Study: Women managers not likely to quit

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Employers who assume that women are more likely than men to leave managerial jobs are working on an archaic stereotype, a recent study indicates.

In "Are Female Managers Quitters? The Relationships of Gender, Promotions, and Family Leaves of Absence to Voluntary Turnover," Karen S. Lyness of Baruch College, City University of New York, and Michael K. Judiesch, of Manhattan College, write that the voluntary turnover rates of female managers were actually slightly lower than those of male managers. The article appears in the December issue of the American Psychological Association's Journal of Applied Psychology.

Lyness and Judiesch studied 26,359 managers (11,076 women and 15,283 men) working full-time for a large multinational financial services organization at many locations throughout the United States. They found voluntary turnover rates for male and female managers very similar: 17 percent for men and 16.5 percent for women.

"I don't think anyone's looked at large groups of comparable men and women, both holding managerial jobs," Lyness told United Press International in a phone interview from New York City.

"If you just compare a large group of male employees to a large group of female employees, in general you're going to find that the men are holding higher-level positions. And studying employees from the same company built in a number of controls in terms of what type of managerial hierarchy and opportunities they had," she said.

"And we also were able to differentiate voluntary turnover from layoffs and company downsizings."

The subjects were tracked from January of 1992 to June of 1995. That "longitudinal" dimension "is also something thing that's different between our research and some other studies," Lyness said.

Most previous studies used data collected in the 1970s or 1980s. The new findings may reflect changes that have occurred over the years in women's lifestyles or commitment to their careers.

"The real point is that women's turnover was not higher than men's, as some employers may have assumed. I think it's evidence that women who have achieved managerial positions are just as committed to their organization and to their careers as men."

Lyness was asked if she and Judiesch tracked women by marital status and the number and age their children.

"We controlled for age and marital status. I don't think we controlled for number of children. This was based on the employer's data, and I don't think they would have tracked the number of children," she replied.

She agreed with the supposition that women with no children would have a lower turnover rate than women with several children, and she said this was represented in the study by looking at managers who had taken family leaves of absence for either childbirth or to care for a dependent. Employer records did not make this distinction.

"Not surprisingly, about 94 percent of those were women," Lyness said. "And we did find higher turnover rates for managers who had taken a family leave. However, this difference disappeared for the family leave takers who had graduate degrees. They were no more likely to quit than those who had not taken a family leave.

"We concluded that employers should be careful not to stereotype family leave takers as being more likely to resign."

Only 2 percent (486) of the managers took family leaves during the 41-month period, and about 24 percent of them subsequently resigned.

The researchers also found that recently promoted women were less likely to resign than recently promoted men.

"As you would expect, managers who were promoted were less likely to resign after the promotion," Lyness told UPI. "However, we found that the effect only lasted for 11 months. And then managers who had been promoted actually became more likely to resign. But promoted women were less likely to resign than promoted men."

The "What have you done for me lately?" effect may be operating, the researchers write, "such that a promotion creates an expectation for the manager that he or she will continue to advance and if another promotion is not received within the expected time period, the manager's unmet expectations may cause him or her to begin an external job search." Employers may want to consider using other types of incentives that are delayed rather than immediate, such as stock options, as retention tools, Lyness and Judiesch write.