In the September issue of the Harvard Business Review you’ll find a research roundup of women in the workplace. There are some fascinating and some embarrassing statistics to be found….
- Men get more of the critical assignments that lead to advancement;
- Women “disappear” from organisations when looking at the higher ranks (53% of entry-level jobs to as low as 19% of the executive level);
- Women leave the workplace mostly because of workplace problems (90%) and not so much because they need/want to take care of family as the stereotype suggests;
- There is a distinct “motherhood penalty” for mothers starting in a job – the difference in starting salary is $11,000 – Female raters in this research experiment also judged mothers to be less likeable than fathers and childless women (next to providing fewer offers and less money);
- Women display more ethical behavior than men is demonstrated in several research experiments;
- Leadership-effectiveness evaluations of more than 7,000 executives revealed that at every management level, the women were rated higher than men, and the higher the level the bigger the gap. However, the higher the management also showed a higher proportion of men.
We still have a lot of ground to cover.
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