Effects of the Male-Female Ratio at Work: Policewomen and Male Nurses

Difficulties faced by women in work organizations are often explained as indirect consequences of their numerical minority. Their sex plays no role in these explanations: Men in a minority position are claimed to experience similar problems. The results of this empirical study challenge this: Policewomen are seen to face many of the disadvantages pointed out by Kanter (1977) and others, whereas male nurses enjoy advantages from being one of the few among female colleagues. Also, while the male majority in police teams do indeed resist women when their number reaches a critical mass, the female majority in the nursing teams do not show a similar resistance to men. The study involved 50 police teams and 49 nursing teams of approximately 15 members each. Comparisons were made only within each occupation, between skewed and tilted settings. Data were gathered by means of 297 semi-structured interviews. The opposite effects on men and women of being in a minority are attributed to a difference in status.