Women seek satisfaction at work in different ways than men. Educated, gifted women in the developed world demonstrate this gender difference in career paths as they have the potential and ability to make choices and many choose a distinctly different career path.
I was reading Casey’s Raising Smart Girl’s blog about her feelings about work and motherhood and thinking yet again about how intelligent women I know consider the issue of work within in a different framework from most of the men I know. Susan Pinker’s book The Sexual Paradox: Gifted Women, Extreme Men and the Real Gender Gap offers a very interesting explanation as to why we understand work differently as men and women. Pinker examines why women in the Western world tend to choose different career paths than men, even though in North America and Western Europe most women, particularly the advantaged, educated women in Pinker’s book (NB Pinker’s use of the word ‘gifted’ is applied to educated, professional women). Pinker asks this question: why do women, who are now more likely to pursue higher education than men and, for the most part, have the same opportunity for jobs as men, make different career choices? I would like to emphasize at this point that throughout the book Pinker makes it clear that she’s not talking about all women or all men but the tendencies and men and women as groups – of course, there is individual variation and I will apply the same caveat. Pinker suggests that when the feminist movement argued for equal opportunity in the workplace, we accepted the assumption that the standard male work experience was a universal work standard, applicable to both men and women. We assumed if we removed the barriers imposed on women in the workplace, that women would then the make the same career choices as men. However, this has not happened. In Pinker’s words,
The vanilla gender idea that given every opportunity, [women] should want it, if that’s what men choose, hinges on the assumption that male is the default which we measure everyone’s wants and dreams.
Pinker suggests that the more choice women have, the less likely they are to choose traditional male domains. In countries where women have more ability to choose freely like Japan, Canada or Germany approximately 5% of women choose a career in physics. In countries with poorer economies like Poland and Turkey, approximately 36% have a degree in physics. Gender segregation in the workplace increases in countries like Sweden, Finland and Germany with higher social benefits and educational and job opportunities. While on the surface it seems counter intuitive that Sweden, with it’s multi-generation policy of promoting gender equality would have a women choosing distinctly female career paths while countries like Swaziland and Sri Lanka would have less segregated workforces but Pinker suggests it’s because we’ve been fundamentally incorrect in our ‘vanilla gender assumption’ that presumes that the experience of men in the workforce is the vanilla experience and that women are simply a variation of men.
Women are Not Vanilla Men
Pinker also describes the work of sociologist Catherine Hakim who has found that women, rather than being ‘vanilla men’ choose one of three distinct paths: 20% of women are work-centred (career takes precedence), 20% are home centred (home takes precedence) and 60% are adaptive trying to combine both work and home. Further, Pinker and Hakim that the proportion of women in each group remains consistent regardless of whether or not a woman has children. Supporting her case that women are not ‘vanilla men’, Pinker points to research that describes women as being motivated by different factors. On average, women are more likely to find the social aspects of work important versus men who are more likely to choose a job based on pay and advancement. The more educated (e.g. more choice) a woman has the less likely she is to be motivated by pay and status compared to their male counterparts. An indication of this is women choose socially meaningful jobs over money and status twice as often as men. Women who remain in scientific jobs tend towards areas that have a human component instead of a ’thing’ oriented environment or tend towards areas that contribute towards a greater social good. Interestingly, though in developed countries women still earn less than men and are underrepresented at the top of organizational hierarchies, women are more likely than men to rate themselves as satisfied in their work, suggesting that pursuing a career that includes life balance is more likely to result in feeling work satisfaction.
Career Choices Based on Hormones?
Much of the book outlines Pinker’s hypothesis that the different career choices of men and women are based in biology, guided by hormones. Whenever I hear an argument grounded in either nature or nurture, I’m inclined to reject that is either one or the other. However, Pinker’s nature argument is particularly compelling because she provides cross cultural data suggesting that regardless of socialization certain biological inclinations about work exist. Pointing out gender difference in work behaviour is contentious because difference is often used as a weapon against women (or anyone different). It is also contentious because the hard won gains of first and second wave feminism were based on the premise that women and men are the same. Nowhere does Pinker (nor do I) argue that women are less capable or should not be afforded equal opportunity. The point is that given comparable ability and opportunity, men and women will make different choices about work.
It strikes me that, on average, women are more likely to consider their careers holistically, in the context of the many forces in their lives: care of their children, care for their parents, personal pursuits, etc. For many women, money and status at the expense of the people in their lives is unlikely to be a long term trade off. It also struck me while reading the book that the characteristics described by Pinker as ‘female’ also characterize, Generation Y who have been identified, both men and women, as less likely to trade money for time. For those of us in affluent countries, many of us, once our basic needs have been met, have the fortune to consider what is important to us in a job, what matters in our lives. One in three women with an MBA chooses not to work full time compared to 1 in 20 men with the same degree. This kind of choice is often perceived as lacking ambition but as I suggested in my earlier post, Highly Intelligent Mothers and I think as a society we tend to place less premium on qualities identified as traditionally female or as Pinker pointes out, we assume that the traditional male choice is the choice that is measured against.
A Broader Model of Career Success
Gifted women in developed countries, particularly educated gifted women, have the luxury of choice. But we lack a visible alternative career model. Many women I know, gifted or not, on some visceral level reject the traditional ‘male’ career path as not right for us. Pinker’s book demonstrates that for many gifted women, the search for satisfaction at work really is a search for life satisfaction, of which work is only one part. The Sexual Paradox provides recognition that women tend to make different choices about work. Ultimately, I think Pinker has correctly identified the traditional definition of career success is limiting not just for women but also men. And for the women who castigate themselves for not seeking the accepted path to career ’success’ by working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and climbing the corporate ranks at the expense of their values and families, The Sexual Paradox provides validation for a broader definition of career success.
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