Researchers: Women Must Work Harder to Succeed than Men

Women, have you ever sensed that you had to work twice as hard as a man, doing the very same job, to get ahead? This old adage has proven true, researchers announced in a recent press release.

Sociologists researchers from the University of Virginia and Washington State University did their best to slice and dice data that would disprove the old wives-tail about women needing to work harder than men.

Yet it didn't matter how much they tried, the results were the same. Yes, women do have to work harder than men.

The researchers conducted five different surveys. They were given to different groups. Men participated in the surveys. Women participated in the surveys. They were given at different years. Old people took it, young people took it. They even gave it to people in different countries (they conducted this survey in both America and in Britain). They conducted this survey in several different years so they could compare data from several years ago to current data.

Ultimately it didn't matter who took it.

When responding to the question, "My job requires that I work very hard," women consistently and overwhelmingly said 'yes.' Women said that they agreed or strongly agreed.

"Even when women and men are matched on extensive measures of job characteristics, family and household responsibilities, and individual qualifications, women report that their jobs require more effort than men do. Between a man and a woman who hold the same job, shoulder the same burdens at home and have the same education and skills, the woman is likely to feel she must work harder," said Elizabeth Gorman of the University of Virginia.

Researchers tried to look for every discrepancy they could find. They evaluated the impact of family life on one's work life. They examined the mental and physical demands of different jobs. They examined data collected from over 3,500 interviews.

None of these explained the reason for the difference that continually arose its ugly head.

They analyzed the data, checking to see if the women who participated in the surveys did, indeed, have far more difficult jobs. They even reevaluated all of the surveys and found identical results when men and women held the same or nearly identical job.

The researchers even looked at the issues surrounding housework, the bane of many families. Could women be more fatigued by working, doing housework, and caring for their children and families? Women agreed that they had to work at maintaining these responsibilities, but they did not account for why women sensed that they had to perform better on their jobs.

The only possible interpretation of the data the continually held was that society expects more from women that it does men.

"A lot of experimental research has shown that people rate the same performance as better when told it was done by a man. It follows that women have to do better than a man in order to get the same evaluation. Here we see how this plays out in the effort women must put in at work," said Gorman.

Researchers hope that this data will not be used to further the demands made upon women. Rather, they hope that this data will serve as a reminder that we must work to make job standards more transparent, and equalize the value of work that is contributed by women.

Source:
http://www.newswise.com/p/articles/view/535725/