There are clearly obstacles to success, ranging from outright discrimination to institutional indifference – lack of mentoring, for example. But women aspiring to become corporate leaders shouldn’t despair. The glass ceiling is not quite as shatterproof as the commission suggests. The key reasons:
Fortune 1000 companies employ about 20 percent of the nation’s workers. In the economy as a whole, 43 percent of managers are women, according to 1994 Department of Labor data. In some industries that employ high percentages of women generally – insurance and nonprofit social services – half or more of the managers are women. They also fare well in high-growth businesses like biotechnology and health care.
Every year more women take the one step that ensures fair treatment in the workplace: they become their own bosses. There are about 6.5 million female-owned businesses, employing more people than all of the Fortune 500 companies combined.
The Glass Ceiling Commission’s 5 percent senior-managers figure doesn’t tell the whole story. It is based on two studies – a 1989 survey by Korn/Ferry International, an executive-search firm, and a 1990 report by Catalyst, a nonprofit women’s research and advocacy group – that present only a snapshot in time. That 5 percent figure is a threefold increase from the mid-1980s when women held only about 1.5 percent of these senior positions. ““Measured against a decade ago,’’ says Claudia Goldin, an economic historian at Harvard, ““5 percent seems like progress indeed.''
Moreover, the 5 percent figure may already be outdated. Catalyst estimates that the senior-managers figure has moved closer to 7 percent. And in a 1992 update Korn/ Ferry found that the number of women executive vice presidents in the Fortune 1000 industrials and the Fortune 500 service companies had jumped to 9 percent.
Madeleine Condit, who handles ““diversity’’ issues for the firm, estimates that 10 percent of promotions to vice presidencies went to women last year. ““Opportunities for women are greater now than they have ever been,’’ she argues.
Senior executives of major corporations usually have an M.B.A. and a minimum of 25 years’ experience. But elite business schools started admitting large numbers of women in 1975. Women who graduated that year are only now reaching the point in their careers where they would normally be considered for top positions.
If current trends continue, women could reasonably expect to have as much as 15 percent of senior corporate posts within 10 years. The pace of progress may accelerate after that, since women make up about one third of the students at business schools and just under half of those attending law schools.
Numerous surveys of women M.B.A.s have found that within 10 years of graduation a full 20 percent don’t work at all. The vast majority abandon fast-track corporate jobs because they can’t reconcile the punishing schedule with family life. Becoming CEO of a Fortune 1000 company typically requires putting in 20 years of 15-hour days and relocating as often as every two years.
If these firms were serious about retaining women, some argue, they would make promotions easier for family-oriented executives. And some are doing just that. But until such corporate sensitivity becomes the norm, many women – and an increasing number of men – are simply not willing to pay the price. A glass ceiling? Perhaps. Or maybe just a sign of changing priorities.
