Why do men in female-dominated jobs (nursing, primary teaching, social work) get into management quicker than women?

[margerykemp]

Surely there should be less of a glass ceiling in these jobs where 90+% of workers are female?

This seems to happen even early on in the career path so I dont think it can just be put down to 'choices' over eg childbearing.

Even earlier than pushing in Miggsie, a recent study showed that babies dressed in blue tend to get held facing outwards and babies in pink are more likely to be held facing the person holding them.

Yourefired- can you link anything please?

Just an observation from my years of teaching, but the men seemed more sure of their abilities and fitnesses to have the advanced positions than the women.

I remember one particular young lad who, after 2 years of teaching was already applying for deputy head jobs. He was, quite frankly, a crap teacher who couldn't organise his way out of a paper bag. He really needed a few more years at the chalk face to properly learn the ropes. He didn't realise that his colleagues were still in that covering for and propping up the new boy phase with him. While he was a bit of an extereme example, it wasn't uncommon to see men apply for, and get very angry if they didn't get, jobs that more experienced femal colleagues hesitated to consider.

I belong to the women's network at work and one male senior manager gave us a talk and one of the questions was, if women are able why are they not promoted more? And he replied that in all the departments he had run (quite a few!) the men were always hassling for more money/interesting work/promotion whereas the women didn't, so he said he had it in the back of his mind that a male employee may leave, but not the women, therefore the men tended to get offered more as they hassled more and he was always more aware of what the male employees wanted in terms of their career.

This also ties in with studies that have shown that women will apply for jobs only if they fulfill about 90% of the described abilities and skills whereas men apply for jobs where their skills match is quite low. Again I think this all goes back to early social conditioning where boys are rewarded for pushing themselves forward, and girls are not.

I was the same myself, I have not applied for jobs then seen a less skilled male get the job. Now I ring people up saying "got anything I can do? I'm bored" I've already got another role in the company just by a couple of phone calls. But it is amazing how many women will not do that.

Oh yes, I've heard of the 'glass escalator' too, as a contrasting and problematic opposite to the glass ceiling. Now where the blazes have I read it...

Leggy: I'm also an academic and I haven't been to a conference since 2008. I had DS2 in 2009 and I haven't been able to get away (due to BF and a range of other child-related duties). It's really not having a good effect on my career. DH, on the other hand, has been to several conferences in that time and has reaped the rewards.

That said, I do get paid quite a lot more than him and I have better promotion prospects. However, this is only because I've had better luck in getting better jobs. Of course, the flip side of that is that I always end up being the one accommodating his conference trips or other work activities so that he can try to get into a better position.

Actually, now that I think about it, everyone we know in similar circumstances try to most support the partner with the better promotion prospects. In each of those other cases, that partner has been male and his wife has gone part-time, stayed at home, or otherwise left academia to support his career.

About 18 years ago I went for an interview for a primary teaching PGCE course (Nottingham Poly). There were about 40 interviewees and it was a group-tasks day with personal interviews at the end.

One of the interviewees was male. The rest of us were female.

One of the assessors came round, stopped at our group which had the lone bloke in it, watched for a few seconds then said to him, 'of course, if you get a place, you'll be a head in 10 years'.

The rest of us were gobsmacked. Pointed out that she hadn't observed for more than a few secs, that we hadn't been interviewed yet, that it was just blatantly unfair.

'Thats how life is' she said, and walked off.

Own worst enemies indeed.

Miggsie's post reminds me of that chapter from Dale Spender and Sally Cline's "Reflecting Men at Twice Their Natural Size," where they did an experiment about occupying the "verbal space" in discussions with men. Try as they might, in conversations, they never managed to speak 50% of the time. Even when they got about 30% or so of the time, the men became fairly agitated and even complained that the women were too pushy/talking too much. I think that's about perceptions of how much verbal space, how "pushy" women are "allowed" to be. Very sad that.

However, the idea of the "pushy bloke" getting further career wise because they try their arm more does strike a chord with me. I have managed mostly female workforces, but I can think of two men in one place who drove me up the wall. One was in a junior role and had previously worked in the private sector. His constant bugging about his salary and wanting a more prestigious job title got right up my nose. I didn't have the same flexibility in what was a public-sector led partnership. If he hadn't found another job and quit, he was cruising for a disciplinary actually. Another was more subtle in his efforts to muscle upwards and did end up getting a temporary acting-up gig. I soon realised that he was bluffing his capabilities so if it hadn't been such a short stint, he would have been bumped back down more quickly.

In most places I've managed, we remove names and personal details from forms before shortlisting. Yes, it's possible from other info to sometimes work out the gender of a person (e.g. if they went to a single gender school, if they refer to themselves by gender in the narrative part of the application, etc.) Most of the time though, you can't tell. It's unscientific, but I have found that those with the most "brass neck" type applications (i.e. applying when they don't meet the criteria and/or using lots of "flannel" to pad out the fact that they don't actually have the experience,) tend to be blokes. As a result, they don't tend to get shortlisted! :-)

My kids’ school head teacher said one of the problems with employing Male teachers was they never stuck around for more than a couple of years as they were always after promotions.

There is that general rule to that men apply for jobs they think they could do, women apply for jobs they know they can do.

I do think that men go into job interviews with a different attitude - if women are a bit ‘over confident’ it is generally viewed negatively and men get away with it. The guy who joined my team a year after me with less previous experience got paid more thanks for the same job because he was more pushy about the pay.

Does this win the prize for oldest thread revival?

I know, I was reading this thread then realised it was from 2011!
Have things changed since then, I wonder.

To be fair I think a lot of women feel that they have to prove they are really good at one job before they are entitled to apply for the step up and often they think that takes .time. This is a mindset that needs to change. That's not to say that sexism doesn't exist as well but as women will not get encouraged to go for promotion like men, we'll just have to do it for ourselves and make sure in the future to encourage other women to be ambitious.

The only male nurse I have come across in my life was head of nursing at our large local hospital. He was doing a meet the patients tour of the hospital on Christmas day. Thought it was odd at the time.

It's the same in the counselling world, I did 3 years of classes (different courses with some overlap of students but many new students each year) and the men simply dominated the class. My last year there were 4 men in the group of 20 and they very loudly dominated every discussion.

There also may be a difference in placements since they are so happy to see men since there are a shortage of male counsellors.

I've noticed men in private practice have no qualms about setting their prices a lot higher than women, one CBT therapist I know charges £40 an hour more than average and gets loads of clients. There is a lot of talk about valuing yourself and pricing accordingly but women seem reluctant to do so, I've no idea if the female CBT therapist would be able to attract clients at £100 an hour.

Counselling is seen as women's work and there is a huge push for qualified therapists to volunteer, maybe because they are seen as not needing the money but also a lack of value. Even big organisations such as Mind, hospices and the prison service pay other members of staff (nurses, admin, cleaners) and expect counsellors to work for free, even though many are qualified at masters level.

I only know one modern therapist who is seen as an expert and is written about in the textbooks which are also all written by men!

My prostate owning partner ;-) works in a female dominated caring profession. His female boss keeps telling him he'll be in the position of the boss above her soon. He finds this very embarrassing as it's said in front of his female colleagues who are more experienced than him, he also doesn't want to be a manager. Men are seen as leaders and their words carry more weight, I see it in my own industry too and it gives me the rage!

This is an interesting topic for a thread but I want to mention that it is a zombie thread, which is more than 9 years old (in case anyone is expecting a response from the OP or other posters who posted in 2011).

IME of nearly 40 years in the NHS, yes, always.

Meh. 25 years in primary education; my predominantly male head teachers and deputy heads have all had supportive spouses doing the grunt work at home. Most have had significantly less teaching experience than female colleagues when appointed. Cringe.

I never noticed it was a zombie thread, nothing has changed though!