“Stuck On A Plateau”: Progress For Women Continues Flatlining At Top Ranks Of The Private Sector
After the election, word was that we had just lived through another Year of the Woman. After all, a record twenty women will now be serving in the US Senate next term, representing a fifth of all seats. We had previously failed to breach the 18 percent mark in that legislative body.
But women’s progress has stalled out somewhere else: the top of the private sector. The research organization Catalyst released its 2012 Census today, which tracks the number of women in executive officer and board director positions. Women held just over 14 percent of executive officer positions at Fortune 500 companies this year and 16.6 percent of board seats at the same. Adding insult to injury, an even smaller percent of those female executive officers are counted among the highest earners—less than 8 percent of the top earner positions were held by women. Meanwhile, a full quarter of these companies simply had no women executive officers at all and one-tenth had no women directors on their boards.
But as in the Senate, progress may be slow and even small percentages can be victories. Did this year represent a step forward? Not even close. Women’s share of these positions went up by a mere half of a percentage point or less last year. Even worse, 2012 was the seventh consecutive year in which we haven’t seen any growth in board seats and the third year of stagnation in the C-suite. Meanwhile, women may hold the majority of the jobs in growing sectors such as retail, healthcare and food service, but of the executive officers in those industries they represent less than 18 percent, under 16 percent and just 15.5 percent, respectively.
If this is the sign of the end of men or the richer sex, I fail to see how. Reversing these numbers may take time. But we’re not even on a steady uptick—we’re stuck on a plateau. Fortune tellers who tell us women are on track to dominate the economy need to explain how that can be if we aren’t seeing any movement in these top indicators. Representing half the workforce can still mean inequality if we aren’t breaking through to the top jobs.
By: Bryce Covert, The Nation, December 11, 2012
1 Comment »
Share your comment
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 
Is the discrepancy possibly explained by a difference between public SERVICE positions, which involve lots of problem-solving of practical matters involving the urgent needs of many, and which women may take Very Seriously and with LOTS of integrity, vs the ego-maniacal drive to satiate a thirst for power by whatever means necessary, which selects the sociopath to rise like cream – which we tend to see at the upper echelon of corporations AND male politicos?
we don’t need to wear pants to wield power. But we might need to have zero scruples. And I personally hope that never happens.
but i WOULD like to see at least 50% in the public service sector! If not more like 90%!!! Maybe THEN we’ll get something DONE that actually NEEDS doing! LOL 😉
LikeLike