Still a man ' s world? The influence of gender and gender role type on income in two business school graduate cohorts over time

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of gender and gender role type on objective career success over time from a career practices perspective.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a relational perspective on gender shifting attention to a field, habitus, and capital-based view on careers, the paper analyses the interrelation of gender, gender role type (GRT) and income with a longitudinal two-cohort design of business school graduates (1990, 2000), using mixed linear models.

Findings

In line with the authors ' argumentation, female or undifferentiated GRT earn less than masculine or androgynous GRT in both cohorts over time, and relative income of androgynous compared to masculine men is higher in the 2000 cohort than in the 1990 cohort. Contrary to the authors ' hypotheses, the income gap between women and men has widened rather than narrowed, and masculine women of the 2000 cohort do not attain a higher proportion of the androgynous women ' s mean income compared to the 1990 cohort.

Research limitations/implications

Career success is based on self-report data (income) and partially based on retrospective evaluations thereof. As the idea of connecting masculinity and femininity to gender and career outcomes arose after data collection, the authors had to rely on the psychometric items and scales already contained in the questionnaire.

Originality/value

Instead of (re- or de-)constructing gender as bipolar object, but as realisation of historical acting including the context within which practical actions take place, the concept of GRT is applied to objective career success from a longitudinal perspective, owing to the relational nature of gender and the temporal nature of careers, as well as its embeddedness in the context within which trajectories unfold. In doing so, it shifts attention to career practices, emerging from the interplay of career field, career habitus, and career capital.

Citation

M. Schneidhofer, T., Schiffinger, M. and Mayrhofer, W. (2011), "Still a man ' s world? The influence of gender and gender role type on income in two business school graduate cohorts over time", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 65-82. https://doi.org/10.1108/02610151211199227