989; Lewis and Nice, 1994; Newman, 1994; Tomoskavic-Devey, Kalleberg, and Cook, 1996). A preponderance of studies in the literature on the employment distribution of women and men and the integration of women into governmental managerial ranks provide evidence that women face both glass walls and glass ceilings at the federal and state levels (Lewis and Emmert, 1986; Pfeffer and Davis-Blake, 1987; Baron and Newman, 1989; Kellough, 1990; Bullard and Wright, 1993; Guy, 1993; Cornwell and Kellough, 1994; Lewis and Nice, 1994; Naff, 1994; Newman, 1994; Ruccucci and Saidel, 1997). Though some discussion of ceiling issues is necessary to provide a context for our analysis, this article will primarily concern itself with the wall phenomenon. The glass wall metaphor describes occupational segregation attributed to employment barriers that restrict the access of women to certain types of jobs (or agencies) or that trap them within certain types of jobs (or agencies). Glass walls are likely to persist when: (1) organizational cultures create impediments to change; and/or (2) skills necessary to perform jobs in a given agency are not highly valued elsewhere. The potential for female employment opportunities at the municipal level is considerable. Not only is there a large number of jobs in city governments, but many jobs are close to home and educational opportunities. Even when these employment opportunities contribute to the hiring of large numbers of women by municipal governments, the advancement of women into the more prestigious municipal policymaking positions is a different matter (Slack, 1987; Ballard and Lawn-Day, 1992). Although employment opportunities for women are more numerous at the local level than either the state or federal level, systematic or large-scale studies at this level of government have been scarce. The lack of access to comparative data on cities has resulted in a dearth of empirical studies on gender-based occupational segregation and salary disparities at the municipal level. Greater attention needs to be devoted to evaluating the extent and nature of glass walls in municipal governments (Radin, 1980; Rinehart, 1991). Research which tends to focus on what Frederickson (1990) calls block equality paints the most optimistic picture of female or minority employment patterns (Furchtgott-Roth and Stolba, 1996). The findings in this body of research are derived using highly aggregated data. Aggregation can obscure the fact that females are underrepresented in the best paying or most influential positions in an agency and can hide gender segregation that may exist among government agencies. Segmented equality shifts the focus of analysis to gender representation in various types of jobs (or at different organizational levels) and within functional (or policy) areas in municipal governments (Frederickson, 1990). This latter approach is more likely to identify gender-based differences in employment and salary patterns. We use the latter approach, segmented equality/inequality, to study municipal employment. We examine gender distributions in administrative and professional jobs.(1) Administrative and professional positions are the most desirable ones in city governments; they confer status and authority, are relatively well-paying, and in many cases, allow bureaucrats to significantly influence policymaking and its implementation. We also examine gender-based employment patterns in discrete functional policy areas or tasks within municipal bureaucracies to determine if policy outputs are associated with the extent and nature of glass walls. …

Information Technology Employees in State Government: A Study of Affective Organizational Commitment, Job Involvement, and Job Satisfaction

This article explores the affective organizational commitment, job involvement, and job satisfaction of an increasingly important segment of the public sector workforce: information technology (IT) employees in state government. We propose a model that explores job characteristics and work experiences variables that together influence affective organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and job involvement. Using canonical correlation analysis, we find that role ambiguity, perceived organizational support, leader—member exchange, and task variety are the independent variables that together explain most of the variance in the affective organizational commitment and job satisfaction of IT employees working for one-state government. In contrast to findings based on private sector IT employees, our analysis does not identify major gender differences. Taken together, these findings advance our understanding of affective commitment and job satisfaction within the public sector and provide agency managers actionable ideas on how to retain valuable IT employees.

The Role of Mentoring and Supervisor Support for State IT Employees' Affective Organizational Commitment:

This article assesses the effects of psychosocial and career mentoring, leader—member exchange (LMX), and gender on the affective organizational commitment (AOC) of information technology (IT) employees working in one state government. Few studies have examined the relationship between mentoring and associated antecedents of the AOC of IT employees, and none has examined these relationships for public-sector workforces. The research finds that when both psychosocial and career mentoring are considered, only psychosocial mentoring was significant in predicting the AOC of state government IT employees. When considering just LMX, it was significant in predicting AOC. Neither psychosocial mentoring nor career mentoring was significant in predicting AOC if LMX is also considered. No gender differences were found for any of the variables examined.

Sex-Based Occupational Segregation in U.S. State Bureaucracies, 1987-97

Introduction The literature on the distribution of women and men in public-sector jobs and the integration of women into government managerial ranks is replete with evidence that women often face glass walls, especially in certain types of agencies (Lewis and Emmert 1986; Pfeifer and Davis-Blake 1987; Kellough 1989, 1990; Guy and Duerst-Lahti 1992; Bullard and Wright 1993; Cornwell and Kellough 1994; Guy 1994; Lewis and Nice 1994; Naif 1994; Newman 1994; Riccucci and Saidel 1997). The glass wall metaphor refers to occupational segregation attributed to barriers that restrict womens access to certain types of jobs (or agencies) or to factors that concentrate women within certain types of jobs (or agencies). Glass walls are likely to persist when (1) the agency and its clientele do not engage in efforts to remove impediments to change; and/or (2) skills necessary to perform jobs in a given agency are not highly valued outside the agency. Large-scale studies of sex-based occupational segregation have been conducted on U.S. federal government (Rosenbloom 1977; Lewis and Emmert 1986; Kellough 1989, 1990) and municipal government workforces (Miller, Kerr, and Reid 1999), but the lack of access to comparative public employment data on states has resulted in a dearth of generalizable empirical studies on employment in state-level bureaucracies. Numerous studies employ summary data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions (EEOC) Job Patterns for Minorities and Women In State and Local Government (Cayer and Sigelman 1980; Moore and Mazey 1986; Sigelman and Dometrius 1986; Lewis and Nice 1994; Dometrius and Sigelman 1997). (1) Many other studies are based on samples drawn from one state or just a few states (Bayes 1989; Rehfuss 1986; Hale, Kelly, and Burgess 1989; Kelly et al. 1991; Duerst-Lahti and Johnson 1992; Guy 1992; Newman 1994). The data employed by Bullard and Wright (1993) and Riccucci and Saidel (1997) are limited to agency heads from across the 50 states and gubernatorial appointees from nearly all 50 states, respectively. Previous research on the distribution of state jobs provides some useful conceptual and analytic frameworks, but findings from these studies provide little basis for generalizing about the employment patterns of career administrative and professional personnel. In this article, we examine the distribution of women and men in state-level administrative and professional positions by agency type and over time in each of the 50 states to determine whether agency missions are associated with the extent and nature of glass walls. We are interested in the following questions: (1) what is the distribution of female and male administrators and professionals in various functional areas in state governments (police, corrections, natural resources/parks, highways, public welfare, etc.); and (2) is the underrepresentation and/or overrepresentation of female or male administrators and professionals in various functional areas related to the agency missions in those functional areas? These questions are important for several reasons. Greater access to quality jobs, including public-sector managerial positions, promotes the economic, social, and political progress of women, and it may result in longterm benefits through altered socialization processes (Kanter 1977; MacManus 1981; Tolleson-Rinehart 1991; Guy and Duerst-Lahti 1992). Greater representation for women among managerial personnel is also likely to result in changes in management styles and leadership processes, perhaps making them more innovative and democratic (Tolleson-Rinehart 1991; Duerst-Lahti and Johnson 1992; Stivers 1993). The increased presence of women is also likely to have a distinctive impact on policy outputs (Mezey 1978; Stewart 1980; Stanwick and Kleeman 1983; Welch 1985; Gelb and Palley 1996; Carroll, Dodson, and Mandel 1991; Dodson and Carroll 1991; Tolleson-Rinehart 1991; Thomas 1994; but see Donahue 1997; Ford and Dolan 1999). …

Barriers facing women in the IT work force

The percentage of women working in Information Technology (IT) is falling as revealed by the 2003 Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) Blue Ribbon Panel on Information Technology (IT) Diversity report; the percentage of women in the IT workforce fell to 34.9% in 2002 down from 41% in 1996. Several studies have indicated this issue is reaching a crisis level and needs to be explored. Women working in IT at a Fortune 500 company were asked what workplace barriers they faced that had influenced their voluntary turnover decisions or the decisions of their female counterparts. Revealed causal mapping was used to evoke representations of the cognitions surrounding the barriers women face in the IT field. A causal map was developed that indicated womens actual turnover was linked to their views of their family responsibilities, the stresses they face within the workplace, various qualities of their jobs, and the flexibility they were given to determine their work schedule. Their statements regarding the barriers they faced in terms of promotion opportunities (both perceived and actual) were linked to the same four concepts. Interestingly, there was no link between promotion opportunities and voluntary turnover. Reciprocal relationships were identified between managing family responsibility and stress, work schedule flexibility and stress, managing family responsibility and job qualities, and job qualities and stress. Discrimination and lack of consistency in how management treated employees, while important, were not central to how the women in this sample thought about issues related to promotion and voluntary turnover.

The Impact of Career Mentoring and Psychosocial Mentoring on Affective Organizational Commitment, Job Involvement, and Turnover Intention

This study explores the relationships between career and psychosocial mentoring, and the employee outcomes of affective organizational commitment (AOC), job involvement, and turnover intention. The relationships between psychosocial mentoring and the employee outcomes of AOC and turnover intention were significant. Building from affective events theory, the authors found that AOC mediated the relationship between psychosocial mentoring and employee turnover intention. The study emphasizes the importance of emotion and affect by showing that employees who experienced positive mentoring events at work exhibited higher levels of AOC, which in turn led to reduced turnover intention. The implications are discussed.

Barriers to sustainable development : Jordan's sustainable tourism strategy

Sustainable development is now widely promoted as a holistic concept that aims to integrate social, economic and cultural policies to ensure high-quality growth in the context to which it is applied. During implementation such programs encounter, however, place-specific institutional and cultural barriers that often go unrecognized. This article presents findings from a 10-year collaboration of the University of Arkansas with Yarmouk University, Jordan, that led to the adoption of a heritage tourism strategy that is both economically and environmentally feasible.

Perspectives on challenges facing women in IS: the cognitive gender gap

The persistently low number of women in the information systems (IS) field has led to numerous inquiries about barriers women might face to entry and advancement in the profession. Because IS has traditionally been male dominated, masculine values tend to predominate in the profession. In the current study, same sex focus groups of male and female managers discussed challenges women in IS face that their male colleagues might not. By simultaneously analyzing the perceptions of male and female IS managers, we identified areas of overlap and divergence in the concepts as well as in the linkages between the concepts. Although the men and womens maps shared 10 concepts, none of the linkages between the concepts were the same in the two maps. We thus find that men and women have little cognitive overlap about the challenges that women face. Overall, male participants generally realize that women face a number of challenges associated with female gender role expectations, and more generally challenges they encounter in their workplaces and in the IS field. Their understanding of the challenges, however, appears to be superficial. We call on organizations and the IS profession to devise novel responses and training approaches to promote change in the IS culture.

Affective commitment in the public sector: the case of IT employees

To improve our understanding of individual motivations to remain employed in governmental agencies this study focuses on a specific segment of a state government agency workforce. Information technology (IT) employees possess skills that transfer easily to other sectors, which make them an important group when examining factors that influence the affective commitment and job satisfaction of individuals working in public agencies. Findings indicate that role ambiguity, perceived organizational support, leader member exchange, and task variety are the independent variables that explain most of the variance in affective public sector commitment and job satisfaction.

Sex-Based Glass Ceilings in U.S. State-Level Bureaucracies, 1987-1997

This study employed a national data set obtained from the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to answer two questions. Are women adequately represented in the top-level positions in state bureaucracies and are impediments that women might encounter in reaching the highest level administrative posts related to the policy missions and/or organizational characteristics of these agencies? The authors found that (a) women are underrepresented in top-level administrative and professional positions in distributive and regulatory agencies, suggesting the continued presence of glass ceilings in such agencies; (b) women are better represented among administrative and especially professional cadres in redistributive agencies, however their full representation at the uppermost administrative levels remains an unrealized goal; and (c) women are less well represented in higher paying positions (in proportion to their numbers in the agency) in agencies with higher salaries.