A Study on the Structure of Gender Inequality: Researching Female leaders who work for Education, Medical and Social Work

1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 09410051
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 社会学(含社会福祉関係)
• Research Institution: Toyo University
• Principal Investigator: KANDA Michiko Toyo university, Literature, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (70058030)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): ASAHI Yoichiro Nagano university, Industrial Sociology, Associate Professor, 産業社会学部, 助教授 (30298400) ; AMANO Maki Toyo university, Sociology, Professor, 社会学部, 教授 (50106035)
• Project Period (FY): 1997 – 1999
• Keywords: Gender / Inequality / Leader / Female Principal / Head Nurse / Female Bureaucrat / Social Movement

Research Abstract

We would like more women to become influential leaders.
The aim of this study is to promote women's participation in society, and the purpose of this research was to analyze the structure of gender inequality in regard to job segregation, the sex gap in earnings and sex discrimination and so on.
In order to analyze the structure of gender inequality we researched the situation of influential female bureaucrats, female principals who worked for schools, head nurses who worked for hospitals and female leaders who worked for social movements.
We used "comparable worth" approach and "space/place" approach in order to analyze the data of our research. "Comparable worth" approach is related to comparable-worth discrimination which is said to occur when one finds an effect of the sex composition of jobs on their pay level that remains even when other job characteristics shown to be determinants of pay levels are entered as control variables. Space/place approach is our original concept that is relating to the structure of gender power.
We thought the positions that are occupied by people holding the power "space/place".
We chose three groups of our respondents who worked for the work places that were related to comparable-worth discrimination and the others who worked for the work places that were not related to comparable-worth discrimination as control groups.
It was our hypothesis that there are more opportunities for women to hold influential positions in primary, secondary education and hospitals, in comparison there are relatively fewer opportunities for women to hold influential positions in local gevernment and social movements.
In order to prove this hypothesis we used comparable worth and space/place concept.
We got a lot of thoughtful conclusions from this research and study.