Perceptions About Minority and Female Opportunities for Job Advancement: Are Beliefs About Equal Opportunities Fixed?

Abstract

Perceptions of job advancement opportunities were examined for a large correctional agency that is an equal opportunity employer. The attitudinal data were taken from the 2001 administration of the Prison Social Climate Survey by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Multilevel models were employed that permitted the simultaneous examination of individual- and institutional-level covariates. A sample of 4,037 staff members working at 98 different prisons provided the data. Consistent with prior research, Whites and men believed that minorities and women had greater opportunities for job advancement. The results demonstrated that the gap in equality of opportunities varied significantly from prison to prison, suggesting that the work environment or context does matter. Nonetheless, the gap in how job opportunities were evaluated between men and women and between Blacks and Whites did not vary significantly across prisons, suggesting that the work context had no effect on these differences.!

Keywords

correctional staff equal opportunities women prison workers minority prison workers multilevel models

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