Why Women Still Aren’t Getting Promoted at Work

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.care2.com/causes/why-women-still-arent-getting-promoted-at-work.html


by Piper Hoffman October 19, 2013 6:00 am




Women are largely missing from the highest ranks of corporate power. Even in companies where women outnumber men in lower-level positions, women tend to be far outnumbered among managers and executives.

Researcher Mabel Abraham looked at one American bank where the lower-level jobs were over 80% female, while less than 40 percent of executives were women.

The percentages Abraham found are right in line with my own experience. As an employment lawyer, I prosecuted gender discrimination class actions against several of the largest Wall Street firms and found the same hierarchies. Women were over-represented in entry-level jobs and under-represented in management. Their percentages got steadily smaller as they climbed up the ranks.

Employers have argued that gender inequities like these didn’t result from discrimination, but from a pipeline problem. They claimed that there were not enough women with the education and experience to qualify for top jobs. These days that argument is laughable. Women have outnumbered men in college student bodies for quite a while — possibly since the 1970s – with the gap between them steadily increasing over time. In 2009, 25 percent fewer men graduated college than women. The pipeline is not the problem.

FULL story at link.

[Thor_MN]

1. Isn't a bit arbitrary to post 2009 college graduation dates

when the odds of a 2009 graduate being in the highest ranks of corporate power are exceedingly low? I'm not disputing that women are far outnumbered, but the OP seems to completely ignore that it takes years to go from college grad to executive.

Personally, my opinion is that the circle jerk culture of corporate boards tends to focus the power and wealth into a small group. The boards that set executive wages tend to be made of other executives. They vote each other's compensation up and up - it doesn't pay to let outsiders in.

I honestly think that if women were better represented amongst corporate executives, the compensation would not be so ridiculously unbalanced. Cultural change does not happen instantly, it takes decades.