Who are these men?

Some days I can’t help but pick the scab. When I first saw The 25 Most Influential People on the Web I thought, jeez, here we are again. I’ve tweaked the graphic here, so you can see my point.

25 most influential (wo)men on the web.

But then Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership showed up in my inbox, and I thought, world, you are saying something.

That there is a problem is not in doubt. Despite years of progress by women in the workforce (they now occupy more than 40% of all managerial positions in the United States), within the C-suite they remain as rare as hens’ teeth. Consider the most highly paid executives of Fortune 500 companies—those with titles such as chairman, president, chief executive officer, and chief operating officer. Of this group, only 6% are women. Most notably, only 2% of the CEOs are women, and only 15% of the seats on the boards of directors are held by women.

I’d like to comment. But my mouth is full of bile, and my arms ache from pushing, and my back from bending and so I’ll just say, come on. It’s not Businessweek’s fault, they had to stretch to get 3. Something big and bad and ambient and pervasive is at work. Don’t believe me?

Look at the picture.

Because I can’t anymore.

A bit more, from the HBR article (well worth reading, btw, even if you have to pony up for it.)

The GAO researchers tested whether individuals’ total wages could be predicted by sex and other characteristics. They included part-time and full-time employees in the surveys and took into account all the factors that they could estimate and that might affect earnings, such as education and work experience. Without controls for these variables, the data showed that women earned about 44% less than men, averaged over the entire period from 1983 to 2000. With these controls in place, the gap was only about half as large, but still substantial. The control factors that reduced the wage gap most were the different employment patterns of men and women: Men undertook more hours of paid labor per year than women and had more years of job experience.

Although most variables affected the wages of men and women similarly, there were exceptions. Marriage and parenthood, for instance, were associated with higher wages for men but not for women. In contrast, other characteristics, especially years of education, had a more positive effect on women’s wages than on men’s. Even after adjusting wages for all of the ways men and women differ, the GAO study, like similar studies, showed that women’s wages remained lower than men’s. The unexplained gender gap is consistent with the presence of wage discrimination.

Similar methods have been applied to the question of whether discrimination affects promotions. Evidently it does. Promotions come more slowly for women than for men with equivalent qualifications. One illustrative national study followed workers from 1980 to 1992 and found that white men were more likely to attain managerial positions than white women, black men, and black women. Controlling for other characteristics, such as education and hours worked per year, the study showed that white men were ahead of the other groups when entering the labor market and that their advantage in attaining managerial positions grew throughout their careers. Other research has underscored these findings. Even in culturally feminine settings such as nursing, librarianship, elementary education, and social work (all specifically studied by sociologist Christine Williams), men ascend to supervisory and administrative positions more quickly than women.

8 Comments

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  1. 1
    George girton

    there’s a problem with lists of this type in any case — it’s kind of like the US News list of top colleges: a mistake. And there are some missing women, too, aren’t there? You want me to look at the picture, but I can’t either — you’ve made the men too dark to recognize who they are (as if it is their pictures, and not what they have done, whatever it is, that matters).

  2. 2
    LSF

    You could look at the selection from a ethnicity point of view – where are the Chinese, the Asians, the Brits?

    Life and work is hard. Someone might need to work harder to get somewhere because of their sex, race, or class. In certain occupations you might have to work harder because of your voice, or your looks. You might have a disability to work around. Other people like other people that fit in, particularly when it comes to commerce. And the fact that women have children and all the (nice) baggage that comes with that means that there will always be fewer women in mass-market and mass-media groupings like this.

  3. 3
    Christina Wodtke

    50% of the world is women. 40% of managers are women. 51% of the web is women. The numbers are not making sense.

    The baby thing kills me because it is and isn’t true. or maybe it’s true but not the whole story. merely an easy excuse.

    I am so mad about this. Yes, we’re missing a few folks who might be able to content for the list, mena trott, caterina fake, kathy sierra perhaps, and I’m sure we could list more. I wish SFWOW still did 25 most important women on the web so we could raise awareness of the influence of women. But also I wish there were more women to pick from.

    Lingering discrimination, politics that have male behavior and values, husbands who don’t really pick up 50% of the work, self-doubt instilled by years of passivity… it is a labyrinth. And only a few mice get to the cheese.

  4. 4
    ptamaro

    To me, this is just another instance of proof that the “Old Boys Network” is alive, well, and still in full effect. I think it’s really hard to find “an even playing field”.

    Lists like this one seem to me to be basic popularity contests — “Okay guys, lets assemble this years list: who’s got the best press recently, do we like them, and do they photograph well?”

    When I see stuff like this, I always start from the perspective that the article is really just scheduled manufactured content to use as filler between the ads — much like a lot of what’s on Prime-Time television.

    Yup, the numbers don’t really add up and they probably won’t anytime soon. This is a bummer, and I think we all lose a bunch because of it.

    I guess I just try to take it for what it is to me, a bunch of photos of beautiful people who seem to be having some impact on the rest of us…

    Here’s a thought: Who delivered these ‘most influential’ folks to the world, and nurtured them to greatness?

  5. 5
    ptamaro

    To me, this is just another instance of proof that the “Old Boys Network” is alive, well, and still in full effect. I think it’s really hard to find “an even playing field”.

    Lists like this one seem to me to be basic popularity contests — “Okay guys, lets assemble this years list: who’s got the best press recently, do we like them, and do they photograph well?”

    When I see stuff like this, I always start from the perspective that the article is really just scheduled manufactured content to use as filler between the ads — much like a lot of what’s on Prime-Time television.

    Yup, the numbers don’t really add up and they probably won’t anytime soon. This is a bummer, and I think we all lose a bunch because of it.

    I guess I just try to take it for what it is to me, a bunch of photos of beautiful people who seem to be having some impact on the rest of us…

    Here’s a thought: Who delivered these ‘most influential’ folks to the world, and nurtured them to greatness?

  6. 6
    Christina Wodtke

    a bunch of photos of beautiful people who seem to be having some impact on the rest of us

    one cheering thought: they ain’t exactly beautiful. The geeks have inherited the world, I just wish there were more girl-geeks.

  7. 7
    Sheldon Kotyk

    Just so you know, my director is female and replaced a male who moved to take on a different role.

    I’m finding that although she has a different type of personality than my previous director, I’m enjoying working for her and think she is doing an amazing job.

    The old white boys club is still around but guys still get mocked for being nurses too and there is a larger percentage of blacks in basketball and football than whites.

    I guess the point I am trying to make is that you can’t look at the current lists, you need to recognize that it will take a generation for the changes made in the 80s and 90s to make a difference in these kinds of lists as the girls who grew up with more opportunities develop into the leaders.

    I probably spent less time and emotion in this comment than you did in your post so feel free to fire back.

  8. 8
    Livia Labate

    It will never be an “even playing field”. You (not *YOU* Christina, anyone) can either embrace that fact and focus on doing what you want to do, or you can be bogged down by the circumstances. That does not decrease the frustration of seeing a lists like this year after year and recognizing the same patterns of inequality.

    You mentioned many of the reasons why this is the reality of our economy and society today, all true. I hate framing these problems as if women are ‘victims of the circumstances’ though (which is how it’s often framed); that only irritates me further, because it implies powerlessness and that thinking is what takes power away from people, like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    It is true, however, that the effects of progress in this area from the 80’s and 90’s will only be really embedded in social thinking years from now. It does take time, but meanwhile women need to gloat more, take credit for their accomplishments and ask for what they want. I see examples of that NOT happening on a daily basis and I’ve gotten into trouble pointing that out to other women. My point: they are hurting my own ability to succeed. It’s a self-serving argument (yes!), just as much as being shy or afraid to face this unequal landscape is selfish.

    Have you seen the movie ‘Who Killed the Electric Car’? They do a great job at pointing out all the culprits and how they contributed equally to the ‘gestalt of failure’ of that technology. The same is true for why women aren’t conquering as much as they could and being recognize for it (in comparison to men) – it’s a multi-variable problem: corporate culture, American culture, men x women dynamics, sexism, etc, etc – but since the only variable I know and have some control over is myself as a woman, that’s the variable I criticize.

    It is immensely frustrating to work your ass off every day to see other rip the benefits, to interact with incompetent people you know make more money than you, and to finish a day going above and beyond to see others being praised. It requires a good deal of self-motivation, but in today’s society, if you can’t do that, it doesn’t matter what your color, sex or creed is. It’s not about choosing to deal with it, it’s about having to.

    It’s funny that I came across your post now. I just finished watching Working Girl (1988) on tv. I remember watching it when it was out and thinking ‘that’s how you do it! – ambitious, driven and no less of a woman’. I watch it now and though the entire movie looks and sounds incredibly cheesy (I just can’t take shoulder pads and big seriously in this day and age), that sentiment is still there. But so is the frustration.

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