Worklife career mobility: changing gender differences

1
Work-life career mobility changing gender
differences?
Erzsébet Bukodi and Shirley Dex GeNet Final
Conference Cambridge, 26-27 March 2009
2
Research questions

• Are there gender differences in the pattern of
  work-life occupational mobility?
• Are womens and mens occupational trajectories
  (in terms of earnings and social status)
  converging or diverging over time, across
  cohorts?

3
Overview

• Policy and legislative context
• Data and labour market context
• Two measures for occupational standing
• Occupational attainment over the career
• A typology of occupational histories
• The role of education and entry position in
  work-life occupational mobility

4
Some relevant background

• 1970s was the decade of major legislative and
  policy change on equality
• Equal Pay legislation
• 1975 Anti sex discrimination legislation
• Statutory maternity leave
• Decade for family policy changes from 1997
  onwards
• National Child Care Strategy Sure Start
  Programme Working Families Tax Credit Part-time
  work directive Family leave directive parental
  leave Paid paternity leave enhanced and wider
  eligibility maternity leave, Min wage.

5
Data Three British Birth Cohort Studies

• MRC National Survey of Health and Development
• all children born in England, Wales and Scotland
  in one week in 1946.
• follow up data collections took place twice from
  ages 1 to 4, 8 times between ages 5-15, 7 times
  between ages 16-31 and 3 times between ages 32-53
• The National Child Development Study
• Census of babies born in a certain week of 1958
  in GB
• 7 main interview waves up to 2004 (age 46)
• The British Cohort Study
• Census of babies born in a certain week of 1970
  in GB
• 6 sweeps up to 2004 (age 34)
• In all surveys
• Retrospective occupational histories

6
Data sample size
7
Two measures for occupational standing

• Earnings and social status can be seen as major
  rewards obtained via occupation
• Occupational earnings scale An updated and
  extended version of the Nickell scale
• the average hourly earnings of all employees, men
  and women, working full-time
• it provides a score for each of the 77 SOC90
  minor occupational groups
• Occupational status scale Chan Goldthorpe
  scale
• extracting principal dimension from data on
  social interaction among members of occupations
  (close friendship)
• provides scores for 31 occupational categories
  (either SOC90 minor groups or combinations of
  them)

8
Earnings and status hierarchies different ones

• The occupational earnings and occupational status
  hierarchies, although weakly correlated, are
  still clearly different scales.
• Eg. when cross-classifying all jobs ever held by
  NCDS men aged 16-46,
• just over 25 of all men were on the main
  diagonal
• over a half of men are in occupations that yield
  higher earnings relative to their status
• Under 25 of men in occupations with lower
  earnings than their status.

9
Labour market conditions at entry
10
Labour market conditions over cohorts
life-courses
Cohort 1946 aged 22-34
Cohort 1970 aged 22-34
Cohort 1958 aged 22-34
11
Economic conditions Growth in GDP
Cohort 1946 LM entry
Cohort 1958 LM entry
Cohort 1970 LM entry
Cohort 1946 aged 22-34
Cohort 1958 aged 22-34
Cohort 1970 aged 22-34
12
Occupational earnings attainment over age
MEN
WOMEN
13
Occupational status attainment over age
MEN
WOMEN
14
A typology of occupational histories, ages 16 to
34
15
Work-life occupational earnings mobility
16
Work-life occupational status mobility
17
Two scales differing patterns of gender
differences
18
The role of education and career entry

• Multinomial regression
• Dependent variable the 5-fold typology
• Covariates education, first occupational status,
  only full-time work over the career, fathers
  class managerial professional
• Separately for cohorts and genders
• Separately for the earnings and the status scale
• Calculating predicted proportions of career types
• for differing levels of education
• for differing levels of first occupation

19
The role of education

• 1946 cohort Remarkably stable career for
  degree-holders (low rates of upward/downward
  mobility)
• 1958 cohort very unstable career regardless of
  level of qualification (especially for women with
  part-time experience and men)
• For the less well educated, higher rates of
  downward mobility, especially in the 1958 cohort
• For the tertiary educated, higher rates of upward
  mobility, but
• for vast majority of 1958 cohort, upward moves
  are followed by downward moves
• much higher probability in 1970 cohort of a
  steadily upward career (especially for men)
• Generally, stronger effects of education for
  women in all cohorts

20
The first occupations - striking gender
differences

• Earnings hierarchy
• far greater immobility at the bottom of the
  hierarchy for women than men, especially for
  women with some part-time experience
• womens chances of mobility out of the bottom
  level of the earnings hierarchy are even getting
  worse
• However, in case of the status scale
• womens chances for mobility out of the bottom
  are much higher than mens, even if they
  experienced part-time work over their careers
• Women and men, who start out at the top, tend to
  have relatively stable careers but this is much
  more apparent in the 1946 and the 1970 than in
  the 1958 cohort

21
Conclusions

• Occupational status
• women are more likely than men to move upwards
• bad effects of part-time work are deteriorating
  over time
• Occupational earnings
• women are less likely than men to move upwards,
  and are more likely to move downwards
• womens chances of moving out of the bottom are
  getting worse
• on average, declining gender differences in this
  respect
• Gender differences in career mobility depending
  on how we measure them

22
Conclusions

• The 1958 cohort very unstable occupational
  careers, especially for men, at all levels of
  qualification, and regardless of the occupational
  levels at career entry
• the effects of economic circumstances under which
  they developed their early careers