Women lag behind men on most dimensions of job quality.

An international report has found women in more underpaid, stressful and inflexible work compared to male counterparts.

In a report published recently by the British Sociological Association (BSA),  academics tested out their hypothesis that women ‘trade in’ high-powered careers for lower quality, lower paid jobs in order to access more job flexibility.

Discussing the basis for the research, a spokesperson for the BSA told the Huffington Post UK: “It’s been commonly thought that women take jobs with lower pay and fewer prospects in order to benefit from having more flexibility, so that they have more time to spend at home with their children.”

Indeed, an Equality and Human Rights Commission report in 2009 found that skilled workers, particularly women, were dropping out of the workforce or choosing lower-paid, lower-skilled part-time work in order to balance work and family life.

However the new BSA report, published last month in a journal called Work, Employment and Society, tells a different story.

Professor Meir Yaish from the University of Haifa and Professor Haya Stier of Tel Aviv University  analysed survey data collected on the working conditions of 9,000 women and 8,500 men in 27 industrialised countries, including the UK.

The survey measured areas such as probability for advancement, job security, time autonomy, emotional conditions and job content and quality.

The results showed that not only did women report lower pay, less opportunity for advancement and lower quality in job content but also less autonomy in working hours and less job security.

And the findings showed that on average men reported less stress and exhaustion from their work (5 per cent lower) and less insecurity in their job (2 per cent lower).

Men also gave answers that were 8 per cent higher than women’s when asked about their income and opportunities for promotion, and 15 per cent higher when asked about whether they had control over their schedule, their time off and what time they started and ended work.

“The findings show that women lag behind men on most dimensions of job quality,” the researchers remarked in a BSA press release.

“This result runs counter to the expectation that women’s occupations compensate for their low wages and limited opportunities for promotion by providing better employment conditions.”

Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, told the Huffington Post UK that “These findings will come as no surprise to the millions of working women in the UK involved in the daily juggle between the competing demands of work and caring.”

The report shows that gender inequality in the workplace is an international problem, with the study’s authors concluding that “women enjoy hardly any advantage over men in the labour market”.

However, the researchers also found that the more women there were in a profession or trade, the more equal conditions became in most aspects of work, proving that female representation in the workplace is the first step to closing the gender gap.