Men Are More Likely to Leave Jobs if Their Boss Is a Woman
‘Male teachers are about 12% more likely to leave their schools when they work under female principals than under male principals,’ a new study in New York public schools concluded. COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION
Things are looking rosy on the jobs front, but not everyone is always equal at work.
Men earn more than women, are more likely to make it to the C-suite and, studies suggest, they’re more likely to show emotion at work without suffering consequences. New research claims they’re also more likely to leave a job if their boss is a woman.
‘These results suggest that opposition from male subordinates could inhibit female progress in leadership.’
Using a 40-year panel of all public school teachers and principals in New York State, researchers from the University of Virginia and Northwestern University looked at how female principals affect rates of teacher turnover — an important determinant of school quality.
In schools with female leaders, men are more likely to get itchy feet. “Male teachers are about 12% more likely to leave their schools when they work under female principals than under male principals,” they concluded. “In contrast, we find no such effects for female teachers.”
The men who leave don’t typically end up working for another woman. “When male teachers request transfers, they are more likely to be to schools with male principals,” the report said. “These results suggest that opposition from male subordinates could inhibit female progress in leadership.”
These results are supported by earlier research, which found that women in male-dominated workplaces are more likely to say their gender has made it harder for them to get ahead at work, say they’re less likely to be treated fairly and report gender discrimination at much higher rates.
Military-based studies suggest that working alongside women helps men change their attitudes about gender.
That research, released last March by the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., concluded that women are about three times as likely as men to say their gender has made it harder for them to succeed at their job (19% for women versus 7% for men).
There is hope, however. Working alongside women does help men change their attitudes about gender roles and identity. That’s according to a team of researchers who randomly assigned female recruits to some squads in the Norwegian military, but not others, during boot camp.
In the mixed gender squads, they found a 14 percentage-point increase in the fraction of men who think mixed-gender teams perform as well or better than same-gender teams, an 8 percentage-point increase in men who think household work should be shared equally.