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Women have staged a "quiet revolution in the workplace" and now hold down more high-status jobs than men, research suggests.
A report by Cambridge University says the majority of lawyers, doctors and architects are women thanks to education improvements and a changing perception of "women's work".
But the study, which also examines pay in 10 European countries, has found that despite this men are still being paid far more than women in the same positions. And the report comes as the Women and Work Commission says the gender pay gap widened to 22.6 per cent last year.
In his Gender Inequality At Work In Industrial Countries, Dr Robert Blackburn analysed data on several million European workers using official censuses and labour-force surveys and looked at patterns of employment within 300 occupations.
He said: "The findings are very important, but not widely recognised until now. A quiet revolution in the workplace means that the widespread idea that women do the low-status jobs is now wrong - they are more likely to be found working in the sorts of occupations that both men and women think are higher up the social scale."
He added: "There was not always this advantage to women; it is part of a significant change in industrialised societies in the last 50 years."
Jobs assessed were ranked according to social status, how interesting they were and how desirable they appeared to others using the Cambridge Social Interaction and Stratification Scale. It placed professions such as medicine and law at the top of the spectrum with managers and scientists.
Research into the gender division within each field showed that more women in the "prestigious" jobs. Dr Blackburn said dirty and dangerous manual work was usually carried out by men, adding: "Formerly women were more likely than men to be in manual occupations, but as manual work has declined, it is predominantly women who have moved into non-manual jobs."
He believed the shift was also because women were now more likely to go to university than in the past.
Reader views (4)
Great - Just look at their sterling work over at Haringey Child Services.
Gender doesn't discriminate incompetance.
- Hansel, London, 11/08/2009 12:12
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Life is a never-ending supply of contradictory research reports, last week we had the whinging 'Women & Work commission's' final report, stating exactly the opposite to the findings of this Cambridge report. Why don't these researchers collaborate & come up with some consistent findings?
- Cynicalsusie, Essex, 11/08/2009 11:59
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Not before time to.Woman are superior to men on so many levels and there qualities are advantageous to a modern technological society,woman are better at multi tasking and are more focused,etc and not least they don't come with so much egotistical baggage.Woman will continue on the rise and this can only be to societies benefit,of course men have known this all along and hence have felt threatened by the female and introduced all sorts of unjust legislation to oppress them,evidence in its self of the fragile male ego.PS I'm a man.
- Kev, London-UK, 11/08/2009 11:01
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Thank goodness Harperson's on holiday otherwise we'd be inundated by her wittering on about this and that all men should be shot, perhaps while she's away we can have a reasonable debate on the issue?
- Bob, Cheam, 11/08/2009 10:51
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