A Long Way from Equal
I was complaining to my father after learning a male coworker made more money than me despite the fact I was on the management team and my coworker was not. My father responded, “I didn’t think women had to deal with that anymore. I thought women were treated as equals these days.” I’ll spare you the 30 minute rant I shared with my father in response.
The idea that women and men are equals in the workplace is a common misconception. After all, there are more women going to work every day than there are men. And women are breadwinners: a working wife, on average, contributes 42.2 percent of her household’s income. (Source: The Center for American Progress). Women receive the majority of college degrees. But for some reason, this doesn’t add up to women rising to the tops of their organizations in any significant numbers. We know that the wage gap is widening, not closing. And, in Massachusetts alone, women are losing ground at the top.
Now, a new report from the White House Project points out just how far women still need to go in several different industries. According to “Benchmarking Women’s Leadership” women represent a mere 18 percent of top leaders. Take a look at the percentage of women who are:
*Full professors 26%
*University presidents 23%
*Fortune 500 CEOS 3%
*Among the highest paid at the Fortune 500 6%
*Movie and TV directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers 16%
*Television station owners 6%
*Newspaper publishers 18%
*News directors of radio stations 20%
*News directors at television stations 28%
*Law partners 18%
*Judges 25%
*Top military officers 11%
*Members of Congress 17%
*State legislators 24%
*Mayors 15%
*Protestant clergy and rabbis 15% (The Catholic Church, Orthodox Judaism and Islam prohibit women from holding ministerial leadership positions.)
*College athletic directors 21 percent
The sector where women come closest to parity is nonprofit. Women represent 45 percent of nonprofit CEOS. But when you take a closer look, you will see they represent only 21 percent of the CEOs at organizations with budgets of $25 million or more. And women CEOS at these organizations earn, on average only 66 percent of what their male counterparts earn.
Maybe you are reading this and thinking, “Well I don’t want to own a television station or be a mayor or a minister. I make a decent living and have a good life.” That’s fine. But the lack of women at the top still affects you. There is a growing body of literature showing the correlation between diversity of leadership and positive results.
Women and men approach leadership, risk management, team building and other key skills differently. Women represent 51 percent of the population and at least 85 percent of consumer buying power. In order for the United States to compete in a global market, rebound from the recession, and best represent the interests of all of its citizens, we need to shift the balance of power.
Actually, shifting the balance of power as you suggest as been shown to be VERY detrimental. Not that men should be superior, but that if men and women simply change position, the economy/society actually doesn’t improve. According to education stats, whenever one gender was educated more than the other (i.e. 104 girls educated for every 100 boys, or vice versa) the country showed a dramatic decline in economic output.
In fact, the US continues to have the highest economic output b/c we achieve almost exact parity in education (99 girls to 100 boys or vice versa depending on the natural ebb and flow of population).
Also, the growing power and number of women isn’t so much the rise of women as it is the leveling off of an unusual phenomenon that we called the “baby boom”. It doesn’t detract from women, it’s just that many of these statistics are misleading. The post-war generation up to those born in the 60s were part of a baby boom, which was disproportianately skewed towards males. About 4 males were born for every 1 female. This actually helped the economy since it replaced the losses incurred during the war. Because of this, the US was able to get closer to gender parity of 1:1 male to female, though it was closer to 1.35:1 male to female.
Now, however, the baby-boomers are retiring and dying, and their children are established in the workplace. Of course, there is no baby-boom since, the births are now about equal, with a slight advantage towards females 1.03:1 female to male. Therefore, the numbers you quote are really evanescent as it really represents the dying off of an usually male-dominated generation. Some could also argue that is’s simply evolution, as the presence of a male-dominated generation would necessitate the female population to increase which would explain why the past two generations have been skewed towards the female.
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