Abendroth, Anja-Kristin, et al. “Women at Work.” ILR Review, vol. 70, no. 1, 2016, pp. 190–222., doi:10.1177/0019793916668530. 

In this chapter in the “Women at work” book, the authors are discussing the gender earning gap and inequality in access to higher level positions. They are stating facts and results generated from doing a report using 5,022 workers in 94 German workplaces. They present statistics and results for every issue they report. One of the main points is that women are less promoted to management positions and that has an effect on the gender earning gap. When women are in management positions, the gender earning inequalities decreases and they help other women access high positions. The key source of gender inequality at work are the male managers who are biased towards men and eliminate women from executive positions. Putting formal hiring procedures and career planning will reduce the gender earnings gap and will give women more opportunities to reach management and leading positions. Women with male supervisors have more earnings disadvantage than men with male supervisors due to discretion control on written performance evaluation.

The authors are using persuasive writing strategy, using evidence, facts, statistics and reports. They are not presenting their own opinion which is an interesting strategy and makes the document neutral. I agree that the presence of women in executive positions will help reduce gender inequality in the workplace and bias towards men.However, it seems like a loop, how we are going to solve the problem of women not being given management positions and not getting promoted, so they can help reduce the gender earning gap and other inequalities. This book is giving me evidence and numbers about my research and proves the presence of the issues of gender inequality in existing workplaces.The book is credible because it is supported by the German Science Foundation of the Collaborative Research Center 882 at Bielefeld University,and the authors are all faculty members.

“ We find evidence that male supervisors use their power to promote their in-group. Women face earnings disadvantages when working for a male supervisor, compared to similarly situated men. The in-group bias of male supervisors seems to be an important source of gender earnings inequalities” p.194.