Individual Differences:

Age & Gender

Lindsey GrecoSpring, 2011

Age Statistics for Older Workers Institutional Barriers for Older Workers

Attitudes Practices

Legal concerns Physiological Changes

BLS Data

BLS Data

BLS Data

BLS Data

Institutional Barriers for Older Workers

Healthy retirees have 10-30 years of life expectancy Largest untapped source of potential labor in

economy

Face disincentives to work Workplace attitudes and practices may

hinder older workers’ employment opportunities

Organizational Attitudes: Fact or Fiction?

Older workers can’t or won’t learn new skills Older workers don’t stay on the job long Older workers take more sick days than

younger workers Older workers aren’t flexible or adaptable Older workers are more expensive

Advantages of Older Workers Are careful, calm, and effective Less training costs due to their experience Higher organizational commitment Equal or better attendance rates Lower on-the-job accident rates Higher performance and productivity

More reliable than younger workers, stronger work ethic, can serve as mentors

Can help address talent shortages, recruitment challenges, and unwanted turnover

Organizational Practices: Financial Disincentives

Healthcare costs may increase for older workers, making it difficult to get hired into new jobs

Pension plans Benefits resemble a hill Pension accrual rises with time on the job, then peaks and falls Peak accrual occurs after 30 years

Staying on job for additional years can result in negative pension accruals

Phased retirement plans reduces hours to part time and then eases them into retirement Have to deal with tax code (paying out of pension plan),

Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)

International Organizational Practices

Increase national pension eligibility to 65 (UK & Japan) Government promoted programs that match older workers

with employers or offer training opportunities (UK & Japan) Changed benefit calculation to reward those who work

longer by basing pension on lifetime earnings instead of the highest 15 out of 30 years (Sweden)

Increased the reward for those who defer drawing benefits from the national pension system (UK)

Creation of a government commission to explore new policies to promote skill development for older workers (Sweden)

Legal Considerations Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)

Protects workers over 40 from discrimination Applies to private and federal entities

Does not apply to state governments Enforced by the EEOC

Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) Sets minimum standards for pension plans in private

industry. Does not require any employer to establish a pension plan.

It only requires that those who establish plans must meet certain minimum standards.

Enforced by the DOL

Considerations for Older Workers

As people age they are at higher risk for several diseases and injuries are much more severe

Elderly have a higher risk of workplace fatalities relative to their share of employment

Higher rates of fatalities and falls Loss of physical fitness, environmental hazards, adverse effects of

medication

Although older workers are less likely to be hurt seriously enough to lose work time, they often take twice the time needed to return to work. Causes increased economic burden on medical care system,

corporation costs, and individual hardships More often have broken bones/multiple injuries Take longer to heal

Physiological Changes

Vision Hearing Musculoskeletal Co-morbidities and Chronic Diseases

Vision Decline in static and dynamic visual acuity, loss of contrast

sensitivity, decrease in dark adaptation, increase in susceptibility to glare.

Clutter (i.e., non-target information in the visual field) and search deficiencies make it more difficult for older workers to see critical information and easier to miss it because of clutter

Workplace accommodations: Controls that are well lit, clean, uncluttered displays Illumination should increase without creating glare. Printed material (including instructions and warnings) should be

large (at least 12pt font) Older people have a restricted field of view, so they are least likely

to notice signs that are not in their direct line of sight Color-coding should be provided on changes in ramps and surfaces

to prevent falls, which are the leading occupational fatality among older workers

Hearing Age-related hearing loss is thought to begin at about age 35,

but becomes more pronounced with advancing age Older workers score significantly lower than younger workers

in auditory task performance Poor auditory discrimination

Orgs should try to control noise exposure in the environment Soft music, sound-absorbing materials Create conference tables and rooms that reduce echoing and

facilitate communication

Conduct audiometric exams annually Encourage use of hearing protection when necessary

Musculoskeletal Changes Muscular strength at 51-55 is 80% of that at 31-35

Reduction in joint mobility and manual dexterity For young workers, tool design is unrelated to job performance For old workers, poorly designed tools had lowest JP of all groups High design quality led to highest JP of all groups

Slowing of reaction and movement times Depending on task complexity, older adults are slower to respond. Response speed has a linear relationship with task complexity Older adults have more difficulty managing or coordinating multiple

tasks But older workers have more experience than younger workers

So older workers apply previously learned skills to current situations, resulting in comparable performance with younger workers

Considerations: allowance of longer response time, additional practice, frequent refresher training. Training should be tailored to meet the needs of older adults

Co-morbidities and Chronic Diseases

Arthritis High blood pressure Visual and hearing impairments Emerging problem is the use of medications

Impact physical/cognitive abilities and increase the risk of drug interaction

Gender Biological Differences

Physical brain structure Hormones

Behavioral Differences Communication Mate Guarding

At Work Leadership Style Job Stress Mental Health Workplace Anger

Biological Differences Brain Structure

Researchers generally believe the female brain is organized to function more symmetrically allowing integration of left and right brain functions more readily than the male brain.

Male and female brains may be somewhat differently structured with the two cerebral hemispheres being more specialized and less well interconnected in men than in women.

Hormones Role in initial brain development Continued impact on behavior patterns

Different Task/Skill Performance

Differences in the way men and women estimate time, judge speed of things, carry out mental mathematical calculations, orient in space and visualize objects in three dimensions, etc.

Men Tend to be higher in independence, dominance, spatial and

mathematical skills, and rank-related aggression e.g., men have an advantage in tests that require the subject to

imagine rotating an object or manipulating it in some other way

Women Tend to be better in human relations: recognizing emotional

overtones in others and in language, emotional and artistic expressiveness, esthetic appreciation, verbal language and carrying out detailed and pre-planned tasks. e.g., women generally can recall lists of words or paragraphs of text

better than men

Communication Male

Hierarchy based on competition Goals are real and material Rules and individual roles are clearly established

in each situation 

Women Hierarchy based on cooperation Goals are social and sharing Rules and individual roles are sometimes

tentative and changing

Mate Guarding Men are more likely than women to become distressed by

sexual infidelity Women are more likely than men to become distressed by

emotional infidelity These fundamental sex differences have now been replicated

by many different scientists in many diverse cultures – China (David Geary) Sweden (Michael Wiederman) Netherlands (Bram Buunk and Pieternel Dijkstra) Germany (Alois Angeitner and Victor Oubaid) Japan (Mariko Hasegawa and Toshikazu Hasegawa) Korea (Jae Choe)

Mate Guarding 234 participants were asked to imagine that their partner

had become both sexually and emotionally involved with someone else then asked to state which component of the betrayal they

found more upsetting.

63% of the men, but only 13% of the women, found the sexual component of the infidelity to be more upsetting.

87% of the women, but only 37% of the men, found the emotional component of the infidelity to be more upsetting.

Supports the evolutionary hypothesis that the fundamental psychological design of the jealousy adaptation differs for the sexes

Threatening Characteristics of Rivals

Which rivals are perceived to be the most threatening? Dutch, Korean, and American people were asked to rank 11

rival qualities according to which would be most upsetting. The rival characteristics ranged from “having a better sense

of humor than you” to “being a more skilled sexual partner than you”

Men in all three cultures, more than women, reported that they would experience greater distress when a rival surpassed them on the dimensions of: financial prospects, job prospects, and physical strength.

Women in all three cultures, more than men, reported greater distress when a rival had: more attractive face or a more desirable body.

Gender and Management

Women make up: 38% of first or mid-level managers 29% of executive or senior-level managers

Of Fortune 500 Firms: 1.8% of CEOs 9.4% of highest clout positions (executive VP

and above) 6.4% of highest paid positions

Gender Differences in Leadership?

Overall, research has been inconclusive Slight tendency for women to be more

Transformational Person-oriented Communal

Men tend to display more traditional leadership qualities Transactional Task-oriented Agentic

Gender Stereotypes and Leadership

There is a definite gap between what observers perceive as leaders and what they perceive as female (Eagly & Karau 2002). The idea of “think-manager-think-male”

There is usually a similarity between the traits defined as masculine and the traits defined as manager, while there is little overlap between feminine traits and managerial traits. Traditional views hold that masculine traits are the

behavioral norm for leadership positions. Consequently, men are seen as better, “natural” leaders

while women are forced to adopt masculine behaviors to fit into male-dominated organizational settings.

Role Congruity Theory

Expectations & attributions for male vs. female managers Unfavorable evaluations of a woman’s actual leadership

behavior can result from the perceived violation of gender roles. When women become leaders they can face negative evaluations

because they fail to conform to cultural expectations of femininity (Eagly & Karau, 2002).

Females in leadership positions face prejudice from a perceived violation of their gender role

Studies have shown that everything else being equal, men are simply viewed as being more effective leaders than women (Johnson, Murphy, Selamawit, & Reichard, 2008). Less positive attitudes are associated with female leaders than

with male leaders.

Leader and Subordinate Gender

Evolutionary Theory Van Vugt and Spisak (2008) used evolutionary theory to

explain differing perceptions of male and female leadership. Female leaders were perceived as better leaders than male

leaders when competition came from within the group, meaning women were preferred for maintaining intragoup relationships.

Male leaders were rated better than female leaders when competition was between groups.

Suggests that gender preferences for leaders can vary depending on the conflict: either internal or external.

A male leadership prototypes (i.e., competitive) and female leadership prototype (i.e., communal) can be activated depending on the context.

Leadership Style & Job Stress Women in male-dominated industries face pressures different

from those faced by men in the same jobs or by women and men in more female-dominated environments

Women in male-dominated industries were equally interpersonally oriented compared to men in those industries in contrast to managers in female-dominated industries where

women were more interpersonally oriented than men.

The only factor which had a greater impact for women managers in male-dominated industries, compared with women in female-dominated industries, was discrimination. Related to experiences such as

colleagues of the opposite sex being treated more favorably feeling that one's sex is a disadvantage when it comes to career

progress

Leadership Style, Job Stress, & Mental Health

Neither women in general, nor women in male-dominated industries, experienced worse psychological health than men.

Leaders in male-dominated industries reported worse psychological health than managers in female-dominated industries. May mean that larger pressures affect women

and men in male-dominated industries equally

Gender, Organizational Status, and Workplace Anger Expression

Females are socialized to approach and express their anger indirectly and passively

Males are taught to keep a stiff upper lip and remain emotionally inexpressive But, the are permitted, and perhaps expected,

to display their anger directly, if not aggressively.

Anger control was the most frequently reported form of expression across all respondents

Anger Expression Differences in the outward expression of anger were non-

significant Although men reported outwardly expressing their anger

more frequently than did females

Lower status males reported expressing their anger more frequently than did their female counterparts

Employees with lower status were more likely to outwardly and upwardly express their anger than were higher status members likely to outwardly direct their anger downward

Employees of both sexes and at both high and low levels of the hierarchy reported controlling their anger and holding their anger in when in the presence of those at a different status level

What questions do you have?