(Press-News.org) Are wage differences between men and women decreasing as more women attain managerial positions? A new Swedish report from the Uppsala Center for Labor Studies (UCLS) at Uppsala University and the Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation (IFAU) concludes that they are not. Manager gender is tied to neither wages nor, accordingly, wage differences on the labour market.
Women held approximately 36 per cent of managerial positions within the Swedish employment market in 2008. That female managers are a minority is sometimes advanced as an explanation for the fact that women generally receive lower wages than men. The wage gap between men and women, adjusted for age, experience, education and industry demographics, is approximately 8 per cent. A greater proportion of women in managerial positions could serve to reduce the wage gap if female managers set wages differently or, by serving as examples, encouraged a higher level of performance by women.
Earlier studies have shown that wage differences are smaller in industries and at workplaces with female managers. In her study, however, economist Lena Hensvik found no support for the claim that female managers entail any benefit for women in connection with wage setting. The study encompassed all of the public sector workplaces and a representative selection of private sector workplaces in Sweden during the years 1996.
"At the first stage, I found that women with female managers receive higher salaries," she says. "But when I went further and considered individuals who had had both male and female managers and how salary varies with manager gender, I found no significant difference between working for a woman and working for a man. Any differences appear to be tied to the individuals, not their managers."
Having more female managers thus seems not to contribute to reducing the salary gap among employees.
"Earlier studies that found differences between workplaces with and without female managers should be interpreted with certain caution, since these studies did not take account of employee-pool composition differences," continues Lena Hensvik.
But do women employ more women? Lena Hensvik asserts that there is no evidence that they do. It may be that women employ more high-performing women, but even that appears to be bound up with the character of the workplace or industry, and not with the issue of whether the managers happen to be men or women.
###Working paper: http://www.ifau.se/Upload/pdf/se/2011/wp11-22-Manager-impartiality-Worker-firm-matching-and-the-gender-wage-gap.pdf
Read more about UCLS at http://ucls.nek.uu.se/Research+themes/
More female managers do not reduce wage gap
2011-12-19
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Rapid rise in wildfires in large parts of Canada?
2011-12-19
This press release is available in German.Chicago/Leipzig. Large forest regions in Canada are apparently about to experience rapid change. Based on models, scientists can now show that there are threshold values for wildfires just like there are for epidemics. Large areas of Canada are apparently approaching this threshold value and may in future exceed it due to climate change. As a result both the area burnt down annually and the average size of the fires would increase, write the researchers of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the University ...
Winter diets? The secret is to chill the extremities
2011-12-19
Although the temperate climates of central Europe provide plentiful food in summer, finding enough to eat is much more problematic in winter. Many small mammals avoid the problem by hibernating but this survival strategy is generally not practised by larger animals. With the exception of some bears, large mammals remain fully awake throughout the year, yet they too must reduce their metabolism to cope with the comparative scarcity of food. Red deer, for example, are known to lower their heart rate and to allow their extremities to cool substantially during winter. These ...
BGI-BOX terminal server debut operation in China Agricultural University
2011-12-19
Shenzhen, China – BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, started the trail operation of "BGI-BOX", its first cloud computing terminal server, in China Agricultural University on December 8. BGI-BOX is designed for users without bioinformatics background and it allows users to access bioinformatics analysis and genomic data in their own laboratories with the advantages of easy to use, high flexibility and user-friendly interface.
With the rapid development of high-throughput sequencing technology over the past ten years, the cost of DNA sequencing is decreasing ...
No brakes on breast cancer cells
2011-12-19
MicroRNAs or miRNAs are tiny RNA molecules that have only about 20 nucleotides and do not code for proteins. They regulate many important processes in cells by binding to target messenger RNAs – the instructions for protein production –, thus blocking production of the respective protein. In cancer, the production of some miRNAs is often reduced or amplified. This particularly affects miRNAs that regulate the activity of cancer-promoting genes.
A key molecule in the development of cancer is a transcription factor called NFkappaB, which is an important switch for many ...
Group sex among adolescents a public health concern, new study says
2011-12-19
One in 13 teenage girls, aged 14 to 20, reported having a group-sex experience, with those young women more likely to have been exposed to pornography and childhood sexual abuse than their peers, according to a new study led by a Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researcher.
In a study published in the Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, Emily Rothman, associate professor of community health sciences at BUSPH, and colleagues surveyed 328 females who had utilized a Boston-area community or school-based health clinic, to ...
First comprehensive DNA study of mast cell leukemia uncovers clues that could improve therapy
2011-12-19
Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Cancer researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have carried out the first comprehensive study of the changes seen in the DNA of a patient with mast cell leukemia (MCL), an extremely aggressive subtype of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with a very poor prognosis.
Their genomic survey has helped identify two previously unknown mutations that could directly influence patient response to currently available therapeutic drugs.
The details uncovered by the study not only suggest a diagnostic improvement and an alternative treatment strategy ...
Remote wilderness polluted by humans
2011-12-19
The research is based on studies of sediment from 36 lakes in the USA, Canada, Greenland and Svalbard, Norway. The researchers have analysed how the chemical composition of the sediment has changed over the centuries. Twenty-five of the lakes all show the same sign – that biologically active nitrogen from human sources can be traced back to the end of the 19th century.
The nitrogen analyses of the lake sediments show that the changes began around 1895. The results also show that the rate of change has accelerated over the past 60 years, which is in agreement with the ...
Tool detects patterns hidden in vast data sets
2011-12-19
Researchers from Harvard University and the Broad Institute have developed a tool that can tackle large data sets in a way that no other software program can. Part of a suite of statistical tools called MINE, it can tease out multiple patterns hidden in health information from around the globe, statistics amassed from a season of major league baseball, data on the changing bacterial landscape of the gut, and much more. The researchers report their findings in a paper appearing in the December 16 issue of the journal Science.
From Facebook to physics to the global economy, ...
Plasma treatment zaps viruses before they can attack cells
2011-12-19
Adenoviruses can cause respiratory, eye, and intestinal tract infections, and, like other viruses, must hijack the cellular machinery of infected organisms in order to produce proteins and their own viral spawn. Now an international research team made up of scientists from Chinese and Australian universities has found a way to disrupt the hijacking process by using plasma to damage the viruses in the laboratory environment, before they come into contact with host cells.
The researchers prepared solutions containing adenoviruses and then treated the samples with a low-temperature ...
New device creates lipid spheres that mimic cell membranes
2011-12-19
Opening up a new door in synthetic biology, a team of researchers has developed a microfluidic device that produces a continuous supply of tiny lipid spheres that are similar in many ways to a cell's outer membrane. "Cells are essentially small, complex bioreactors enclosed by phospholipid membranes," said Abraham Lee from the University of California, Irvine. "Effectively producing vesicles with lipid membranes that mimic those of natural cells is a valuable tool for fundamental biology research, and it's also an important first step in the hoped-for production of an artificial ...