When the Canadian sociologists analyzed their data on female status attainment, they also found some surprising results. First of all, native-born Canadian women with full-time jobs come from higher-status family backgrounds than do their male counterparts. On the average, their fathers have nearly a year more education and hold higher-status occupations. Second, the average native-born Canadian working woman has a higher-status occupation than do similar males.
Finally, the correlations between women’s occupational prestige and their fathers’ education and occupational prestige are much lower than for men. Moreover, these same findings have turned up in American studies; it has now become standard practice to include women in status attainment research. How can these patterns be explained?
First of all, women are less likely than men to hold full-time jobs and are especially unlikely to work the lower their job qualifications are. For many married women, especially those with young children, low-paying jobs offer no real economic benefits; the costs of working (including child care) are about equal to the wages paid. In consequence, low-paying, low-status jobs are disproportionally held by males. This fact accounts for women having jobs of higher average prestige. But women are also underrepresented in the highest-prestige jobs.
As a result their occupational prestige is limited to a narrower range than that of men, which reduces correlations with background variables. That the average working woman’s father has more education and a better job than does the father of the average employed male can be understood in the same terms. More qualified women come from more privileged homes; the daughters of the least-educated and lowest-status fathers aren’t in full-time jobs.
In fact, the husbands of working women have occupations with higher than average prestige. This is because of a very high correspondence between the occupational prestige of husbands and wives when both are employed full-time. People who marry tend to share very similar levels of education and similar family backgrounds. Indeed, divorce and remarriage contribute to the similarity of husbands and wives in terms of occupational prestige.
These findings must not cause us to overlook the fact that women long were excluded from many occupations and are still underrepresented in elite managerial and professional careers. What they do show, however, is that within the special conditions outlined here, female status attainment does not differ much from that of men.