Describe the status of the US workforce in terms of gender diversity/equality. Does this represent significant change from the past? Argue your position.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Coined in 1986, the term glass ceiling is used to represent an invisible but absolute barrier or solid roadblock that prevents women from advancing to higher-level positions. Various statistics support the existence of a glass ceiling. The pay gap between men and women is one example. In 2012, the median weekly income in full-time management, professional, and related occupations was $1,328 for men in contrast to $951 for women. This gap continued for MBA graduates. Female graduates from top MBA programs earned 93 cents for every dollar earned by a male graduate, and the pay gap tends to increase over time. Also, a recent WSJ/NBC national poll revealed that 40 percent of the women reported experiencing gender discrimination.


Alice Eagly and her colleague Linda Carli conducted a thorough investigation into the organizational life of women and in 2007 published their conclusions that women had finally broken through the glass ceiling. We updated data originally reported in Eagly and Carli's book and that led to their conclusion. There were many more female CEOs in 2014 (24 and 50 female CEOs within Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 firms, respectively) and more women in managerial, professional, and related occupations than there were in the 1980s and 1990s. Statistics further showed that women had made strides along several measures:

• Educational attainment (women earned the majority of bachelor's and master's degrees from 2006 through 2012).
• Seats on boards of directors of Fortune 500 firms (9.6% in 1995 and 16.6% in 2013).
• Leadership positions in educational institutions (in 2010, women represented 18.7% of college presidents and 29.9% of board members).
• Federal court appointments (in 2013, 32% and 30% of federal courts of appeals and US district court judges, respectively, were women).

You can interpret the above statistics in one of two ways.

• No change. On the one hand, you might see proof that women remain underpaid and underrepresented in leadership positions, victims of discriminatory organizational practices.
• Positive change. Alternatively, you can agree with Eagly and Carli's conclusion that "Men still have more authority and higher wages, but women have been catching up. Because some women have moved into the most elite leadership roles, absolute barriers are a thing of the past."

Eagly and Carli propose that a woman's career follows a pattern more characteristic of traveling through a labyrinth. They use the labyrinth metaphor because they believe that a woman's path to success is not direct or simple, but rather contains twists, turns, and obstructions, particularly for married women with children.