Staffing Personnel: Feminization and Change in Human Resource Management

Are Diversity Programs Merely Ceremonial? Evidence-Free Institutionalization

“…Personnel specialists grew tenfold between 1960 and 2000, while the labor force grew only threefold. Women were nearly unknown in personnel as of 1960, but they held half of specialist and manager jobs by 1980, and 70% by the late 1990s (Dobbin, 2009: 5, 169;Roos and Manley, 1996). This change in the profession's composition shaped its agenda, and corporate policies supporting gender equality came to take precedence.…”

The Strongest Link: Legitimacy of Top Management Diversity, Sex Stereotypes and the Rise of Women in Human Resource Management 1995 – 2004

“…For example, when the upcoming of scientific testing instruments shifted the image of HRM from a welfare to a professional function, the share of male HR specialists increased (Trudinger 2004: 104). A close relationship between status decrease and rise of women's representation or vice versa could be observed from the early stages of HRM until the end of the 1980s (Roos/Manley 1996). More current documentation of feminization and status of HRM cannot be found in the literature.…”

“…Reversely, a decrease in numbers of women has accompanied an improvement in the occupation's status. In trying to account for these developments, scholars emphasized that the representation of women within HRM depends on the attractiveness of the occupation to men (e.g., Legge 1987;Roos/Manley 1996). As long as HRM is not important at the overall level of organization and society, men are not interested and leave the positions to women.…”

“…While these ideas have been powerful for explaining the inroads of women to HRM and a resulting status loss of the occupation (Roos/Manley 1996), they cannot account for the recent status increase of HRM that occurred despite the inclusion of women in HRM. Using institutional theory we also look at aspects in the HRM feminization debate that have not been considered before.…”

Charting the strategic trajectory of the Australian HR professional

“…In the decade following World War II, the status of the function increased, along with the participation of men. From around 1970 until 1990, studies consistently showed a correlation between a decrease in the status of the HR function and the rise of women's participation (Roos and Manley ). This relationship has been explained by the central argument that men will prefer an occupation with status; the corollary to this is that the presence of men increases the status of an occupation.…”