March is Women’s History Month and a wonderful time to celebrate the contributions of working women. From Rosie the Riveter to Muriel Siebert, the first female to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, women have forever altered the American workplace.
Yet, as highlighted by actress Patricia Arquette during the Oscars last Sunday, . No matter how you measure it — be it salary, representation in management, executive and board positions or the perceived value of our contributions — .
So it’s not completely surprising to learn that the percentage of working women is on the decline. The New York Times wrote that , down from a high of 74 percent in 1999. America’s female employment rate now lags behind a slew of industrialized nations, including Japan, France, Britain and Sweden, where 83 percent of females are in the workforce.
The Times details reasons for the drop, including a dearth of opportunities (particularly for those without a college education), a shortage of affordable child care and recession-related job cuts, which eliminated many jobs held by women. But there are other factors contributing to inequality and underrepresentation.
Several women interviewed by The Times blamed a lack of family-friendly policies for keeping them from returning to work. I’ve written in the past about the importance of employers offering work policies that allow women and men the option to work differently.
These policies help employers attract and retain top talent. Just look at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has reduced its turnover to 15 percent from 24 percent four years ago by adopting more flexible work policies.
But we also have to tackle the issue of cultural perceptions about women’s role in the workforce. Rosie the Riveter became a cultural icon for women during World War II, changing attitudes about the type of work women were capable of performing. Those changes occurred from necessity as a shortage of men forced employers to fill their ranks with women. I would argue that today we need a new Rosie.
I got my master’s degree in business administration from Wharton Business School, where women account for 45 percent of the class, so it surprised me greatly to learn of a study of Harvard Business School graduates that found more than half of .
Really? After spending two years toiling alongside women of equal or superior intelligence, drive and ambition, these men still think that their career will be more important?
The Harvard Business School research tells us that there is a clear disconnect between what men and women envision when it comes to their careers and balancing. Maybe it’s time for some frank discussions about why women are valued differently in the workplace. Baby-boomer fathers advocate for equal treatment for their daughters — in sports, in school, in career opportunities — yet it’s not a cultural norm for those same fathers to champion their female colleagues at work.
We need more men to mentor women and actively promote their contributions in the workplace, so that the work environment improves for all our daughters.
The workforce collectively needs to embrace the importance and necessity of women in leadership roles. Perhaps seeing more women in leadership positions would not only help change perceptions but also improve the overall status of working women. According to the Center for American Progress, and 4.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs and hold just 16.9 percent of Fortune 500 board seats.
How to change the situation is the million-dollar question.
Another Harvard study found that as many as 50 percent of women working in science, engineering and technology will leave over time because of hostile work environments. “Men need to be the ones that are advocating and pushing for women to rise up, and not just rely on the 1 percent of women who are already at the top to do it,” says one female tech industry executive interviewed by the Los Angeles Times.
To quote Jeffery Tobias Halter, president of the strategic consulting firm YWomen, women won’t gain parity in leadership roles until men become actively engaged in the conversation and in advancing such initiatives.
Unless corporations and the executives that run them embrace new options and a new way of thinking, they will continue to miss out on a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge from women.