Women in the German Workplace: What Facilitates or Constrains Their Claims-Making for Career Advancement?

Laura Luekemann and Anja-Kristin Abendroth
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Laura Luekemann: Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany
Anja-Kristin Abendroth: Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany

Social Sciences, 2018, vol. 7, issue 11, 1-34

Abstract: To contribute to the understanding of gender inequalities within the workplace, this article explored gender differences in claims-making for career advancement and how they depend on workplace contexts based on unique German linked employer–employee data. Applying organizational fixed-effects models, we found that women were less likely than men to make claims, especially when they had children, and that this was related to their working fewer hours. The gender gap in claims-making further depended on workplace characteristics that influenced women’s ability and their feeling of deservingness to work in more demanding positions. Although claims by mothers’ increased in work–life supportive workplaces, highly demanding workplace cultures seemed to hinder women’s attempts to negotiate for career advancement. Thus, the dominance of the ideal worker norm was a relevant driver for the gender gap in claims-making. Whereas this gap in making claims was found to be only partially related to the workplace gender structure, the formalization of human resource practices, such as performance-based evaluations in the workplace, fostered mothers’ claims-making, indicating that these evaluations were used to legitimize their claims in the workplace.

Keywords: gender inequality; claims-making; workplace; supportive workplace culture; formalized personnel policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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