Writer: Isabel Chen, Editor: Sophie Niu
Over the past several decades, women’s growing involvement in the labor force has played a crucial role in the success of the US economy. Despite only contributing to about 37% of the global GDP, women have been re-entering the workforce at a much higher rate than men. Data from a 2023 LinkedIn sample indicates that women account for 41.9% of the workforce. And yet, the fraction of women in senior leadership positions, such as VP roles or the C-suite, is almost 10% lower, averaging around 32%.
Female labor participation experienced significant growth during the 70s and 80s and peaked in 1999. The surge was partly fueled by the fact that women were more likely to pursue higher education; for reference, the percentage of women in the labor force with college degrees increased four times over between 1970 and 2021. There was a major decline during the 2007-2009 recession and the lowest participation rate for women was in the 2021 pandemic. There are multiple reasons behind this most recent decline. One major factor is the largely female tendency to approach job application with a risk (or perhaps, rejection) aversion. This involves applying only to jobs that they’re most certainly (over)qualified for, or positions that are beneath the applicant’s skill level.
Are women taking men’s jobs?
Amidst ongoing debates about gender roles in the workforce, there is an assumption that women are taking jobs from men in various sectors. Over the past four decades, as more women entered the workforce, their labor participation rate (LFPR) has steadily approached that of their male counterparts. This shift during the 20th century, described as the “Grand Gender Convergence” by Claudia Goldin marked the slow recovery of female employment. The gender convergence peaked around 1975 and has slowed sharply since, before plateauing after 2000. Such dynamics fueled a contemporary argument that the growing minority of female participants affects the existing majority of male workers. In a sense, with the growing proportion of female employees, men who exit the workforce are then replaced by women entering the field; in a world of gender-specialized industries, this argument becomes simply that women are ‘stealing’ historically male-dominated jobs. These attitudes perpetuate the expectation that there are gender barriers for certain industries; women are expected to pursue creative and care-oriented work, while men fill positions in white-collar sectors and fields that seemingly demand advanced cognitive skills (IT, finance, etc). Understanding these misconceptions is crucial, as they may not only affect an individual woman’s career path, but also shape broader societal conceptions of gendered employment.
Returning to the original argument, the research paper, “Women, Wealth Effects, and Slow Recoveries”, analyzes the notion of whether the addition of female workers in the labor market reduces male employment rates. These researchers utilize a methodology that estimates “female-biased shocks” by observing state-level convergence dynamics. The conclusion was that a 1% increase in female employment in one state relative to other states led to a 0.18% decrease in male employment. Thus, the effects of rising female employment on male workers is marginal at best, and not the mass ‘crowding out’ effect that the larger narrative seems to suggest.
Female Experiences in the Workforce
For a lot of women, entering the workforce is no easy task. Unconscious bias infiltrates the sourcing process, influencing recruiter behavior and candidate selection. When reviewing applicants, recruiters are more likely to click on men’s LinkedIn profiles, and therefore less likely to contact their female applicants. This bias also extends to how firms perceive candidates, with men engendering descriptors such as “competent” and “ambitious”, while women were described as “supportive” and “agreeable.” However, despite these biases, women are still more likely to be hired after they apply. In fact, when women go after roles above their skillset, they are 18% more likely to get hired, compared to their male counterparts. This statistic underscores a familiar concept; women consistently undervalue their professional experience and skill set. To reference a commonly quoted statistic, women only apply to jobs that they’re 100% qualified for—for men, that figure is around 60%. Though this figure is slightly exaggerated, the idea being communicated is simple and true enough; there is an inherent confidence gap between men and women when it comes to the recruitment process. Therefore, when applying to a job that has some threshold of qualifications for its applicants, the women within the applicant pool are often more qualified than the men. Additionally, since women are expected to play a more supportive role, they’re often discouraged from applying to positions that align with the more ‘masculine’ values of “independence” and “ambition”.
Women often face significant setbacks in job environments especially if they decide to become parents. It is socially construed that an employed mother’s first priority no longer remains her job, but rather, her children. However, the contradiction lies in the fact that the labor market often reacts positively to the parental status of men. This disparity is referred to commonly as the ‘motherhood penalty’ and ‘fatherhood bonus’. Women are less likely to be hired or paid as much as male coworkers once they become mothers, with their salaries decreasing by an average of 4% per child, whereas men generally see a 6% salary increase upon attaining fatherhood. This ultimately leads to women having to conform to expectations of taking on domestic responsibilities, opting for jobs that offer more flexibility and are more manageable with caregiving duties. This leads to women prioritizing job security and stability and dissuades them from climbing the ladder of corporate advancement.
Consider promotions; For every 100 men that are promoted from an entry-level position to manager, only 87 women are promoted. Reflecting a broader trend, the share of female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies has barely risen from 0% in 1995, to less than 5% in 2017. To make matters worse, female leaders continue to leave their companies at a much higher rate than men. Women are also subject to unnecessarily higher expectations,, as papers written by female authors take on average six months longer in peer review than those written by men. In economics-related academia, 68% of men secure tenure within 10 years of earning their Ph.D., while that figure for women is only 47%. In addition to the largely societal and career-oriented obstacles women face in the workforce, there is, of course, blatant financial discrimination. A woman who has never married and doesn’t have children earns about 96% of a man’s salary. For every dollar a man earns, the average woman earns 80 cents. As aforementioned, corporate ascension is comparatively more difficult for women due to consistent undervaluation; researchers found that women were 7% more likely to receive a high rating for a performance review but receive a 6% lower score in a leadership-potential metric. These consistent disparities underscore the biases and expectations that women have to endure in order to participate in the workforce, all of which result in a discouraged female workforce, unrealized potential, and underutilized human capital.
Female Job Search Behavior
Women are in general more likely to discount their accomplishments and therefore less likely to market themselves, in terms of skills and experience. For example, women are less likely to describe themselves as “proficient” or “skilled” in programming languages on their CVs. According to a paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, women consistently rated their test performance much lower than men even though they scored the same. Remarkably, women’s reluctance to self-promote persists even when they are told that an employer would use their self-evaluation, highlighting a significant, gendered difference in self-perception and promotional behavior in professional settings.
This disparity can often start early on. When it comes to education, girls are often steered away from certain subjects in school. Boys, by comparison, are often encouraged to pursue math and science. In an Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, when teachers were asked to assess a boy and a girl student who did equally well on a math test, they rated the boy as more mathematically capable. As can be inferred, the lack of encouragement for school girls to pursue more technical subjects leads them to choose less prestigious and less challenging career tracks.
As we’ve established, there’s an inherent confidence gap in how men and women approach the application process. According to a LinkedIn report, women on average apply to fewer jobs, demonstrating greater selectivity in their job search process. And compared to men, women are less likely to apply to positions they’re (mostly) qualified for. However, this argument, which uses gendered differences in risk aversion, competitiveness, and confidence to explain market discrepancies, only accounts for 10-15% of differences in labor market outcomes. The rest can be attributed to the wealth gap, the social stigmas and professional obstacles women encounter upon entering the workforce, the lifestyle decisions they make that then adversely affect their careers, and a slew of other gendered issues that assert the archaic notion that women do not belong in the workplace; a notion that is reinforced by many assertions of the free market. Many comprehensive reforms would be required to change the reality of employment for women. With the help of collectivist action, and some workplace policy revision, we can work to achieve a more equitable environment that encourages women to pursue advancement and fully realizes the potential of our female workforce.
Photo illustration by Fast Company. Source photos by Christina Morillo and raw pixel.
