Sexual Paradox, The by Pinker Susan

Author:Pinker, Susan [Pinker, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: azw, mobi
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2008-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

The Gender Paradox

We know that women have varying goals—career, home, or both—and that 60 to 80 percent of women are in the last two categories; they adapt their careers to accommodate children. We also know that female law partners are twice as likely as men to be dissatisfied with their corporate careers, one factor that hastens their exit.30And finally, we know that female lawyers choose socially meaningful jobs over money and status twice as often as men do.31The question is what relationship these factors have to women’s happiness.

No one expects women to be happier with their work. Yet when career satisfaction is measured, women beat men hands down. Economists call this the gender paradox. Women earn less as a group and are still sparse at the top of the hierarchy. Yet in countries including the United States, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, and Britain, they have consistently rated themselves to be more satisfied with their work lives than men.32It’s assumed that women will want the same things as men and be very unhappy if they don’t get them. But what if women have different goals? If women view their work as an isolated element to be evaluated on its own, then the “vanilla male” view makes sense, as it does to 20 to 30 percent of women. But if the majority of women see work as only one factor that fits into a complex pastiche, they might rate themselves as happier if their jobs allow them to succeed in other spheres, too. One British study that supports that idea was conducted by the sociologist, Michael Rose, at the University of Bath. Based on surveys of 25,000 female public service employees, Rose showed that British women’s rates of job satisfaction have fallen since the early nineties, while men’s work satisfaction has stayed the same. Thus, as women’s work values and pressures approach the male standard, their satisfaction drops to the male level, too. Clearly, a significant proportion of women don’t want to work long hours at intense jobs and are doing so reluctantly.33

In his bookHappiness, the British economist Richard Layard explains why he thinks women’s levels of happiness have dropped while their pay and job opportunities have improved. Their happiness has not kept pace with their increasing salaries and job opportunities because they can’t keep up with the Joneses, Layard writes. Women used to measure themselves against other women. Now they look at both men and women, so there are more ways to feel that they don’t make the grade.34But there’s more to it than that, I think. For the most part women have stepped into positions defined by male ambition. By turning on their heels, more than half of all female lawyers are saying they reject this picture of success.

More typical male single-mindedness may come at a cost to happiness and personal health. The laser focus required of some high-level jobs requires employees to behave as if they work in a vacuum. At the highest levels, work can supersede all other interests and concerns.

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