Shaping a career in management: the importance of gendered expectations

ABSTRACT

The study focuses on students in professional bachelor programs, how men and women navigate career opportunities after graduation. The research is based on longitudinal data from 969 Norwegian students. A crucial finding is that when men and women have equal expectations of entering a management position, they also attain such positions equally often. The results also reveal that women have equally high ambitions as men, but lower expectations of entering management positions. These findings indicate that perceived barriers reduce women’s choices and make them self-select away from manager positions. The study shows the necessity of a divide between ambitions and expectations and that gendered expectations are formed before graduation. Opposite to what earlier theory suggests, women have not tuned down their ambitions to match their expectations through an irrational and unconscious process. Instead, ambitions stay high and women appear to search rationally for alternative outlets, such as more often expecting master’s degrees.

KEYWORDS:

• Ambitions
• career expectations
• gender
• management
• self-selection

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declarations of interests

No potential conflict of interest exists.

Notes

1. The respondents in this study are asked if ‘ledelsesansvar’ is part of their job. In Norwegian, ‘ansvar’ means responsibility. ‘Ledelse’ means both management and leadership and a distinction is not made in everyday terminology. Similarly, managers and leaders are both called ‘ledere’ and one supposes that many ‘ledere’ do both leadership and management. We here use the term management positions also to cover positions that might have been termed leadership positions in English. The idea that there exists informal leaders without a formal title as ‘leder’ is not common perception, but could exist between scholars of business and administration. However, none of respondents are such scholars. Therefore, when respondents are asked if ‘ledelsesansvar’ is part of their job, it is unlikely that men or women without such a formal title would answer yes to this question.

2. The group preschool-teachers have a very low share of men, and we have therefore excluded the group from the analysis.

Additional information

Funding

No external funding was received. The work was funded by the employer, Oslo Metropolitan University Dataset: www.hioa.no/eng/Research-and-Development/Our-research/Research-at-SPS/prosjekter/StudData

Notes on contributors

Aagoth Elise Storvik

Aagoth Elise Storvik is professor at School of Business, Oslo Metropolitan University. Her research interests are gender, professions, management and political leadership.

Bente Abrahamsen

Bente Abrahamsen is a professor at Center for the Study of Professions, Oslo Metropolitan University. Her research interests are gender, professions and motivation.