February 1 , 1999

By DOROTHY P. MOORE
Special to the Post and Courier

     

     When I wrote my first book about successful women entrepreneurs, one of the most important criteria was managerial experience in a previous organization because it was important to learn why women left organizations to start businesses of their own.
     The study examined two types of entrepreneurs, the intentionals and the corporate climbers. The intentionals had always planned to start a business and worked for someone else to gain experience and knowledge.  The corporate climbers initially entered with the intention of making the organization their career and later changed their minds.  
Interestingly enough, the women in both groups left their prior organizations for essentially the same reasons. The decisions to leave were a complex mix of personal aspirations and factors that prevented them from being the best they could be in their former environments. 
     The typical female entrepreneur who participated in our study had been in business for seven years.  Many had experienced an organizational life that offered less opportunity for self-expression, individual creativity, and financial well being than they desired. Their exit to entrepreneurship suggests an interesting question: How typical were the environments these entrepreneurs left behind?  
     In-depth investigations into the structure and operating  practices of one firm or several can yield detailed findings, but the results may not be applicable in other settings.  Surveys can take in far more organizations but are difficult to design, which usually means they are limited to a single category, such as banks. 
What is needed is data covering the range of organizations. Fortunately, we have an extensive data base in a series of snapshots from the 1991 National Organizations Study.  With the year 2001 approaching, it is hopeful that other researchers will conduct  a similar investigation. 
     The 1991 NOS was designed as a multipurpose, multi-investigator survey  of the structure, context, and personnel practices of a diverse population of a large number of  U.S. organizations without limits on type, geography, size, or other dimensions.  The research was extensive and path-breaking, for nothing like it had ever been attempted on a national scale in the United States before or since. 
     The study yields data that accurately reflects what was going on inside the American workplace in 1991.  The gender-related findings in particular suggest much about the organizational experiences of the women entrepreneurs we interviewed.
First of all, organizations in the U.S. in 1991, whether private for-profit businesses or public agencies or nonprofit establishments, exhibited considerable gender segregation. 
     Most men worked in typically male jobs and most women in typically female jobs. By the criterion of 30% to 70% male or female, only 19% of all American jobs could be called gender balanced.  
     Upper management positions showed considerable gender segregation.  Half of managerial jobs in 1991 were typically male, and more than a quarter exclusively so. Only in establishments with high proportions of women or part-time employees were managerial positions likely to be gender-integrated. The higher up one went in an organization, whether large or small, the less job integration there was.  Women in management were likely to be alone or few in number.
     Size mattered.  In larger organizations, women had better chances. Small firms were far less likely to have a job-integrated workforce.  In establishments with 20 or fewer employees, 84 percent of the jobs were completely gender segregated.
     Gender segregation meant inequality. Most female jobs were characterized by low wages, limited access to employee training programs, and  little or no chance for advancement. If the workforce in a particular job changed to become  increasingly female, employee wages dropped and prospects for advancement withered.
     The uneven playing field was not susceptible to change through market forces.  Theories of the efficiency of free markets and hands-off government policies are grounded in the  assumption that intense competition in the marketplace requires increasing organizational efficiency.  It follows that job integration would increase because firms will seek to employ the best workers available, irrespective of other factors. 
     The same theories similarly assume that the absence of competition in government and public-policy organizations would produce job segregation.  In fact, the reverse was true.  Government  and non-profit organizations exhibited a considerably higher degree of gender integration.
The greater gender integration in jobs in the larger organizations was directly related to the fact these organizations used formal job descriptions, followed hiring procedures based on qualifications, and had published policies that made line managers accountable to upper management and employees. These practices, in turn, related directly to the scrutiny required under the equal opportunity legislation.
     The conventional wisdom was that because men are viewed as breadwinners they are more committed to their companies and job than women, which conventional wisdom held to be home- and family-oriented. NOS revealed that while men were in fact slightly more committed than women to their organizations, this had less to do with sex than the reality that men were more likely than women to have jobs with commitment-enhancing features.
     The National Organization Study also said something about the characteristics of high performance establishments. 
     These firms had common characteristics, and they existed in a package.  Among these characteristics were a concern with quality, real teamwork, fair compensation practices, decentralized decision making, employee participation in decisions where they benefit by sharing in the gains and profits from the success of those decisions, employee training programs,  and a commitment to employee security in the form of internal advancement based on employee skill development.
     The Study reports on U.S. organizations as they existed eight years ago.  Have things changed?  There are no data that allow us to judge accurately.  Two elements suggest that job segregation could be lessening: the increasing interest in high performance on the part of more and more firms and the normalization of EEO practices in hiring and advancement.