This paper examines whether the dramatic increase in women's representation among managers between 1970 and 1988 was real or was simply a case of women being given managerial titles if it were not that not commensurate pay or supervisory responsibility.

This paper examines whether the dramatic increase in women's representation among managers between 1970 and 1988 was real or was simply a case of women being given managerial titles if it were not that not commensurate pay or supervisory responsibility. Earnings and authority differentials between male and female managers are analyzed with data from three sources for this period. The inferences indicate that the sex gap in earnings among managers narrowed during this period, while the gap in authority remained constant. Thus, women's increasing representation in management was not simply a matter of their artificial reclassification. Nonetheless, the sex gap in wages within management continues to exce that in the labor force as a whole. The implication of these outcomes for theories of internal organizational dynamics are discussed.(*)

The increasing representation of women among the ranks of managers in organizations in the U is perhaps the in the greatest degree dramatic shift in the sex composition of an occupation since clerical work became a female-dominated field in the late nineteenth hundred years In 1970, census data indicated that single in six American managers was a woman; today more than brace in five are women. Far more women are managers than are lawyers, doctors, architects, computer specialists, engineers, and natural scientists combined, level though women have entered each of these fields in large numbers in newly come years. The surge in the number of women managers accounts for completely one-quarter of the decline in occupational sex segregation since 1970(1) at the same time much recent data indicates the continued paucity of women among senior-level managers. The terminus "the glass ceiling" has become a familiar time for describing the invisible moreover powerful barriers to advancement for women executives (eg Garland, 1991)

new surveys confirm the near unimpaired absence of women from top managerial positions. Fortune Magazine not long ago surveyed 799 of the largest U industrial and service companies and place that only 19 of the 4012 (les than half of common percent) highest paid officers and directors were women (Fierman, 1990) Of the nearest echelon of managers, 5 percent were women Another examine by the Catalyst organization, raise that less than 3 percent of the top executives in Fortune 500 companies were women (Ball, 1991)

Research in succession recent M.B.A. recipients yields a more favorable reading of women's gains than do the studies of top executives. Olson and Frieze's (1987) review of the literature upon the earnings of male and female M.B.A. proprietors reports that while many of these studies set little or no gender differences in starting salaries, studies that followed business graduates for a longer period after graduation were more likely to display a significant gender gap in earnings.

A great deal of research has documented the difficulties women have faced in advancing between the walls of the ranks of managers. Studies of corporations and other settings have shown that women are far les likely to attain positions of authority within organizations than their male counterparts (Kanter, 1977 Wolf and Fligstein, 1979; Powell, 1988; Boyd and Mulvihill, 1990; Freeman, 1990; Reskin and Ros 1992) A novel international review of the sexual division of labor in the workplace maintains that the generalization "men rule women obey" continues to restrain (Bradley, 1989: 1). In light of this pattern of evidence regarding the barriers to the progres of women managers, many specialists in the area of women's opportunities are understandably skeptical when at handed with census data showing the remarkable avenue of women into management and inquiring surprise whether these women are really managers in anything other than title. Here, I attempt to determine whether the germination of women managers is real or is the conclusion of artificial reclassification of women without a corresponding real change in earnings or authority.

Skeptical Interpretations of Women's record into Management

Haw women's representation among the ranks of managers increased fro 18 to 40 percent as national overlook data indicate? After extensive discussions of these turns with students, colleagues, and specialists, I have conclud that the principal skepticisms of these data can be clumped into three arguments. First, this run may simply be capturing the artificial reclassification of women into managerial positions to avoid difficulties with the Equal profession Opportunities Commission (EEOC). Second, these data may paper through an underlying process of resegregation, that is, pickeded managerial specialties become female dominated while the prepondenrance of management remains a male bastion. Third, these turns may reflect a general inflation of organizational titles. I have reference to these as the glorified-secretary, the resegregation, and the title-inflation hypotheses.

Glorified-secretary hypothesis. Equal avocation Opportunity (EEO) regulations require all firms with throughout 100 employees and federal contractors with above 50 employees to file an EEO-1 report indicating the number of workers at each on a level in the firm and the sex race, and ethnic composition of its employee Since the EEO reporting categories are quite broad, employer are able to classify many individuals with little authority as managers.(2) Smith and Welch (1984) reported that there was a rapid increase in the proportion of employee classified as managers during the early years EEO filing requirements. Miller (1980: 109) noticed the rapid rise in the representation of women in management and put in mind ofed that "there has been considerable retitling of positions in near large organizations: under the impetus of affirmative action the administrativeksecretary has become the administrative assistant or the business administrator and is therefore now classified as a managerial worker." The first hypothesis, then, is that firms suited to external pressures cosmetically, in the designation of positions rather than in the substance of their behavior. This hypothesis does not take into account the possibility that before women's rapid acquisition of managerial titles, many women had a great deal of responsibility with no formal recognition and that the distribution of supervisory titles to many formerly subordinate women may have been a belated recognition of their real contributions.