by
Sarah Fischer
(Guelph, October 20th, 2005)
Despite decades of fighting for a place in the workforce, then chipping away at the glass ceiling, women are still earning fewer dollars than are men. Now, evidence suggests that women not only earn less, but also feel they deserve less pay. A University of Guelph researcher is trying to understand why.
Prof. Serge Desmarais, Department of Psychology, has conducted numerous studies about gender and its effects on pay entitlement, that is, how much employees feel their time at work is worth. Each study has shown the same conclusion: men feel more entitled to higher earnings than do women.
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Prof. Serge Desmarais is researching the perceptions and consequences of gender-based pay inequity.
Photo: Martin Schwalbe
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Desmarais suspects this may be due to social roles people adhere to in society.
“Individuals have a well-rooted set of social norms that are introduced at an early age and continue throughout life,” says Desmarais. “We may not always realize they’re present, but they impact our lives in so many ways, including wage differences and pay entitlement.”
Even children as young as seven show differences in entitlement based on gender. In a study of grade two students, Desmarais had the children perform a task and take as many stickers they felt they deserved as a reward. Female students consistently took fewer stickers than their male classmates.
“Whether it’s girls wanting less or boys wanting more, we’ve found that on average girls feel less entitled than boys from a very early age,” says Desmarais. “Research also indicates that children perceive professions as gendered early in life as well. For example, to them a doctor is a man and a nurse is a woman.”
The hiring process may also contribute to a woman’s feelings of lower entitlement, he adds. In another study, he looked at dependability in the workplace and how certain issues influenced a candidate’s ability to secure a job. He found that serious illness or needy parents, among other factors that could hinder an employee’s dependability, didn’t affect the candidate’s success – but the ability or desire to have children did. This, Desmarais believes, may leave women feeling they are entitled to less pay if they are considered less dependable in the workplace.
“In the long run, women have aspirations that exist outside of work, such as having a family,” he says. “These desires may make them feel as though they are entitled to less from their work because they commit to goals outside the workplace as well.”
In the future, Desmarais will attempt to identify ways of testing his social roles hypothesis of why women feel they are entitled to less.
“The gap in pay entitlement between genders carries through the entire lifespan, with women feeling they deserve less from a very early age through their senior years,” he says. “We need to determine why women feel less entitled and men more entitled so that we can rid ourselves of this gap and these differences that persist between the sexes.”
This research is sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
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