Work and Occupations

This article examines the impact on women's employment of the changing demographic structure of the family. Using log linear techniques and data from the 1960 and 1970 censuses, our findings modify earlier research and have implications for the future. Key findings include a decline in the effect of marital status on women's employment; no decline in the effect of child status; a more complicated relationship between race and employment status than previously realized; and clear evidence that rates are increasing not only because of changes in family structure, but because of changes in the employment patterns of successive cohorts of women.

Data from 525 professionals and semiprofessionals are used to test the hypothesis that one's sex is more salient than occupational competencies for persons in opposite-sex- dominated occupations. The impact of these characteristics on a global measure of self-esteem is used as an indicator of their relative salience. The hypothesis is supported in that sex is quite important for all respondents, while occupational competencies are important only for those in same-sex-dominated occupations (professional men and semiprofessional women). This finding is interpreted in a symbolic interactionist framework. Assuming that the salience of various self components is determined by the feedback one receivesfrom significant others, thesefindings suggest that opposite-sex colleagues tend to ignore or downplay occupational competencies in lieu of one's sex. Possible implications for the career success of those in opposite-sex-dominated occupations are discussed. Also discussed are more general implications for self-development theory.

This article reports a study of aggregate unit salary levels, within a major research university. We analyze these salary levels, as they are influenced by unit sex composition, and modified by unit attainment levels—where unit refers to the departments, colleges and schools, and other academic divisions of the university. We investigate three central issues of sex and salary, previously overlooked in salary studies of academic employees: Do high proportions of women depress men's unit salary levels ("competition" hypothesis)? Are women's salary levels higher in male-dominated, and lower in female-dominated, units ("concentration" hypothesis)? Are men salary-compensated for working with women ("compensation" hypothesis)? The findings support none of these hypotheses. Rather, the relationship between unit sex composition and salary rests upon the connection between units' composition and attainment levels.

What happens to people who are assuming a master status for which audiences have discrepant expectations, when socializers also emphasize that recruits take the desires of all audiences into account? A participant observation and in-depth interview study of ministry students in a humanistically oriented seminary revealed that these students received discrepant expectations for the professional identity from organizational personnel (the humanistic role) and members of the wider community (the traditional role). By advocating personal and egalitarian involvement with clients, socializers taught recruits to care about outsiders' expectations. As a result, recruits called into question the meaning of the professional identity, effected "double role distance," and took on an "ambivalent" identity. Students in humanistic schools of the personal service professions may experience a similar dilemma.

This article examines the intergenerational covariation in detailed aspects of occupational roles. Occupations are conceptualized and measured on the basis of indicators for role requirements, content, and rewards. The detailed components are thought to underlie overall role characterizations such as socioeconomic status transmission. Data pertain to a national sample of male members of the civilian labor force and to a countywide sample of high school males. Canonical correlation analyses for two role relationships, involving parent occupation, early career occupation, and late adolescent occupational aspirations, show: (1) role transmission occurs for a multiplicity of occupational characteristics that span the requirements, content, and rewards of roles; (2) the two role relation ships are not isomorphic in their structure; (3) support for recent arguments that complexity of roles is a key organizing feature of role transmission processes; and (4) mixed support for recent research on patterns of intergenerational occupational movement.

Contrary to Granovetter's hypothesis that salient job information derives from "weak ties" (acquaintances), this study of 299 social and physical scientists at one Canadian and one U.S. university reveals that "strong ties" (intimates) were approximately seven times more prevalent than "weak ties." Furthermore, with only one exception (U.S. graduates who obtained Canadian academic positions), the reliance on "weak ties" for job information declined from 1920 to 1978. Although a greater amount of job information can be obtained through weak ties, the problem is to locate only the few openings for which one would be seriously considered and would consider accepting. Long lists of undesirable unobtainable positions are of little interest. Thus, it is more efficient to rely on a few intimate colleagues (strong ties) in seeking employment.