3. DELINEATION OF STUDY VARIABLES
Women and men's equal participation and involvement in the labour market can be measured not only in terms of access to jobs but also in terms of the work conditions experienced on the job. To present a comprehensive overview of the nature and extent of gender discrimination in the teaching profession, this study focuses on a broad range of workplace conditions experienced by employees. There are three possible outcomes when examining gender difference in work conditions: 1) The work conditions are the same for men and women, 2) men experience better work conditions, or 3) women experience better work conditions. For a society like Botswana, which is still strongly patriarchal, it is highly unlikely that women would experience better workplace conditions than men would. Even in developed societies that are characterized by less patriarchy and considerably stronger measures designed to check gender inequality, women still fare worse than men do in the workplace.
The work conditions examined by this study are grouped into four major groups, namely, intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, workplace support and workplace stresses. The specific conditions analysed under each category are delineated and defined below. The perceived differential experiences of these conditions for males and females constitute gender discrimination in the workplace.
3.1 Intrinsic Rewards
Intrinsic rewards, variously termed task rewards, are benefits inherent to the work itself and fulfil human goals related to the individual workers' internal sense of fulfilment (Kalleberg 1977). Although there exists no commonly agreed upon list of such rewards, they include the freedom to plan work (or self-direction and responsibility), the chance to learn new skills and abilities, opportunities to use one's skills and abilities (challenging work), being informed about the job, creativity, the ability to do the job well, sufficient feedback regarding the effectiveness of one's effort, being fairly rewarded for work accomplished, the chance to see the results of work done, and the chance for self expression through work (Mottaz 1985; Price and Mueller 1986a). In the study, four work conditions - namely, participation in decision-making, autonomy, upward communication and task significance - are analysed as intrinsic rewards.
Participation in decision-making refers to the extent of the employee involvement in the adoption of major policy decisions that affect the organization and its employees. Employees, for example, can be involved in choosing between alternatives in new production or service delivery techniques, promotional procedures, staff promotions, terms of service for workers, and the hiring and firing of core personnel (Blunt and Jones 1992).
Autonomy is the degree to which employees are offered the freedom, independence and discretion to make decisions pertaining to the substantive and procedural aspects of their job such as scheduling and determining the procedure to be used in executing the task (Hackman and Oldham 1975). The highest degree of autonomy exists when the employee has total freedom to make such decisions while the lowest degree exists when the individual has to depend on others in the immediate work environment for such decisions.
Upward communication refers to the transmission of information up the hierarchy (Mulinge 1994). It represents the degree to which employees can transmit with ease their ideas, feelings, and feedback from their jobs to higher-level administrators and/or managers. The variable manifests the extent of employee feedback to the organization's decision-making machinery. As applied to the teaching profession, it relates to communication between teachers and school administrators and between school administrators and the officers in the relevant departments of the Ministry of Education.
Task significance is the degree to which an individual's role contributes significantly to the overall organizational process (Hackman and Oldham 1980). It exists whenever the employee perceives the role(s) he/she performs to be important to the survival of the work organization.
3.2 Extrinsic Rewards
Extrinsic rewards are benefits that are not inherent to the work itself but instead are the by-products of doing the work (Kalleberg 1977). They are provided by the organization for the sake of motivating the workers to perform their tasks and maintain membership in the organization. For the purpose of the study, the following work conditions are analysed as extrinsic rewards: pay, job security, promotional opportunities, promotional rate, professional growth opportunities and access to managerial positions.
Pay refers to the wages and salaries received by employees for services rendered. Job security is the extent to which an employee is guaranteed his/her job as long as he/she is cautious and performs at a minimal level of competence (Leonard 1977). The existence of job security guarantees the employees the opportunity to continue applying the knowledge and skills that are associated with the job. This not only enables them to become better workers, but also helps them to further their career ambitions.
Promotional opportunities refer to the degree of potential vertical mobility within the organization (Price and Mueller 1986a). Promotion along internal job ladders has a bearing on the career development and future monetary and fringe benefits received from the job. Promotional rate, on the other hand, refers to the frequency of upward mobility by the employee. It can be calculated by dividing the employee's tenure with the employer by the number of times the employee has been promoted.
Professional growth opportunities refer to the degree of opportunity afforded by the organization for the employee to increase work-related skills and knowledge (Mangelsdorff 1989). The opportunity for employees to improve their work-related skills and knowledge improves their chances of promotion within the organization and helps them to become more competent. Finally, access to managerial positions refers to the perceived chances of promotion to higher-level positions that are associated with the exercise of authority.
3.3 Workplace Support
Grouped under the category workplace support are work conditions that satisfy the employee's needs for assistance in job-related problems (or role-related matters). They include friendly, helpful, and supportive supervisors (Mottaz 1985; Price and Mueller 1986a) and a cohesive work group (Price and Mueller 1986b; Randall and Cote 1991). The support conditions analysed in this study are supervisory support, work group cohesion, grievance procedures and socialization practices. Such support could be received by the individual from members of his/her work group, supervisors and/or managers (Ganster, Fusilier and Mayes 1986; Mottaz 1985).
Supervisory support is the degree to which supervisors are friendly, helpful and supportive to their subordinates (Mottaz 1985). Supervisory support can be said to exist in a workplace where human relations characterized by trust, respect, friendship, and a considerable concern on the part of supervisors for subordinates' needs abound or where the supervisor's task-oriented behaviour is such that both the roles of the supervisor and the subordinate are clearly defined. Work group cohesion refers to the degree to which employees of an organization form close informal relations in their immediate work units (Price and Mueller 1986b). It is generally associated with a high degree of interaction and felt responsibility among members of the group (Cartwright 1968), which, in turn, lead to greater social involvement such as employee joint participation in social activities inside and outside of the work environment.
Grievance procedures are the extent to which formal appeal procedures are available to employees to air their complaints (Freeman and Medoff 1984). The existence of grievance procedures lowers employees' disaffection with the employer and tends to impact positively on morale and delivery of services. Finally, socialization practices refer to the degree to which work organizations display institutionalised procedures for familiarizing/acquainting (new) employees with their workings. The aim of socialization is to introduce the reality of the organization to especially newcomers by availing to them information about the organization (such the purpose and mission of the firm and the in-depth workings and expectations of the organization) that shapes the way they adjust to the organization (Jones 1986). This reduces the uncertainty and anxiety surrounding the entry process.
3.4 Workplace Stresses
Workplace stresses are those work conditions that undermine the employee's ability to perform his/her tasks efficiently. They include those conditions that provide what Kalleberg (1977, 128) refers to as `creative comfort, i.e., a `soft' job' such as convenient travel to and from work, good hours, freedom from ambiguous roles, pleasant surroundings, freedom from role overload (enough time to complete tasks), and freedom from conflicting job demands. Their presence in the work environment brings pressure to bear on the employee thereby undermining his/her abilities to cope with the job requirements (House 1981). The stresses examined by this study include work overload, role ambiguity, role conflict, resource inadequacy and sexual harassment.
Work overload represents the extent to which job performance required in a job is excessive. It is `the degree to which the various role expectations perceived by the focal person exceed the amount of time and resources available for meeting them (Blunt and Jones 1992, 237).' Work overload occurs whenever role expectations are in excess of the available time and resources (Blunt and Jones 1992). The converse, work under-load, exists whenever the role holder considers the demands of the role to fall short of his/her abilities either in size or in variety (Blunt and Jones 1992) relative to the available time.
Role ambiguity is the degree to which there is a discrepancy between the amount of information a person receives and the amount necessary to perform the role adequately (Kahn, Wolfe and Schoek 1964). A non-ambiguous job is one in which there is adequate job description specifying the precise scope and nature of an employee's responsibilities (Blunt and Jones 1992) and clear and timely information regarding the expectations associated with a particular role, the methods for fulfilling known role expectations and the consequences of role performance.
Role conflict is the degree to which incompatible demands are made upon an individual by two or more persons whose jobs are functionally interdependent with that of the individual (Kahn, Wolfe and Schoek 1964). It may exist when two or more sets of role expectations that are contradictory or incompatible, occur simultaneously such that compliance with one makes compliance with the other more difficult or impossible (Blunt and Jones 1992). Resource inadequacy refers to the extent of insufficiency of infrastructural and material resources and equipment that are necessary for the employee to execute his/her duties with the minimum of discomfort (La-Anyane 1985). The assumption underlying this construct is that employees will wish to have adequate resources with which to do their jobs well (Kalleberg 1977).
Finally, sexual harassment refers to any repeated but unwelcome and unsolicited verbal or physical sexual advances or conduct at the workplace that creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment (Petrocelli and Repa 1994; University of Botswana 2000). Among others, it could take the forms of sexually derogatory and discriminatory statements or remarks; sexually suggestive approaches; unnecessary touching and unwanted physical contacts; compromising invitations or presents; actual requests or demands for sexual favours; or the display of suggestive and/or degrading pictures or objects in the workplace (University of Botswana 2000). These, being offending, demeaning, discomforting and humiliating to the recipient, are judged objectionable. Sexual harassment may interfere with the recipient's job performance, undermine his/her job security and prospects and create a threatening or intimidating work environment.
3.5 Other Variables Studied
Several other variables are analysed by the study. These are the discrimination in hiring or recruitment into the teaching profession, global discrimination, job satisfaction, professional commitment, organizational commitment and intent to stay. While the first represents a pre-entry factor, the last four are outcome variables often termed employee affective orientations that may be impacted on by the perceived status of workplace conditions.
While discrimination in recruitment represents the degree to which males and females are not afforded equal chances to join the teaching profession, job satisfaction is the degree to which an employee likes his/her job (Price and Mueller 1986a; Smith, Kendall and Hulin 1969). The concept of job satisfaction has been used dimensionally to refer to the degree to which employees like different facets of their job (Smith, Kendall and Hulin 1969) such as pay, supervision and promotion. However, the study is interested in its global use (Quinn and Staines 1979; Brayfield and Rothe 1951) or the overall degree to which employees like their jobs.
Professional commitment refers to the degree to which an employee uses the profession as the reference group and is loyal and dedicated to it (Greenham 1971; Mueller et al. 1994). It is established during the initial training stages for the profession. For teachers in particular, they are initiated into acquiring a feeling of commitment to the teaching profession during their stay in Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs) and University Colleges.
For the purpose of this study, organizational commitment will be defined as the employee's identification with, and involvement in, a particular organization (Mowday, Porter and Steers 1982). It depicts an active relationship with the organization such that individuals are willing to give something of themselves to contribute to the organization's well being (Mowday, Porter and Steers 1982). Allen and Meyer (1990, 1) call the same concept `affective commitment' and define it as `the employee's emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in the organization. Intent to stay, on the other hand, refers to the employee's expected likelihood of remaining employed by the same organization rather than seeking employment elsewhere (Halaby 1986; Halaby and Weakliem 1989). It focuses on the employee's intention to stay with or terminate his/her membership in the organization.
The constructs organizational commitment and intent to stay are more specific concepts subsumed under the umbrella concept of organizational attachment, which refers to the degree to which employees are bound to their employing organization (Mueller et al. 1994). Both concepts have the firm as the referent but differ in terms of the type of attachment they represent; whether it is affective or affectively neutral. Whereas organizational commitment is consistently viewed as affective attachment (Allen and Meyer 1990; Mowday, Porter and Steers 1982), intent to stay is typically viewed as affectively neutral (Halaby 1986; Halaby and Weakliem 1989). It represents the employee's more `realistic' or rationally-determined plan to stay or leave, a decision that is based on calculative or instrumental assessments of the perceived utility of remaining with the organization relative to leaving (Mueller et al. 1994).
