Family obligations or cultural contraints? Obstacles in the path of professional women.

Publication: Journal of International Women's Studies

Publication Date: 01-MAY-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Bridgewater State College

Abstract

This paper provides an account of our research on balancing private life and work among highly qualified information technology (IT) professionals. The authors basically present the findings of an empirical research on balancing private life and work among highly qualified information technology (IT) professionals (mostly engineers and few managers), comparing small loosely structured high-tech finns and big bureaucracies. Authors here build on theories regarding gender and commitment, appraisal and promotions and link these to work time behavior to show up consequences of gendered work time patterns on engineers' careers.

Briefly, to sum up the rationale, women and men behave differently regarding working hours, which are remarkably long in IT. As well, management is reluctant to reduce the workweek, and authors analyze why this is so. More, working hours are, more than ever, regarded as an important asset as well as an indicator of employee commitment. Finally, commitment is an important factor in promotions, which puts those who ask for reduced hours at a disadvantage. So much for women and for balancing working and private life.

Key Words: Gender, Information technology, Appraisal Others : Career, commitment, promotions, work time pattern, engineers

Introduction

This paper provides an account of our research on balancing private life and work among highly qualified information technology (IT) professionals. Most of them are engineers, but we also interviewed managers. The project was funded by the Fonds quebecois de recherche sur la societe et la culture [Quebec Fund for Research on Society and Culture] under its program called Action concertee sur le travail en mutation [Concerted Action on Changing Work].

Here we will be presenting a small part of our findings, those having to do with:

--First, the importance of how commitment is assessed in career advancement (the performance appraisal and promotion process),

--Second, the importance of working long hours and of "presenteeism" in assessing commitment,

--Third, the impact of the differences between men's and women's working hours on career advancement.

As we go along, we will discuss a number of studies on the issue that we found particularly interesting and compare our findings with theirs.

Method

We surveyed seven Canadian companies, based in Montreal, that hire professional women (engineers and managers), in four business sectors: five small loosely structured high-tech firms (information technology business services, optics-photonics) and two big bureaucracies in the traditional economy (corporate real-estate management services and insurance). Most of the companies had about a hundred employees at the time of the interviews. The number may have dropped since then, as there have been layoffs at some. The companies were contacted during the summer of 2000 and the interviews took place between January 2001 and April 2002. We conducted extensive interviews with women and men in the same positions: managers, computer analysts, programmer-analysts, project managers, systems analysts, systems architects, testing engineers, software designers, optical engineers, process engineers, operating engineers, optics-photonics researchers and IT engineers.

In each company, we interviewed one or two human resources managers, two to four supervisors and ten to twelve employees (equal numbers of women and men) working as engineers, researchers and IT specialists (mostly programmer-analysts). The semistructured interviews lasted one and a quarter to two and a half hours. They were held in a closed office at the workplace, and everyone interviewed received a guarantee of anonymity and confidentiality signed by the research team members that quoted their commitment to the Commission d'acces a l'information [Quebec Access to Information Commission]. The 88 in-depth interviews and the huge amount of qualitative data they contained were processed with the assistance of the NVIVO software application.

We asked people about their job contents and their job requirements, the rules of advancement that applied, human resources management practices, especially as they concerned helping to balance private life and work, and about their problems, strategies and professional decisions in this regard. With the data, we were able to make a useful comparison in building on work already done in the field, that is to say we compared men's and women's strategies for balancing work and private life as they relate to the corporate and professional cultures: formal and informal standards, prevailing idea of performance and commitment.

Career-Advancement Factors: The Last Findings And Ours

The importance of commitment in the performance appraisal

The performance appraisal is, of course, a crucial moment for career advancement because it is generally the key to promotion. In an appraisal, employees' commitment is naturally taken into account, whether they are engineers, professionals or managers. This is so common, in fact, that there are widely used, validated instruments for assessing commitment, such as the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) and its variants (Singh & Vinnicombe, 2000). One of the scholarly classic definitions of commitment (Mowday, Steers & Porter, 1979), which dominated research on the subject for some 30 years almost unquestioned (Guest, 1992), focussed on two main aspects:

(1) continuance commitment, or the desire to keep working for an organization, attachment or loyalty, and

(2) affective/attitudinal commitment, which is adherence to the employer's values and objectives and the resulting willingness to work.

The contemporary definition of commitment

Commitment is a primary appraisal factor, yet its definition has changed a great deal in recent years, firstly as a consequence of an effort from the researchers to ask the employees for their own definition. As a result of this methodological device, factors of important change in the definition of commitment, like the globalization of trade, were put to the fore (Johnson, Lero & Rooney, 2001, p. 32; Stiles, Gratton, Hope-Haily & McGovern, 1997; Rousseau, 1995). For instance, as it becomes less likely in the current economy that employees will remain with their employers for a long time, their present productivity and contribution to the company are of greater concern (Guest, 1997, 1998; Singh & Vinnicombe, 2000). Singh and Vinnicombe surveyed 37 managers and engineers of both sexes in high-tech (aerospace) companies specifically on the concept of commitment. The aspects of commitment that their subjects mentioned as priorities are similar to those expressed by our subjects:

--First, to 65% of respondents, was on-time task or objective delivery within budget and a willingness to "put yourself out, do some extra" (Singh & Vinnicombe, 2000, pp. 238-240). The women placed more emphasis on the importance of putting themselves out at work, the struggle to juggle work and family, and the difficulty in fulfilling both roles well (Singh & Vinnicombe, 2000, pp. 240 and 249). We will come back to this later.

--Second came involvement in the organization and quality of work (59% of respondents), even if it is not "for life," devoting yourself loyally to the organization, making it a personal commitment, considering that you represent the organization in all your relations with the outside world: customers, shareholders, suppliers, partners and even neighbors.

--Third and fourth were being proactive, using initiative and doing your best for the organization, making the organization your top priority.

--Fifth (41% of respondents) came putting in the extra hours required for delivery. Half of the women mentioned this aspect whereas only a third of the men did. The authors explain this difference by pointing to the problems that overtime work causes women, problems that they go into at length: among other things, the women are unhappy that the amount of time spent at work is considered to be the primary indicator of commitment and they feel that the quality of work should be taken into account more. Many women disagree with using unlimited overtime as an indicator of commitment, when what it really indicates is availability (22% mentioned availability when talking about commitment). The comments of these subjects suggest that there are significant differences between the sexes in terms of their concept of commitment.

--A number of other aspects mentioned illustrate...

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