Gender, Income and Inequality

advantage of this possibility. Thus, they are constantly, at least unconsciously, in fear of loosing their job.

The nature of management by a team leader with software developing background differs from the management performed by someone with a management degree. Tom, the employee with much longer experience in the company and several years of management background, also insists on the differentiation between leading and managing a group. Leading is associated with support, whereas managing is connected with control.

The fact that specialists take over management tasks shows a further aspect of rising flexibility within management practices. When specialists in another field take over management tasks, they have to extemporize, which automatically means a higher flexibility within their management approaches. Also, the demand for a flat hierarchy and less obvious control leads to flexible acquaintance to how management positions are defined.

An interesting connection exists between experience in the job and development of a position. The more experience software developers gain within their job and the more technological knowledge they have the more they move into the role of having coordinating tasks, basically moving away from technology. There is a relationship between gaining specialized knowledge and growing into management tasks, which has nothing to do with the actual knowledge. This was mentioned by several of my interview partners. Such a development in one’s career is also closely connected to the person. A certain personality and professional background are crucial for the perspective needed to assume a role with a high amount of coordinating tasks.

leadership. Also, for women between 30 and 49 years of age, there was no increase. The portion of women with children in this group even decreased (Achatz et al. 2006).¹⁰⁶

I talked to two female team leaders. Frau Schmidt spoke about her role as a female in meetings with her male coworkers on the management level. In these meetings she is usually the only female and always attracts attention. She says that she notices that the male managers like it better among themselves. She also explains that she always feels that she is being tested by those male colleagues in the management who do not know her. If they hear about her good reputation, then she feels they do not initially accept that but challenge it. Therefore, she feels like she has to prove herself over and over. In her view, when men have a good reputation male manager are less critical and accept this reputation.

Concerning specific tasks, Frau Schmidt notices that men indeed work very concentrated and focus on detailed and small fields and also make decisions relatively fast. But she notices that her male coworkers often overlook the context, the big picture behind their little decisions. They do not take this into account enough. In her view, women are more skeptical and factor the context into their decision regarding a small part of the big picture, realizing the possible consequences. The way women make decisions is therefore sometimes a little more complicated but also more anticipatory.

A study by Bertschek and Spitz from the Centre of European Economic Research shows how the introduction of ICT along with organizational change leads to an increase in wages for employees. Based on individual data from 1998/1999 of about 12,000 male employees¹⁰⁷ in Germany, they found an “average treatment effect of IT use of around five to six percent” (Bertschek and Spitz 2003, 4). This suggests that the increase in productivity experienced by the companies due to their investments in IT and organizational change is in part given back to the employees. More specifically, the researchers looked at three forms of organizational change: restructuring of departments, changes in the management structure (such as flattening hierarchies), and outsourcing parts of their production process. They also looked at different components of IT such as personal computers, laptops, and the Internet. They found that use of rather advanced technologies, like the Internet or Intranet, was connected with higher wages. In contrast, use of scanners had a significantly negative impact on wages. Any

106 This empirical information is based on the IAB manager study (IAB Führungskräfte Studie).

107 The so-called “BIBB/IAB-data set” was collected by the German Federal Institute for Vocational Training („Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung (BIBB)) and the Employment Research Institute (IAB).

impact of IT on the wage of highly educated employees was not seen. This suggests that today a high level of education accompanies an intensive use of modern ICT and is therefore not a reason for a raise of salary. Their survey of individuals confirmed earlier results from a company-level study (Cappelli and Carter 2000) that employees do not gain from organizational changes if they do not use IT on the job. For example, outsourcing actions or department restructurings lead to higher wages only for IT users.

Interestingly, the personal workplace does not have to be involved directly in the reorganization process in order for the employee to profit from the restructuring through a higher wage level (Bertschek and Spitz 2003).

In a quantitative empirical study based on Microcensus data, the effect of two forms of flexible employment conditions, part-time employment and temporary employment, on income inequality was researched. Regular – as opposed to marginal – part-time employment seems to have only slightly negative effects on income inequality and is balanced by relatively freedom concerning the set-up of the work schedule. This is especially true for women in part-time employment. Men, in contrast, are much more affected by income inequality when they work part-time. The result for men and women is also negative regarding temporary employment. This form of employment is very much underprivileged and correlates with significantly lower income (Groß 2000).

Inequalities in the labor market are not only expressed by inequalities in income but touch other dimensions of labor as well. Kratzer, a researcher at the Institute of Social Scientific Research in Munich, emphasizes the tendencies of polarization of labor in this context. He argues that the increasing pluralization of labor can be considered a polarization of labor which leads to higher inequality in the labor market.

This inequality is not necessarily new. Moreover, the existing inequalities are reinforced. Kratzer points to an important aspect of this development by calling attention to the ambiguity of differences. For example, there is an ambiguity in temporary employment. Highly skilled workers who are only temporarilly employed do not face the amount of insecurity and precarious risk faced by less-skilled workers, who have to fear that the temporary employment might turn into a long term problem.

Highly skilled workers can always hope that their temporary employment only expresses a brief passage of their career and will eventually change into employment of long tenure (Kratzer 2004).