Equal, but different?

The impact of gender egalitarianism on the integration of female/male HR directors

The Authors

Julia Brandl, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Vienna, Austria

Wolfgang Mayrhofer, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Vienna, Austria

Astrid Reichel, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Vienna, Austria

Acknowledgements

The order of authors is alphabetical. Input was equal. The authors are grateful to the Editor Sandra Fielden and to the anonymous reviewer for advice and comments.

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the status and functional responsibilities of female human resource (HR) directors vary cross-nationally and how gender egalitarian cultural values affect role differences between female and male HR directors.

Design/methodology/approach – A cross-country comparison of HR directors involving 22 countries based on the 2004 Cranet survey.

Findings – Consistent with the hypotheses, gender egalitarian values reduce sex-role differences for strategic integration and for traditionally female-stereotyped HR functions. However, there is no support for the notion that egalitarian values influence sex differences for male-stereotyped HR functions. Since, the data indicate higher levels of involvement of female HR directors in male-stereotyped HR functions in 12 out of 22 countries, unequal distribution of functional responsibility is interpreted as an indicator for sex differences in administrative workload.

Originality/value – Macro cultural factors matter for sex-role differences in strategic integration and functional responsibilities of HR directors. The effects of gender egalitarian values have greater impact on reducing vertical differences than horizontal differences.

Article Type:

Research paper

Keyword(s):

Human resource management; Gender; Women executives; Culture.

Journal:

Gender in Management: An International Journal

Volume:

Number:

Year:

2008

pp:

67-80

Copyright ©

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

ISSN:

1754-2413

Introduction

Human resource management as a profession has traditionally been a female domain (Legge, 1987). Recently there are an even greater number of women than men in the HR profession (Brandl et al., 2006; Roos and Manley, 1996; Wirth, 2001) and a considerable number of them also work in managerial positions (Brandl et al., 2007; Pichler et al., 2005). Despite these improvements, recent studies indicate the persistence of differences in responsibilities and status of men and women within the HR profession in non-managerial positions (Monks, 1993; Simpson and Lenoir, 2003) as well as at the managerial level (Brandl et al., 2007). Research from the UK and USA shows that compared to men, female HR professionals are employed in lower hierarchical positions (Canniffe, 1985; Long, 1984) and predominate HR jobs in the field of training and development, while they are less present in collective bargaining and industrial relations (Simpson and Lenoir, 2003).

The present study builds on this work by describing how equality in HR functional responsibilities and the status of female and male HR directors varies cross-nationally and by analysing how cultural values affect apparent role differences between female and male HR directors. An empirical study at the country level is carried out to answer these questions.

The study seeks to make three contributions to research on the role of women in the HR profession. First, it sets findings from previous research with a single country focus in a broader perspective by providing empirical evidence on national differences in sex-role differences. Second, it complements insights into individual and organizational determinants on the disproportionately high assignment of female HR professionals to female stereotyped responsibilities and lower status positions – known as “ghettoization” (Roos and Manley, 1996) – by examining the impact of cultural values on the division of work between male and female HR directors. Third, it provides a more fine-grained picture of the division of HR work that goes beyond specialization of female HR professionals in occupational fields by looking at the gendered profile of a particular type of HR position, namely the HR director of an organization. In particular, we describe the HR directors' positions by examining their responsibilities and status.

Conceptual backround

Gender egalitarian values

One of the contributions of this paper is the introduction of country level cultural variables as explanatory variables for division of work in a certain profession. Culture theories (Charles, 1998; Charles and Bradley, 2002; Omar and Davidson, 2001) explain cross-national variation in the gendered work division with the prevalence of ideals about the role of women in society. Widely shared assumptions of typical women's characteristics and norms for adequate behaviour within a societal context influence the advancement of women to powerful positions. These assumptions involve in what respects women differ from men (e.g. whether women have specific abilities, skills, preferences) and what status and roles are appropriate or not appropriate for women. Organisations adopt cultural ideals and apply them in their HR policies (Dobbin and Sutton, 1998; Kelly and Dobbin, 1998); individuals encounter these ideals as important guidelines for making decisions and evaluating the fairness of their roles (Major and Schmader, 2001).

Universalism refers to how natural the sexual division of labour is perceived to be by individuals in a distinctive societal context. Depending on the cultural modernisation of a given national context (Meyer, 2001; Ramirez, 1997; Ramirez and Wotipka, 2001), people reject traditionally ascribed gender roles (Reskin and McBrier, 2000) and apply normative standards of “equal opportunity” in their behaviour (Charles and Bradley, 2002, p. 576).

The prevalence of such gender-egalitarian values opens up elite male-dominated domains to women (Ramirez and Wotipka, 2001). In the HR profession, such elite fields are HR director positions which are highly integrated in strategic planning and functional HR responsibilities which are traditionally perceived as male-stereotyped domains. We discuss these aspects consecutively and develop our propositions on how the prevalence of gender egalitarian values affects the sex-role differences in HR director positions.

HR director positions

The position of a HR director can be characterised along the level of strategic integration and the involvement with functional responsibilities (Brewster et al., 1997; Budhwar, 1998). The level of strategic integration is an indicator for the HR director's hierarchical status in an organisation. It describes to what extent the position holder is involved with the development of business strategy planning. Strategic integration represents an important dimension of vertical sex segregation (Brandl et al., 2007).

Functional responsibility is a measure of horizontal sex segregation. It describes to what extent the HR director is responsible for the different basic HR activities of an organisation. In analogy to the distinction between male and female stereotyped occupational HR fields (Simpson and Lenoir, 2003), we distinguish male (hard) and female (soft) stereotyped HR functions. We define recruitment and training and development as soft HR functions and pay and benefits and labour relations as hard HR functions. HR directors are responsible for all of these HR functions; however, the extent of responsibility for particular HR functions can vary. For example, an HR director can be strongly involved with recruitment and training and less involved with pay and benefits. This means that we conceptualize sex differences in our study along three dimensions (Figure 1).

Influence of gender egalitarian values on vertical sex differences

Although the HR profession has a feminine image (Legge, 1987; Niven, 1987), women often have both less formal authority and less “real” influence than male HR professionals. Empirical research shows that female HR managers are underrepresented in higher level positions (Canniffe, 1985; Gooch, 1994; Long, 1984; MacKay, 1986; Monks, 1993; Roos and Manley, 1996).

A study by Kelly and Gennard (2001, p. 52) on British HR directors and whether they are members of the board of directors finds that only two of the 42 HR board members are women. Although their sample is not representative, Kelly and Gennard see the low number of women as consistent with data from other studies on women in senior management functions.

Gooch's (1994) study of the career experiences of female HR professionals in the UK finds that among the reasons why female HR professionals are unable to catch up with male professionals are attitudinal barriers for accessing managerial positions and low-career expectations. They expect to be able to reach middle-level positions but not top-level positions. In addition, many respondents “saw upward progression as less important than leading a [‘balanced life’]” (Gooch, 1994, p. 18).

Gender egalitarian values transport norms of equal opportunity of women and men in hierarchy. Therefore, such attitudinal barriers will be consecutively reduced and career aspirations are likely to become more similar among female and male HR professionals. Thus, we propose that gender egalitarian values are associated with lower differences between female and male HR directors in strategic integration:

H1. There is a negative relationship between gender egalitarian values and the differences in strategic integration of male and female HR directors.

Influence of gender egalitarian values on horizontal sex differences

In addition to hierarchical differences, HRM literature also asserts a functional division of labour between male and female HR professionals (Hardin, 1991; Simpson and Lenoir, 2003). Whilst female HR professionals are strongly represented in soft HR fields like training, staff development and recruitment, other fields such as compensation and industrial relations are male domains.

The absence of female HR professionals from hard HR functions is well documented in empirical research. For example, bargaining and negotiating are found to be dominated by male HR professionals (Hardin, 1991; Monks, 1996). Recent research in the USA context suggests the persistence of a gender specific division of functional responsibilities. On the other hand, female HR professionals are disproportionately employed in training and development or in recruiting (Long, 1984). In line with this, Simpson and Lenoir (2003) show that labour content differs considerably between male and female HR professionals. While female HR professionals are more likely to engage in service-oriented behaviours, male HR professionals are more likely to adopt conflict-related activities.

Often, functional specialization is explained by the gendered image of these fields. For example, Gooch (1994) sees the specialization in training and development resulting from the female preference for tasks with social demands (e.g. “working with people”) and Monks (1996) explains the specialization of male HR professionals on industrial relations resulting from the “more dynamic” image of these activities. As Miller and Coghill (1964, p. 40) explain with respect to the employment of women in the field of labour relations:

By definition, this role involves the expectation of institutionalized conflict as a major feature. Whatever their prowess on the domestic scene, women are rarely cast as professional fighters in our society.

The prevalence of gender egalitarian values implies that such gender-specific ascriptions are rejected and that HR fields become open for HR professionals regardless of their sex (e.g. the employment is based on a person's professional experience or education). In these contexts, female HR professionals are less likely to face constraints for taking over responsibility for hard HR functions because the gendered nature of the field disappears. On the other hand, male HR professionals may find it does not harm their professional image if they take over responsibility for soft HR functions.

Findings from previous studies on representation of women and men in occupational fields tend to support integrative arguments (Charles, 1998; Charles and Bradley, 2002). Thus, we propose that gender egalitarian values are associated with lower differences between female and male HR directors in specialization in hard (soft) functions:

H2. There is a negative relationship between gender-egalitarian values and the differences in responsibility of male and female HR directors for hard HR functions.

H3. There is a negative relationship between gender-egalitarian values and the differences in responsibility of male and female HR directors for soft HR functions.

In the following, we assess whether empirical patterns of differences between female and male HR directors correspond with these propositions.

Method

Sample

The data for our analysis has been generated within Cranet, a research network dedicated to analyzing developments in HRM in public and private organizations with more than 200 employees in a national, cross-national and quasi-longitudinal way since 1989. The extensive Cranet survey is answered on a regular basis (every five years since 1995, before every year) in – currently – more than 30 countries and gathers data on policies and practices that are seen as most relevant to the concept of HRM (Brewster et al., 1996, p. 593). Each country in the network is responsible for creating a national sample representative of the respective company population. Postal surveys are filled out by HR specialists (Brewster and Hegewisch, 1994; Brewster et al., 2004, 2000). The average response rate since the survey's inception is about 20 per cent. After six major survey rounds more than 30,000 organisations are currently included in the Cranet database.

For the analyses in this paper company data from countries taking part in the 2004 survey round is used. For our study we select countries with an established HRM system. We eliminate public sector organisations from the sample because HRM in public organisations is different from HRM in private companies in various respects. One is the higher exposure to legal forms of gender egalitarianism created by equal employment laws. This is due to the fact that public organisations are more visible. Members of the public feel they have a right to comment on the activities of public sector organisations. “The threat of public outcries in the public sector … have to [‘go by the book’]” (MacKay, 1986, p. 306). Furthermore, we exclude companies in which the HR department does not have any responsibility for any of the HR functions asked for in the questionnaire. As information about the HR director is vital for our analyses, we only include companies where the most senior person of the HR department answered the questionnaire. This yields 7,346 companies included in the study from 29 countries. Since, the major independent variable is a country-level variable we have to exclude seven countries for which the information on national gender egalitarian values is not available. The remaining 22 countries are listed in the sample description in Table I. Analyses are conducted at the country level. Thus, all company-level data gathered within Cranet – in a second step (see below) – is aggregated to the country level.

Measures

The main explanatory variable, gender egalitarian values found in a particular country, is measured as the percentage of individuals in a country that (strongly) reject the statement: “A man's job is to earn money; a woman's job is to look after the home and family” This country-level information was gathered within the framework of the International Social Survey Program 2002 – family and changing gender roles III. Since, gender egalitarian values are measured as a percentage it potentially ranges from 0 to 100. Although a single item measure:

… this survey item provides an excellent indicator of individuals' adherence to liberal egalitarian ideals because such ascribed roles assignments are strongly at odds with modern norms of … equal opportunity and free choice (Charles and Bradley, 2002, p. 576).

For tests showing the validity of this measure see Charles and Bradley (2002).

Our company-level conceptualization of strategic integration includes “formal” as well as “informal” strategic integration (Galang and Ferris, 1997). The scale (ranging from 0 to 2) measures the membership of the HR director on the board of directors and his or her integration in the company's strategy formulation.

We measure functional responsibility of HR directors in their companies by the HR director's responsibility for major policy decisions on various HR management issues: pay and benefits, recruitment and selection, training and development, and industrial relations. The exact question for measuring involvement of HR directors is “With whom does the primary responsibility lie for major policy decisions on the following issues?” Answering options are “line management” (0), “line management in consultation with HR department” (1), “HR department in consultation with line management” (2), and “HR department” (3).

Following the distinction of male and female stereotyped aspects in HRM (Legge, 1995; Storey, 1992), we group HR practices into hard and soft functions. Responsibility for hard functions is measured as the degree of the HR department's responsibility for pay and compensation and industrial relations. Responsibility for training and development as well as recruitment constitutes responsibility for soft functions. The degree of responsibility for any of the functions ranges from 0 “line management” to 3 “HR department”. The scale is calculated as the sum of the degrees for each hard/soft function thus both scales range from 0 to 6.

As argued above, this study is concerned with equality of strategic and functional integration of female HR directors in various countries. To create measures of equality on the country level we aggregate company data on to the country level by forming groups and differences. In particular, the variables “difference in strategic integration” and “difference in responsibility for hard/soft functions” are calculated as follows: for each country the two groups of female and male HR directors are formed. Then, the absolute values of difference in mean strategic integration, mean responsibility for hard and soft functions, respectively, in the two groups are calculated for each country.

As control variables (also aggregated to the country level) we include the mean percentage of female employees in the HR department, the percentage of HR directors with an academic degree, their mean number of years of HR experience and the size of the HR departments relative to the company both measured in number of employees (given in percentage for descriptive statistics).

Findings

Table I provides the disaggregated sample description giving information on characteristics of HR directors and their HR departments in each of the 22 countries separately. It also includes the numbers of companies from which the mean and percentage values for the aggregated sample are calculated. The first column displays the mean percentage of female employees in an Australian, Austrian, etc. HR department. In all the countries more than half of the employees in HR departments are female. In most cases the proportion ranges from 60 to 80 per cent. In France, the number of women in HRM is especially high; on average 95 per cent of employees in HR departments are women. The second column shows the percentage of HR directors in each country who possess an academic degree. In almost all the countries (except The Netherlands) the majority of HR directors are university graduates. In Bulgaria, France, the Philippines, Spain and the USA more than 90 per cent of all HR directors have an academic degree. The mean experience of HR directors, depicted in column three, ranges between ten and 20 years in the majority of countries – only former communist countries Hungary and the Czech Republic show lower values. The fourth column gives the average size of an HR department relative to the whole company (both measured in number of employees) in a certain country. Switzerland shows the highest value; the average Swiss HR department employs more than 4 per cent of the company's staff. In the majority of countries the average size of an HR department is 1-2 per cent compared to the company as a whole.

Table II provides descriptive statistics of the disaggregated sample. In order to give first insights on the difference or equality of female and male HR directors in the countries included, we differentiate between the two groups of female and male HR directors also showing the differences which serve as our dependent variables in the following regression models. Table II also includes gender egalitarian values in the 22 countries. In the first column we see Spain, the Nordic countries, Germany, The Netherlands and Italy scoring high on gender egalitarianism (up to 77.7) whereas former communist countries like Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Hungary score low (down to 28.9).

In 19 of the 22 countries female HR directors are on average less strategically integrated than their male counterparts. With a scale for strategic integration that can range from 0 to 2 the differences go up to 0.55 in Cyprus, 0.42 in the Czech Republic and 0.29 in Australia. In Slovenia, Hungary and the Philippines female HR directors are (slightly) more integrated than male equivalents.

The next three columns provide information on mean responsibilities for hard HR functions. Comparing the average degree of responsibilities of female and male in the different countries we find a rather diverse picture. In 12 of the 22 countries female HR directors are more involved in carrying out hard functions. The differences range from 0.04 in Germany and Switzerland to 0.91 in New Zealand. For the responsibility for soft functions (depicted in the last three columns) we find a different picture. Soft functions are rather female dominated. In 17 of the 22 countries mean involvement in soft functions is higher among female HR directors than among their male counterparts.

For the main study on the aggregated level we are concerned with the mere difference between HR departments with female and male directors and not with the direction of differences. Table III provides means, standard deviations and correlations for the variables aggregated on the country level.

The mean gender egalitarian value of the countries included is 54.74 (theoretical range 0 to 100). Difference in strategic integration can – like the scales the differences are calculated from – range from 0 to 2. The actual mean is 0.20. The mean values of difference in responsibility for hard/soft functions (possible range 0 to 6) are 0.33 and 0.41, respectively. On average the HR departments of a country have 72.78 per cent female employees and represent 1.82 per cent of their companies' sizes. The average HR director has 14.37 years experience in the field and on average 76.58 per cent of the directors held an academic degree. We find significant negative correlations of the main explanatory variable gender egalitarian values with difference in strategic integration and difference in responsibility for soft functions. This indicates that the countries displaying higher gender egalitarian values show less differences between female and male HR directors.

Table IV summarizes the OLS regression results for the three dependent variables. H1 proposes that gender egalitarianism has a negative effect on the difference in strategic integration. Following this expectation the effect of gender egalitarianism is negative and significant (p(2sided)<0.05). None of the control variables shows significant association with difference in strategic integration. H3 is also supported. The difference in responsibility for soft functions is significantly negatively related with gender egalitarian values (p(2sided)<0.05).

Difference in responsibility for hard HR functions seems to follow a pattern different to the one for soft functions. H2 is not supported. The difference in responsibility for hard HR functions is not significantly associated with gender egalitarian values but with the percentage of female employees in the HR department. However, since the whole model is not significant for hard functions, this result cannot be interpreted.

The residuals of all three models are normally distributed and their levels of autocorrelations are not substantial (Durbin Watson between 1.81 and 2.22). Calculation of the variance inflation factors does not indicate multicollinearity. The distribution of the residuals does not raise suspicion of strong heteroskedasticity for the models with difference in strategic integration and responsibility for hard HR functions, respectively, as dependent variables. The visual inspection of the partial scatter plot of residuals from the soft-functions model, however, suggests rather serious violation of equal variances. Analysis with White heteroskedasticity-consistent standard errors and covariance reveals a weaker (p(1sided)=0.07) influence of gender egalitarianism whereas the coefficient of relative size of HR department gained strength (p(2sided)=0.01).

Discussion and conclusions

While critical HR scholars acknowledge that the situation of female HR professionals needs to be discussed in relation to societal contexts (Legge, 1987, p. 33-34), the societal level has been rather neglected in empirical analyses of the sources for sex-role differences in the HR profession so far. In this paper, we have attempted to contribute to filling this gap by exploring how differences among female and male HR directors vary cross-nationally and how gender egalitarian values affect probable role differences between female and male HR directors.

The descriptive findings of our study show that sex-role differences between female and male HR directors are subject to considerable cross-national variation. Particularly noteworthy, in some 22 of the countries we studied, female HR professionals are equally integrated in strategic decisions and hold similar functional HR responsibilities. These findings challenge existing work on female HR professionals from the Anglo-Saxon context which indicates considerable discrepancies in roles between female and male HR professionals.

In order to understand the cross-national patterns, we consulted research on cultural values (Charles and Bradley, 2002; Omar and Davidson, 2001; Ramirez and Wotipka, 2001). This research suggests that sex-role differences in the HR profession lessen with the prevalence of gender egalitarian values. Overall, our study supports the argument that gender egalitarian values have integrative consequences, i.e. they reduce role differences in the status and functional responsibilities of HR professionals. However, the integrative effects are rather weak and the effects we measured for functional responsibilities are even weaker than the effects for hierarchical status. Prior research explains these weaker relationships with a higher taken-for-grantedness of sex-role differences in functional areas as compared to hierarchy levels (Charles and Bradley, 2002, p. 575). Differences in functional specialization are likely to be perceived as more natural, so the need to challenge them is not even recognized and efforts to change them end up facing strong resistance.

Interestingly, our descriptive analysis shows that in 12 out of 22 countries, including low gender egalitarian countries (e.g. Austria, Italy), female HR directors have more (!) responsibility for HR functions such as labour relations and pay and benefits than their male counterparts. This is puzzling because previous research suggests that these HR functions are traditionally dominated by male HR professionals. Gooch (1994, p. 17) clearly asserts the low involvement of female HR professionals with these functions: “By the 1970s, women's influence in the personnel function had declined with the growing emphasis on the need for personnel to handle industrial relations issues.”

One possible explanation for this counterintuitive finding could be that an HR director's responsibility for specific operative HR functions is not only a measure for gender stereotyped work, but also an indicator for the total work load of the HR director. Supporting this view, HRM research postulates that HR directors need to reduce their involvement with operative HR activities generally (e.g. devolve them to line managers) in order to have more resources for participating in strategic decision making (Larsen and Brewster, 2003). In this case, a higher responsibility of female HR directors for HR functions could be an indicator for the uneven distribution of workload among male and female HR directors and is thus more likely to occur in low gender egalitarian contexts.

This suggests that understanding sex differences in the responsibility for operative HR functions of one particular position is more complex than the representation of women and men in specific HR fields at the occupational level. The study of sex differences within HR professional positions of the same category needs to take in account not only the gender-stereotype of HR activities but also how much these activities are valued in a particular context.

Legge (1987) sees the HR profession as a very good example of the subordination of women in employment. This makes it an important field for studying cross-national patterns in role differences of female and male managers. Our study raises a number of follow-up research questions for understanding cross-national variation in sex-role differences among HR directors: Which factors other than culture contribute to understanding patterns of sex-role differences? What specific requirements do female HR directors need to fulfil to achieve equalization in low egalitarian contexts? How are the particular sex-roles of HR directors enacted and maintained within organisations? The last question also requires different research designs (e.g. ethnographic studies, conversation analyses) that could be useful to develop the micro-foundations to our macro-analysis.

Figure 1Dimensions for analysing sex differences in the HR director position

Table ISample description per country

Table IIDescriptive statistics per country

Table IIIMeans, standard deviations and correlations

Table IVResults of regression analyses

References

Brandl, J., Mayrhofer, W., Maier, F. (2006), "A lot to do, but little to say? A cross-national comparison of gender and power in the personnel function", paper presented at 21st Workshop on Strategic Human Resource Management, Aston Business School, Birmingham, .