Christina of ElegantHack has a frustratingly on-target post up now about the ongoing gap between men’s and women’s pay, promotions, and abilities to break into the highest echelons of the business world. She quotes an article from Harvard Business Review with some very disturbing data:
That there is a problem is not in doubt. Despite years of progress by women in the workforce (they now occupy more than 40% of all managerial positions in the United States), within the C-suite they remain as rare as hens’ teeth. Consider the most highly paid executives of Fortune 500 companies—those with titles such as chairman, president, chief executive officer, and chief operating officer. Of this group, only 6% are women. Most notably, only 2% of the CEOs are women, and only 15% of the seats on the boards of directors are held by women….
Although most variables affected the wages of men and women similarly, there were exceptions. Marriage and parenthood, for instance, were associated with higher wages for men but not for women. In contrast, other characteristics, especially years of education, had a more positive effect on women’s wages than on men’s. Even after adjusting wages for all of the ways men and women differ, the GAO study, like similar studies, showed that women’s wages remained lower than men’s. The unexplained gender gap is consistent with the presence of wage discrimination.
Similar methods have been applied to the question of whether discrimination affects promotions. Evidently it does. Promotions come more slowly for women than for men with equivalent qualifications. One illustrative national study followed workers from 1980 to 1992 and found that white men were more likely to attain managerial positions than white women, black men, and black women. Controlling for other characteristics, such as education and hours worked per year, the study showed that white men were ahead of the other groups when entering the labor market and that their advantage in attaining managerial positions grew throughout their careers. Other research has underscored these findings. Even in culturally feminine settings such as nursing, librarianship, elementary education, and social work (all specifically studied by sociologist Christine Williams), men ascend to supervisory and administrative positions more quickly than women.
You’d be well advised to check out the whole post here.
None of this is news in my field, either generally, or more specifically speaking. For every “25 Most Influential People on the Web” article (with 3 women out of 25) to get in Christina’s craw, we’ve done 1/6 less and gotten 5 out of 50 women included in the latest big listing of “top” rabbis.
This? Continues not to be OK.