Women's jobs are poorer paid and more stressful: study

Jerusalem: Women's jobs are poorer paid, less flexible, more stressful, and offer fewer promotion opportunities than men's, an international study that included data from 27 countries has found.

Professor Haya Stier, of Tel Aviv University, and Professor Meir Yaish, University of Haifa, Israel, analysed survey data on the working lives of 8,500 men and 9,000 women in 27 countries.

In a paper published in the journal Work, Employment and Society, researchers described how those surveyed responded to questions about their jobs.

On a scale of 1-5, on average men gave answers that were 0.215 points higher (8 per cent) than women's when asked about their income and opportunities for promotion. On a scale of 1-5, on average men gave answers that were 0.159 points (5 per cent) lower than women's when asked about how stressful and exhausting the work was. Men gave answers that were 0.084 (2 per cent) points higher than women's when asked about how interesting they found their work, how independently they could work and how much scope they had to improve their skills.

In the study, men gave answers that were 0.062 points (2 per cent) lower than women's when asked about job security. Only in the area of physical condition did men score their work worse, saying it was more physically arduous and dangerous, by 0.275 points (8 per cent), researchers said.

When asked if they or their employer decided at what time they started and ended work, how they organised their schedule, and whether they took time off work, men scored 0.148 points (15 per cent) higher.

"The findings show that women lag behind men on most dimensions of job quality," researchers said. "This result runs counter to the expectation that women's occupations compensate for their low wages and limited opportunities for promotion by providing better employment conditions.

"The findings indicate that women enjoy hardly any advantage over men in the labour market.

"Women lag behind men on most employment dimensions: their jobs offer lower salaries and fewer opportunities for advancement, but also lower job security, worse job content, less time autonomy and worse emotional conditions," researchers said.

The researchers also found that the more women in a profession or trade the closer their working conditions came to men's in most aspects of work.

The respondents were from Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Latvia, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the US.