More Workers Turn Gender Blind About Bosses

Fewer Americans care about whether their bosses are women. That is, ironically, in contrast to whether companies are willing to promote women to management.

Gallup reports that, “Americans would still prefer to work for a male (32%) rather than a female (22%) boss if they were taking a new job, but the edge for a male boss is now, by two percentage points, the smallest it has been since Gallup first began asking this question in 1953. Almost half now say gender would make no difference in their preference.”

Despite this change of attitude, a great deal of data shows that women have had little success in breaking through the “glass ceiling” into top management.

Gallup does not give sufficient reasons for the evolution of workers attitudes toward gender. The most obvious is that, in a world in which jobs are hard to come by and the positive opinions of bosses are prized, gender is less important than job security. That means worker impressions could change when the recession ends and jobs opportunities become more plentiful.

Another reason for the new attitude toward gender is that a greater number of women have the training that comes from college and advanced degrees. Larger numbers of women are in graduate schools. Workers may equate training with a willingness to be gender blind.

Women may have begun to receive more respect from their workers. But, that may not matter much to them. Women still only make about 80% of what men do for work in comparable positions. Few of them are in top management or on boards.

It is fine to be wanted by subordinates, but that does not get female managers promotions or raises in pay.

Methodology: Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Aug. 11-14, 2011, with a random sample of 1,008 adults, aged 18 and older, living in the continental U.S. selected using random digit dial sampling.

Douglas A. McIntyre