Recent Posts
Accomplish March 21, 2017
Women are giving men a run for their money. A new study has that found that high-paying jobs – from doctors to software engineers – now favor hiring women due to their exemplary social skills.
In recent months, economists Guido Matias Cortes, Nir Jaimovich and Henry E. Siu have presented their ongoing research titled, “The End of Men and Rise of Women in the High-Skilled Labor Market” at economics conferences.
So far their findings show that more high-skilled jobs, which the authors define as jobs that pay in the top 25 percent of all occupations or jobs that mainly require cognitive skills like problem-solving, require increasing levels of interpersonal skills.
Although men are still better-represented in these jobs, the study has found that their chances of staying in the jobs have fallen over time. Women’s chances, on the other hand, are rising due to their abilities excel at collaboration, empathy and managing others.
According to U.S. census data reviewed by the researchers, women’s advancement in high-paying jobs have accelerated from 1980 to 2000. In 1980, only 54.2 percent of college-educated women held such roles. But in 2000, that number rose to 58.8 percent. Conversely, 66.2 percent of male graduates worked in cognitive jobs. And then in 2000, that number fell to 63.3 percent.
By 2014, only 61.4 percent of college-educated men were in those jobs, compared to the 57.8 percent of women working similar roles.
The economists back up their data by citing recent research indicating that men and women make different decisions and perform differently in stressful situations. And many employers are now acknowledging this.
Their research has shown that there was a strong correlation between female employment and stressful jobs. “We find that occupations in which the importance of performing under stress increased were associated with increases in the female share of employment,” the study says. “Nonetheless, the strong and signifiant positive effect of changes in the importance of social skills on female share remains.”
When you put these two factors together, the researchers concluded it as “strongly suggestive evidence that the increased demand for female labor in good jobs is due to an increase in the importance of social skills in these occupations relative to other occupations.”
This data can also be supported by the 1977 and the 1991 editions of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, a government manual commonly referred to as O*NET. After examining the changes between the two editions, the economists discovered that many roles now call for the ability to influence others and to interpret “feelings, ideas or facts.”
On top of this, they also cite a recent paper published on Harvard about the collective intelligence of human groups to show that women typically have more sophisticated interpersonal skills than men.
We say, it’s about time someone noticed.
