Women have been in the workforce throughout the ages, including being servants, cooks, seamstresses, nannies, and nurses in ancient times. How else could an unmarried woman of little wealth or a woman whose husband died prematurely survive?
The New York Teacher Archive of Women’s Labor History reaches back to 1765 when “the first society of working women, the Daughters of Liberty” was formed under the auspices of the Sons of Liberty.
The 20th century was the era of women striving for recognition and acceptance as a valued resource in the business world. On June 10, 1963, the U.S. Congress passed the Equal Pay Act. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act added Title VII, forbidding employment discrimination on the basis of race and sex, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established the same year.
“Women have the rights that they deserve, and have won the battle against society. The labor market today has a new face. ... Women of the past have paved the way for the rights of women in the present day,” according to an article on the HubPages website.
Women in Today’s Workforce
“Women comprise 46 percent of the total U.S. labor force. With almost half of the workforce being women, female employees aren’t exactly a rarity. For most women today, getting a job is an expected part of life. This is a big change from past decades. In 1900, fewer than 20 percent of women participated in the labor market while today the number is around 75 percent and growing,” according to an article on the College Times blog.
By the end of February, there were 66.7 million women over the age of 16 in the U.S. workforce, versus 75.3 million males over the age of 16, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Although women made great strides in the business world during the last century, there is still inequality in the market that stops women from achieving equal parity with men.
Although women are almost one-half of the labor force, close to 60 percent of working women earn less than $8 an hour, and almost all women in the workforce make less than a male with the same experience, education level, and knowledge. Women are paid three quarters for every dollar a male earns, and the higher the woman’s educational level, the greater the difference in salary between men and women.
“The sad reality is that when you look at the hard facts, there is still a fair amount of inequality when it comes to women’s role in the working world,” according to the College Times article.
Women Climbing the Corporate Ladder
“The past 12 months have seen women take the lead in some of the toughest economic and political environments,” according to a recently released Grant Thornton International Business Report, detailing statistics on women moving into higher-level management positions.
On Feb. 9, Petrobras, one of the world’s five major oil companies, selected 58-year-old Maria das Gracas Silva Foster as its first woman CEO. She succeeded José Sergio Gabrielli de Azevedo, advancing from her position as director of gas and energy, which she held since 2007.
In June 2011, Christine Lagarde, former French finance minister, was named the first woman managing director and madame chairman of the IMF executive board, succeeding Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
There are 17 female CEOs on the Fortune 1–500 list (3.4 percent of those named on the list), among them Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard Co., Virginia Rometty of International Business Machines Corp., Indra K. Nooyi of PepsiCo Inc., Irene B. Rosenfeld of Kraft Foods Inc., Ursula M. Burns of Xerox Corp., and Denise M. Morrison of Campbell Soup Co.
There are 18 female CEOs on the Fortune 501–1000 list (3.5 percent of those named on the list), among them Sara Mathew of Dun & Bradstreet Inc., Laura J. Alber of Williams-Sonoma Inc., and Karen W. Katz, of the Neiman Marcus Group Inc.
In 2004, 19 percent of all senior managers worldwide were women. By 2007, the number of females in executive positions increased to 24 percent, moving down to 20 percent by 2011. During the first few months of 2012, women managers globally increased by 1 percent to 21 percent, according to Grant Thornton.
“Whilst male and female graduates are recruited in almost equal numbers by businesses, the proportion of women in the top jobs around the world is very low. Just 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women,” said Grant Thornton in its report.
Next...Governments Attacking Problem Head-On
Governments Attacking Problem Head-On
“In Spain, a gender equality law was passed in 2007 obliging businesses with more than 250 employees to have at least 40% women on their boards by 2015,” according to the Grant Thornton report.
In 2011, the French government stood up for women and passed a bill that requires 40 percent of corporate board members to be women by 2017.
In Italy, the Italian Companies and Exchange Commission passed a bill that was more open-ended, just requiring gender balancing in the corporate boardroom, while the United Kingdom only calls for at least 25 percent of FTSE 100 board members to be female by 2015, according to Grant Thornton.
The United States and Germany are far behind other nations when it comes to females being promoted to executive levels, while of the countries surveyed by Grant Thornton, Russia is the one country where the most women are in senior level management positions.
“In Canada, Québec passed legislation in 2006 requiring gender parity on the boards of its state-owned enterprises which then comprised just 28% women; the 50% target was reached in December 2011,” stated the Grant Thornton report.
Searching for Reasons
“In fact, this report [‘The Myth of the Ideal Worker’], which studied high potentials in the executive pipeline, reveals that while ‘doing all the right things’ to get ahead works well for men, being proactive did not provide as great an advantage for women,” according to an October 2011 report by Catalyst, a not-for-profit organization.
For women to advance, they must proactively publicize their accomplishments, while this approach limits men in their advancement opportunities.
For men to advance in their careers, they must move on, while for women it is more beneficial to remain at the same company, proving their worth to the upper management involved in promotional opportunities.
“Many women say the corner office remains off-limits because the unwritten rules of the workplace continue to favor men,” according to a 2011 article on Knowledge@Wharton (KW), the Wharton School’s online business journal at the University of Pennsylvania.
Networking opportunities are fewer for women than for men, as such activities have to do with socializing. Not many women will join the men for a drink after work or meet the men at the gym. More often than not, news of a promotional opportunity is discussed when men socialize.
Women rarely negotiate concerning advancement, not because they are unable to negotiate, but because they just don’t think they have to negotiate.
“Women’s difficulties may be due in part to a failure to negotiate,” according to the KW article.
Lastly, management may look for someone with similar characteristics, trends, experience, and background as the manager that is being replaced.
“Research suggests that people, regardless of their personal gender, favor hiring candidates into jobs whose characteristics are similar to people who have held these jobs in the past,” according to an article on the HR.com website.
