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Thirty years after the women’s movement first focused on employment discrimination, progress for women in the workforce can be measured in fits and starts.
"Discrimination still exists," says Jill Miller, CEO and president of Women Work!, a Washington, DC-based national network for women’s employment. "Women continue to be relegated to certain sectors and find it difficult to rise beyond a certain level in others. A lot of people still think it’s OK for men to be considered the primary wage earners and for women to earn less."
While the gender pay gap has narrowed in recent years, women still tend to earn less than men. In the third quarter of 2004, men who worked full-time earned nearly 19 percent more than women: $704 versus $571 in median weekly pay, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Still, Miller sees cause for optimism. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has pursued and settled numerous sex-discrimination cases against large employers in the last five years. "And what happens with big companies tends to filter down to smaller ones," she adds.
Gender Gap at the Top
At the same time, women have become highly visible in certain areas that men have traditionally dominated. Women now make up a majority of accountants; soon, . But even though women hold 46 percent of executive, administrative and managerial positions, according to the BLS, there is cause for concern. Women hold 7.9 percent of positions at the executive vice president level or higher in Fortune 500 companies, according to a 2003 report on corporate governance published by Catalyst, a New York-based nonprofit research group.
Miller cites the 2004 San Francisco class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart as an example of stereotypical thinking that keeps women in subordinate roles. "The case is about this enormous company hiring and promoting men over women," she says. "And it’s not just one incident -- it’s systemic, in thousands of different stores across the US."
More Women Hiring Women?
If women are not in a position to hire, it’s difficult to change current attitudes and practices. It’s "a subtle form of sexism," says Dr. Mary Gatta, director of workforce policy at Rutgers University’s Center for Women and Work (CWW). "If a male has always hired people who look like him, he won’t think of hiring someone of a different gender."
But some male hiring managers may not see many female applicants. "From a young age, women are still not encouraged by parents or teachers to enter certain fields," Gatta says. Despite innovative programs aimed at attracting science- and math-oriented females, technology and engineering remain male-dominated. Only 20 percent of information technology specialists are women; they make up just a bit more than 10 percent of all engineers, according to the "Highlights of Women's Earnings in 2002" report by the BLS.
Work and Family Issues
In those fields, as well as finance and others with traditionally long hours, work and family issues play a role, despite decades of efforts aimed at equalizing parenting responsibilities. "In many cases, especially with jobs that are not 9 to 5, women are still seen as having to take care of family matters first," Gatta says. "And that impacts hiring."
But hiring is not the only area where women remain minorities. The upper ranks of many major companies are still populated by "older white men," says Dr. Eileen Applebaum, director of Rutgers’ CWW. "You tend to advance when someone with power sees you as having potential, selects you for a plum assignment and helps advance your career," she explains. "That often happens when the person in power sees you as a younger version of himself. It takes a certain type of person to recognize that a ‘younger version’ doesn’t necessarily have to be a younger man."
