The reasons given by employers for this unequal representation of women in positions of control and responsibility were: ¹

• women are less well educated than men and so cannot perform creative and complex tasks;

• women are not committed to their jobs and tend to leave the labour force to have families;

• women have higher absentee rates than men because they are less able to keep up the pace of daily work, or because they are inclined to stay home when the children are ill; and

• women do not wish to take on more responsible jobs.

When the researchers investigated these opinions and compared them to reality, they found that: ²

• even within the same educational level and the same occupations, men take top jobs.

• women are less well represented in the labour force during the childbearing years but many return at a later time. These years are not defined as economically productive nor are mothers defined as being "in the labour force", because they do "work around the house". However, 52% of the mothers who had returned to the labour force had been participating 10 years or more; 33% had been participating between 5 and 10 years. Such lengths of time are not "temporary".

• absentee rates are slightly higher for women than for men. However, the rates for total absence from work are nearly equal, while women are more likely than men to work fewer hours than normal in a week. (refer to table 18).

• of the women interviewed, 55% wanted management jobs with more responsibility; but only 28% thought it possible they might be offered such a job, 34% expected no further promotions (compared to 17% of the men), and 34% thought they were at the top of their present skill area (compared to 29% of the men). Only 22% of the women held a realistic expectation for a supervisory or management level position as compared to 37% of the men. When the employers were asked about these expectations, far fewer than 22% agreed with the women about their opportunities for promotion.

The researchers proposed several alternative explanations for the fact that women hold less responsible and less authoritative jobs than men. These are: ³

• more women take part-time jobs that do not lead to promotions (22% of women compared to only 6% of male workers - refer to table 18).

• married women are less geographically mobile than men and will not move to other areas for promotion. We could find no current figures in this area.

• women are discriminated against by employers who hold negative stereotypes. In some cases this leads to discouragement and voluntary quitting by women. In other cases, employers use sexual harassment, and again women quit voluntarily rather than trying to change the employers behaviour.

• women are easily replaced. There is a link between easy irreplaceability and low resistance to exploitation particularly at the unskilled and semi-skilled levels or when the supply of unemployed workers is large. The more women we train in skills where there are already many women workers (such as in clerical occupations), the more likely that employed workers will be threatened with potential unemployment and required to submit to exploitation.

1. M. P. Marchak, op. cit., p. 150.

2. Ibid., pp. 149 - 153.

3. Ibid p. 153.