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Despite advances, gender disparities persist in medicine

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Despite advances, gender disparities persist in medicine

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Women still hold few leadership positions in medicine. Women are often passed over for high positions. However, the percentage of women faculty members is increasing, as well as the number of women physicians. There are faced with strong bias, keeping them from advancing in their careers. They are often attempting to reach the same footing as their male peers, but the undermining discrimination impedes them from doing so.

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From the executive suite to the front lines of the COVID-19 response, women physicians continue to make significant progress in medicine, both professionally and personally. And yet persistent and troubling disparities remain that keep us on unequal footing with our male colleagues.

Even when our experience is equal to or exceeds that of a man, women physicians are routinely paid less for the same work and responsibilities. Women have fewer leadership roles in organized medicine as well as academia. All too frequently, women are passed over for tenure at major academic institutions. We have far fewer bylines in academic journals and often face bias-either implicit or explicit-that keeps us from advancing in our careers at the same pace as men.

As our profession celebrates September as Women in Medicine Month, we should seize the opportunity it affords to measure how far we have traveled toward gender equality in medicine-and how painfully distant that destination remains.

On one hand, women have never enjoyed more influence and representation within the American Medical Association. Our Women Physicians Section now represents more than 90,000 AMA member physicians, and I am honored to be the third consecutive woman to become AMA president-an important milestone for both our organization and organized medicine.

Additionally, our AMA continues to advocate for policies and initiatives to advance women's health and widen our influence in decision-making, policy formulation and leadership.

This year's theme for Women in Medicine Month-"Advancing Equity, Creating Change"-is personified by the newest recipients of the AMA's Joan F. Giambalvo Fund for the Advancement of Women research grant program. Their work will advance opportunities for presenting scholarly work by women researchers, and also create a virtual online negotiation workshop for women physicians and trainees to help close gender-related gaps in pay, position and perks.

This year's theme is also reflected in the burgeoning ranks of women enrolled in medical school, the increasing percentage of women faculty members, and by the growing number of women physicians practicing across our nation.

But I know that even as we have come so far in so many ways, so much more remains to be accomplished in the areas of gender-based pay equity, gender imbalances in certain specialties and subspecialties, and a lack of institutional support for women who are both physicians and mothers.

A study published in JAMA Network Open last fall highlighted the importance that scheduling flexibility, the availability of on-site child care, having facilities and time set aside without penalty for breast pumping, ongoing support for physician mothers returning to work, and expanded paid leave all have for reducing negative experiences for physician moms.

This last issue is a personal one for me. Having worked in private practice as the mother of two small children, I am thoroughly familiar with the obstacles women physicians must sometimes overcome to maintain equal footing with our male peers. I had my first child the day after I finished my general pediatric residency, without the benefit of any maternity leave to fall back upon. I had my second son after I finished my allergy/immunology fellowship, and the timing there was aligned with my board certification process.

My ability to scratch out my own maternity leave was essential, but would have been so much easier if established maternity/parental leave policies had been put in place back then.

Some needed changes are on the way. For example, the American Board of Medical Specialties has adopted a parental, caregiver or medical leave policy that takes effect in July 2021. Under the new policy, all ABMS member boards with training programs that extend two years or longer must provide residents and fellows with up to six weeks away, without requiring a training extension. This certainly would have helped me tremendously when I was completing my training.

Even so, the overall situation has not improved nearly as much as you might expect. The sad fact is that the U.S. ranks near the bottom of world rankings in providing paid family leave to new parents. A study conducted by the Pew Research Institute last year found that the U.S. was the only nation among 41 countries that does not mandate any paid leave for new parents.

Women in Medicine Month is an ideal time for us to reflect on this wide disparity and its impact on working parents in health care and other walks of life. Our AMA is examining the effects of the Family and Medical Leave Act on physicians in a broad range of practice environments. We are also helping state medical societies work with their lawmakers to establish and promote paid parental leave policies. In addition, we are pushing for federal tax incentives to support early child care, and encouraging employers to begin offering paid parental leave or expand paid leave already in place.

These are just a few of the steps we are taking to address a growing need. Now that women represent more than half of all U.S. medical students, the need for paid leave and other accommodations for new physician moms and dads grows greater by the day. Recognizing the obstacles women physicians face are the first step in overcoming them-and hastening the arrival of true gender equity in organized medicine.

Essential Tools & Resources

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Despite advances, gender disparities persist in medicine

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From the executive suite to the front lines of the COVID-19 response, women physicians continue to make significant progress in medicine, both professionally and personally. And yet persistent and troubling disparities remain that keep us on unequal footing with our male colleagues.

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The article focuses on gender economic inequality by highlighting the fact that men dominate the top of the economic summit while women are saddled with debt and poverty. It focuses on that despite women making up nearly half of the work force, they are still making less or ranked less in position as they are doing the same work or more as men. Women comprise just 27 percent of the top 10 percent, and their share of higher income groups runs even smaller. Among the top 1 percent, women make up slightly less than 17 percent of workers, while at the top 0.1 percent level, they make up only 11 percent. Women are underrepresented and genuinely disrespected as their hard work is not reflected in payments. Among full-time workers, women earned an average of 83 cents for every dollar a man earned in 2021, up from 76 cents in 2001. There are many other factors that make matters worse as those of another race or sexuality are paid even less. The article continuously proves that women are underpaid and deserve equality through statistical reasoning and valid facts.

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The global trend towards extreme wealth and income concentration has dramatically strengthened the economic and political power of those individuals - overwhelmingly male - at the top. In the United States and around the world, women continue to be underrepresented in high-level, highly paid positions and overrepresented in low-paying jobs. Women of color and transgender individuals experience particularly high levels of poverty, unemployment, and other economic hardships. Gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace contribute significantly to these persistent economic divides.

Inequality Across Gender Diversity and Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated long-standing gender inequalities. Women are more likely than men to work in service occupations, including domestic work, restaurant service, retail, tourism, and hospitality, that require face-to-face interactions and have been hard-hit by layoffs. Because of the nature of these jobs, teleworking is not an option for many women.

Frontline jobs, which are the ones most often deemed "essential" and require people to work in-person, are also heavily staffed by women. The health care, social work, and government and community-based services sectors are overwhelmingly made up of female employees, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute. Women make up 73 percent of government and community-based services workers, 76 percent of health care workers, and 78 percent of social workers.

The official U.S. unemployment rate does not include people who have not looked for work in the past four weeks. Because women tend to bear more responsibility for family caregiving, women with children were more likely than men to drop out of the labor force when schools and care centers closed due to Covid. Rand Corporation research reveals that the steepest decline in labor force participation in the first phase of the pandemic was among women with two children, at 3.82 points, compared to a 1.39 point drop for men with two children. More recently, the shortage of affordable childcare services has emerged as a barrier for women in returning to jobs in restaurants and other low-wage sectors, contributing to staffing challenges.

Among U.S. women who've stopped looking for work during the pandemic, the steepest drops have been among women of color. Between February 2020 and November 2021, Black women had a 3.5 percentage point drop in labor force participation and Latinx women had a 2.8 point drop, compared to 1.7 for white women. Several factors may have contributed to women of color becoming discouraged from seeking work. On top of gender inequities, women of color face racial discrimination in hiring and layoffs and they are disproportionately concentrated in service and care sector jobs with high risks of Covid exposure.

Transgender people are always in a precarious position, but the Covid-19 pandemic has made them particularly vulnerable. According to research from the Williams Institute at UCLA, transgender Americans are at a higher risk for Covid-19 for several reasons. They are more likely to be low-income, with 47.7 percent of transgender people living below 200 percent of the official U.S. poverty line, compared to 28.9 percent of the general U.S. population. They are also significantly more likely to suffer from asthma and HIV, conditions that put people at higher risk of mortality if they contract Covid-19. And they experience high barriers to receiving health care.

The pandemic has also hit transgender Americans especially hard economically. A poll from the Human Rights Campaign and PSB Research shows that as of June 2020, 54 percent of transgender people had experienced reduced work hours - more than double the 23 percent of the total U.S. workforce that faced a similar reduction. Twenty-seven percent of transgender people had experienced pay cuts, compared to just 7 percent of the U.S. workforce. And 19 percent had become unemployed due to the pandemic, a significantly larger share than the general population.

Gender Income Gaps

Female-dominated occupations - such as childcare and restaurant service - continue to occupy the lower rungs of the U.S. wage ladder. Women make up 67 percent of workers earning the federal minimum wage according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a wage rate stuck at $7.25 since 2009. By contrast, women represent only 8 percent of CEOs at Fortune 500 firms. CEOs took home $15.5 million on average in 2020.

White males particularly dominate highly lucrative financial industry jobs. At the top five U.S. investment banks (JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup), males make up from 64 to 82 percent executives and top managers. The share who are white ranges from 70 to 81 percent. More than two-thirds of all New York City securities industry employees were male in 2020, and nearly three-fifths were white.

Men make up an overwhelming majority of top earners across the U.S. economy, even though women now represent almost half of the country's workforce. Women comprise just 27 percent of the top 10 percent, and their share of higher income groups runs even smaller. Among the top 1 percent, women make up slightly less than 17 percent of workers, while at the top 0.1 percent level, they make up only 11 percent.

Other major economies show similar trend lines. A study of eight high-income countries from the London School of Economics found that women made up just 14 percent to 22 percent of the top 1 percent of earners. These surveys were conducted during the 2010-2014 period. The U.S. figure for 2012 is from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Throughout the U.S. workforce, women remain vastly underpaid. Among full-time workers, women earned less than 81 cents for every dollar a man earned in 2016. If part-time workers were included, the gap would be even wider, since women are more likely to work reduced schedules, often in order to manage childrearing and other caregiving work.

Within racial groups, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows the largest pay gaps between men and women appear among Whites and Asians - not because Latinas and Black women have made faster progress towards equity but because average pay for men in these groups falls far below the compensation of White and Asian men.

American women earn less than men, on average, in all industries. The largest pay gaps are in management positions, where men made $88,000 on average in 2016, compared to just $55,000 for women. The smallest gap appears in the construction sector, but women make up only 9 percent of workers in this industry.

The U.S. gender pay gap, while unacceptably large, is not the world's widest. But accurately measuring these gaps across countries can be difficult. Within the OECD group of higher-income nations, South Korea holds the widest gap, with men earning 37 percent more than women, on average. The country with the narrowest gap: Luxembourg, where men make just 3.4 percent more than women. Gaps have been smallest in OECD countries where the share of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements hits at least 80 percent and widest in countries with weak collective bargaining and no or very low minimum wages.

The International Labor Organization concedes that more work needs to be done to develop more accurate global gender gap analyses. One factor skewing the numbers: Women do considerably more unpaid work, from housekeeping to caring for children and the elderly. Among the 21 countries reporting data for at least one year during the 2013-2015 period, the West Bank and Gaza had the greatest imbalance, with men devoting just 16 percent as much time to unpaid domestic and caregiving work as women. Belgium, where men spend 63 percent as much time on these activities as women, ranked at the top.

In the UK, a new regulation requires corporations to disclose the pay gaps between their male and female employees. Financial firms have among the largest divides because of the scarcity of women in top positions. In 2018, HSBC reported the biggest gap, with the bank's female employees averaging just 41 percent as much as UK male employees. For all 10,000 firms in the survey, the median-paid male employee received 9.7 percent more in pay than the median female.

Gender Wealth Gaps

Most inequality analysis focuses on income (the wages earned from a job or from capital gains) rather than wealth (the sum of one's assets minus debts). Income inequality, while stark, pales in comparison to wealth inequality. The divides become even more dramatic when viewed through a gender lens.

At the top end, we have no more striking sign of increasing global wealth concentration than the rise of the billionaire class. The number of individuals with fortunes worth at least $1 billion more than doubled between 2010 and 2018, while remaining overwhelmingly male. In 2018, only 256 women ranked among the world's 2,208 billionaires. Seventy-seven hail from the United States, more than double the number in any other country.

One important component of wealth, retirement savings, shows an even wider gap between men and women. According to the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, American women in 2017 held $42,000 in median retirement savings, compared to $123,000 for men. Some 21 percent of women and 12 percent of men have less than $10,000 in retirement accounts. Both pension plan and Social Security payouts reflect in part past earnings. The gender pay gap means women end up with fewer post-retirement resources. In 2017, the $15,000 average annual Social Security benefit for women lagged the benefit for men by $4,000. The smaller retirement nest eggs of women also have to stretch further than male retirement savings, simply because women have longer life expectancies.

Debt also significantly impacts wealth. Crushing student loan burdens drag many young Americans far into the negative side of the wealth line, with the heaviest for female students. Women comprise 56 percent of college students, but hold nearly two-thirds of outstanding student loan debt.

According to the American Association of University Women, black women graduate with the most debt - $30,400, on average - compared to $22,000 for white women and $19,500 for white men.

Gender Poverty Gaps

The gender poverty gap widened over the past 50 years. In 1968, 10.8 percent of women aged 18-64 (6.1 million women) and 7.2 percent of men (3.7 million) in this age group lived below the poverty line. In 2016, 13.4 percent of women in this age group (13.4 million women) were living in poverty, compared to 9.7 percent of adult men (9.4 million men). The poverty threshold for a single person in 2016: $11,880 in annual income. Households led by single women with children had a poverty rate of 35.6 percent, more than twice the 17.3 percent rate for households led by single men with children, according to the National Women's Law Center.

Poverty is a particularly acute problem for women of color, affecting 21.4 percent of Black women, 18.7 percent of Latinas, and 22.8 percent of Native American women, compared to the national poverty rate for white men of 7.0 percent.

Transgender Economic Gaps

Transgender Americans experience poverty at double the rate of the general population, and transgender people of color experience even higher rates. The National Center for Transgender Equality has found that 43 percent of Latino, 41 percent of Native American, 40 percent of multiracial, and 38 percent of Black transgender respondents lived in poverty in 2015.

In 2015, the overall unemployment rate for transgender Americans stood at 15 percent, compared to 5 percent for the general population. The unemployment rate ran even higher for American Indian, Black, Latino, Middle Eastern, and multi-racial transgender Americans.

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Gender Economic Inequality - Inequality.org

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The global trend towards extreme wealth and income concentration has dramatically strengthened the economic and political power of those individuals - overwhelmingly male - at the top. In the United States and around the world, women continue to be underrepresented in high-level, highly paid positions and overrepresented in low-paying jobs.

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Gender disparities in engineering are a problem, CU Boulder researchers offer a solution

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Gender disparities in engineering are a problem, CU Boulder researchers offer a solution

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Female engineers are more likely to ask questions to gain information, and they tend to ask those questions of other women, according to a study by researchers from the University of Colorado. The findings reflect a disadvantage for women when it comes to professional growth in the male-dominated field of engineering, particularly with regards to promotions. The study offers practical steps to end gender disparities in the engineering field, including promoting a culture shift that encourages sharing expertise and implementing a peer sponsorship program. The partnership between the Leeds School of Business and the College of Engineering and Applied Science at CU Boulder is seen as a great way to solve complex problems facing society.

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Gender disparities in engineering are a problem, CU Boulder researchers offer a solution

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A CU Boulder paper shows professional growth by women engineers could be impacted by whom they seek for advice and answers, shedding light on gender disparities in the male-dominated field and offering solutions to close the gap between women and men in engineering.

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This article details the continuous fight that Iranian women have been going through as the government overlooks their human rights. This issue becomes even more critical when the American government is being part of this issue, inputting sanctions so that the laws against Iranian women are progressively broken, so this social group can prosper in the country. This intervenience can assist them by a great amount as they now have the support of the American government.

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WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. is imposing more sanctions on Iran, hitting people and firms accused of violating women's rights during nationwide anti-government protests over the treatment of young women and girls.

Included in the sanctions are two prison officials, several firms that manufacture equipment for Iranian law enforcement, the commander in chief of the Iranian army and others.

Nationwide protests first erupted over the Sept. 16 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran's morality police. She was accused of violating Iran's strict dress code for women by wearing her headscarf improperly. Those protests have continued for months.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that the U.S. government "remains deeply concerned that Iranian authorities continue to suppress dissent and peaceful protest, including through mass arrests, sham trials, hasty executions, the detention of journalists, and the use of sexual violence as a means of protest suppression."

Political Cartoons

Brian Nelson, Treasury's under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement that Iran's government "treats women as second-class citizens and attempts to suppress their voices by any means."

"We will continue to take action against the regime, which perpetuates abuse and violence against its own citizens - especially women and girls," Nelson said.

The latest sanctions were imposed in coordination with the European Union, United Kingdom and Australia, with the announcement purposely made on International Women's Day.

Among other things, the sanctions deny the people and firms access to any property or financial assets held in the U.S. and prevent U.S. companies and citizens from doing business with them.

The U.S. has taken several steps to isolate Iran from the global community, as protests have continued. In November, the U.S. announced that it's seeking to oust Iran from the U.N.'s premiere global body fighting for gender equality. Vice President Kamala Harris said Iran is "unfit" to serve on the commission and its presence "discredits the integrity" of its work.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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US Sanctions Iranian Officials Over Women's Right Abuses

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WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. is imposing more sanctions on Iran, hitting people and firms accused of violating women's rights during nationwide anti-government protests over the treatment of young women and girls. Included in the sanctions are two prison officials, several firms that manufacture equipment for Iranian law enforcement, the commander in chief of the Iranian army and others.

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Lack of Representation in Medical Research for Women.

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Lack of Representation in Medical Research for Women.

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There have historically been gender disparities in medical research that have excluded or underrepresented women. This has resulted in a lack of understanding about how certain diseases and treatments affect women differently than men. A study examined gender disparities among highly cited researchers (HCRs) in eight biomedical fields using data collected by Clarivate from 2014 to 2020. Out of 10,915 HCRs, 16% were women and 84% were men. The percentage of women as HCRs increased from 13.7% in 2014 to 16.7% in 2020, but women's representation varied greatly across fields, with the lowest percentage in clinical medicine. Women authors also had fewer multiple affiliations than men, indicating potential resource disparities. The study suggests that gender disparities remain in biomedical research authorship and popularity, and increasing the number of women in prestigious biomedical research positions may help mitigate these disparities.

In recent years, there have been efforts to address these disparities, including the 1993 National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act which mandated that women and minorities be included in clinical research studies. However, disparities still exist in terms of funding for research on women's health issues and the representation of women in clinical trials.
Furthermore, it is important to note that gender disparities in medical research are not limited to women. Other underrepresented groups, such as LGBTQ+ individuals and racial and ethnic minorities, also face disparities in medical research.

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Sex Inequalities in Medical Research: A Systematic Scoping Review of the Literature

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Background: Historically, medical studies have excluded female participants and research data have been collected from males and generalized to females. The gender gap in medical research, alongside overarching misogyny, results in real-life disadvantages…

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Inequality for women in sports is a pervasive issue that affects female athletes at all levels. Women often face unequal opportunities, lower pay, and fewer resources compared to their male counterparts. This is despite the fact that women's sports have made significant strides in recent years, with increased participation and visibility.

One major area of inequality is in pay. Female athletes in many sports earn significantly less than male athletes, even when they are performing at the same level or achieving the same success. This is true in both professional and amateur sports, with female athletes in many cases earning just a fraction of what male athletes earn.

Women also often face unequal opportunities in terms of resources, such as funding and sponsorship. This can make it difficult for female athletes to access the same level of training, equipment, and other resources that male athletes have. In addition, women's sports are often given less media coverage, making it harder for female athletes to gain visibility and recognition for their achievements.

These inequalities have a number of negative consequences, including limiting the potential for female athletes to succeed and excel in their sports. Addressing these inequalities will require a concerted effort from athletes, organizations, and society as a whole. This includes increased investment in women's sports, more media coverage, and greater support for female athletes at all levels.

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One of the most controversial topics that sports face is gender inequality. There is not just inequality in participation and opportunity, but also with pay. That comes mainly in professional sports, wherein in almost all cases, men make more money than women.

Male athletes in basketball, golf, soccer, baseball and tennis make anywhere from 15% to 100% more than female athletes. There are many reasons why that is. A popular argument is that women's sports do not nearly bring in the revenue that men's sports do. Using that logic, the question of, "So why should they get paid the same?" is often asked. The fact is that many arguments go beyond that one point that would suggest that sports are naturally unfair to women and that they are not granted the same opportunities that men are to even be able to earn the amount of money that men do.

In catching up with professional boxer Sarah Thomas, she was able to grasp and explain some of the concepts that may lead to the unfair pay gap in sports, specifically combat sports.

Sarah was asked to describe her opinion on the gender pay gap in sports.

She replied, "One of the bigger arguments I have heard regarding women in sports making less money than their male counterparts, is that fewer people watch women's sports, so the women are paid proportionately based on demand. Simply put, more people watch men's sports. This results in higher revenue. Therefore, there is more available money to give to male athletes. I do agree that this logic is fair. Sports are a business just like any other business. The companies pay salaries that are typically reflective of how much money the companies are bringing in. However, I think there should be a shift in focus. Female athletes should be marketed better. Successful marketing could lead to more revenue and higher-paying salaries."

This is an interesting point. Women's sports are not nearly as marketed as men's sports are. Sports Illustrated did a study on media coverage in sports. Women's sports account for 5.7% of media coverage by ESPN. As well as 80% of sports news programs and highlights that this study analyzed covered zero stories on women's sports. So perhaps if fans were more exposed to women's sports, that would draw a lot more interest thus significantly increasing revenue.

Sarah was also asked about where in sports has she seen progress and if that is a direction that the sport of boxing should go in as well.

She replied, "Mixed martial arts is a combat sport that has successfully closed the pay gap. I believe boxing organizations should take notes from the UFC. The UFC has successfully marketed its female athletes. Many main events are female fighters and some of the sport's biggest stars are women."

That is very true. Stars like Amanda Nunes and Ronda Rousey were some of the highest-paid athletes in the world, despite their gender. That could be something boxing could take as well. Using women in their main events more, or switching up marketing tactics to gain more exposure. It should not just be up to the media to expose these hard-working athletes, but there is so much that the sports itself can do to further expose their athletes.

The issue of gender inequality in sports is not going away anytime soon. However, there are very clear ways in how the gap can become smaller. Marketing is probably the best answer because it directly contradicts any argument of how men bring in more revenue so they should be paid more.
Sources

1. https://www.actionnews5.com/2021/02/01/best-life-female-athletes-speak-out-against-gender-gap/

2. https://www.si.com/sports-illustrated/2021/03/24/womens-sports-gender-study-discrepancy

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Gender Inequality in Sports - Athelo Group

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One of the most controversial topics that sports face is gender inequality. There is not just inequality in participation and opportunity, but also with pay.

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While this article does go over 7 causes of gender inequality in sports I find the most interesting to be about access in regards to sponsorships and support. Many other articles on the padlet have talked about gender inequality in the work place, especially in leadership positions, and this article talks about the almost self fulfilling effect that this causes in sports. Women have less initial access to sports and leadership positions which then makes the sports less competitive as well as underfunded. And a main issue is that this cycle only repeats.

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The sports industry is a different world for women than it is for men. Learn more about seven causes of gender inequality in sports, and how we can progress toward a more equal future.

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This article gives factual information to back up the fact that woman are not payed equally in the workforce in comparison to their male counterparts. Their latest figure shows woman earning 81% of what their male counterparts make in the same job situations. As a whole, woman make up  59 percent of the low-wage workforce, and men only 41%.

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Gender Inequality and Women in the US Labor Force

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Gender pay gaps persist around the world, including in the United States. According to public information collected by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the global gender pay gap ranges from 3 percent to 51 percent with a global average of 17 percent (ITUC 2009).

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Only 4.9% of partners, which is the top role in a firm, are female across the Venture Capital industry and 9% in Private Equity. With a lack of women in leadership roles, this can perpetuate the issue by not providing female the role models and vision to one day get these roles, and also because they wont have someone of their gender advocating for them within the office. The concerning part of this data is that 41% of business school students are women. This means they are entering the industry and trying to elevate to higher positions by getting this MBA credential, yet less than 10% of them finally reach partner.

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Hollywood is probably one of the more well-known industries that's widely seen as a tough place for women to ascend to the top. When Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director for The Hurt Locker in 2010, she became the first-ever female director to do so. (Chloé Zhao, who won in 2021 for Nomadland, was just the second.) It's notable not only that a female director won but that the pool of female directors was also so small. In fact, from 2007 to 2019, male directors outpaced female directors by a ratio of 20:1. That's a stunning stat.

Yet Hollywood is hardly an outlier when it comes to big-money industries in which women are underrepresented at the top. There's also been a dearth of female workers among the upper echelons of financial management and investment services. Consider this: According to the Deloitte Center for Financial Services, only six of the 107 largest financial institutions in the United States were run by female CEOs in 2019.

Key Takeaways

Where Are All the Women in Finance?

Studies paint a mixed picture for women in finance. Though the percentage of men and women entering the field is roughly equal, men typically rise to the top faster than women do. For example, among senior roles in venture capital (VC) firms, only 4.9% of the partners are female. The picture doesn't get much rosier when it comes to private equity (PE), in which fewer than 10% of senior roles are held by women. On the bright side, there is a greater focus on improving diversity, and the overall percentage of women joining VC, PE, and hedge fund firms is rising.

When it comes to gender equality, there are a few reasons why women may not be advancing to the top ranks as quickly as men are. One is a lack of role models. Without more women paving the way, those entering the field may find the path more challenging to navigate or may not even know there is one. Some women have voiced concern about work-life balance, while others simply cite the lack of manager support.

The Business School Impact

Based on business school enrollments, the number of people studying finance and business tends to skew towards men. A study by the Forte Foundation found that women accounted for 41% of all full-time MBA students in 2021-a record high that nonetheless illustrates that the field is historically dominated by men.

But the exact size of the gender gap varies among different business schools. For example, 46% of students in Harvard Business School's class of 2023 were women, while at Wharton, women accounted for 52% of the MBA students graduating in 2023. (No statistics were reported for gender-nonconforming applicants at either school).

The gender gap is more pronounced at the faculty level. Studies by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Yale University found that among the country's top business schools, only 16% of their faculty were women. There is also a publication gap, with women professors publishing about 17% fewer papers than men.

The lack of women in mentoring or leading academic roles, and the professional obstacles they face, could be relevant factors in the number of women seeking top boardroom positions.

Investing in Young Women

Women need mentors and role models to show that whatever roadblocks have been preventing them from achieving or even considering C-suite level positions can be overcome. And that means starting young.

Fortunately, there are a number of nonprofits and other women-focused organizations rising to that challenge. Girls Who Invest, a nonprofit founded by financial expert Seema Hingorani in 2015, has an ambitious mission to have women managing 30% of the world's capital by 2030.

Girls Who Invest's programs and offerings are designed to motivate, interest, and inspire young women to join the investment management and greater financial services field.

The mission is not new for Hingorani. Not only does she bring 25 years of investment experience to the nonprofit, but she's also been heavily involved in diversity initiatives. She's a member of Morgan Stanley's Diversity and Inclusion Senior Leaders Advisory Council and was previously the founder and chief investment officer of SevenStep Capital, an investment platform solely focused on women.

And she's not alone. Ellevest, founded by Wall Street veteran Sallie Krawcheck in 2014, aims to make financial products more accessible to women through investing tools, access to financial planners, education, and coaching. The company's motto says it all: "Ellevest was built by women, for women."

Business schools are also getting in on the action. Though it's not just focused on financial careers, Rutgers Business School's Center for Women in Business aims to "remove barriers, build community, and empower women with the confidence and skills necessary to succeed as business leaders."

The 13-member board is largely female and dedicated to growing opportunities for women through networking events, leadership workshops, female-focused mentoring opportunities, and more.

How Many Women Are There in Finance?

Overall, women outnumber men in the finance and banking industry, but the reverse is true at the most senior positions. At the beginning of 2021, women accounted for about 52% of the industry, according to research by McKinsey, but their representation fell at every step up the corporate ladder. In the C-suite, white women accounted for only 23% of executives, and women of color another 4%.

How Many Women Own Their Own Business?

There are 11.6 million women-owned businesses in the United States, according to the National Association of Women Business Owners. This accounts for about 39% of the country's privately owned firms, although they only account or about 8% of national employment.

How Big Is the Gender Pay Gap in Finance?

The finance industry has the second-largest pay gap in the United States economy, according to a study by Automatic Data Processing, Inc. Based on ADP's research, the average salary for women in the banking and finance sector was $27 per hour in 2019, compared to an hourly average wage of $40 for men. There is also a promotion gap, where men take about 6.6 years to be promoted compared to 7.4 years for women.

The Bottom Line

Things are starting to change. Men may still be dominating the C-suite, but as more women learn about the opportunities available in business and finance, find mentors to help guide them, and break down other barriers, expect to see that gender gap start to close.

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Why Are So Few Women in Finance? It's Complicated

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Hollywood is probably one of the more well-known industries that's widely seen as a tough place for women to ascend to the top. When Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director for The Hurt Locker in 2010, she became the first-ever female director to do so. (Chloé Zhao, who won in 2021 for Nomadland, was just the second.)

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Gender Disparities in the Kenyan Labour Market: Implications for Poverty Reduction

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Gender Disparities in the Kenyan Labour Market: Implications for Poverty Reduction

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This article is about the mainstreaming of a gender perspective into investment activities is necessarily a long-term process which involves the integration of gender issues in all national and sectoral policies and programmes.

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Published 2002-09-30

Abstract

Parts one and two of this paper deal with conceptual issues and focus on gender mainstreaming into investment activities for increased women's employment and poverty reduction. The central argument here is that the mainstreaming of a gender perspective into investment activities is necessarily a long-term process which involves the integration of gender issues in all national and sectoral policies and programmes. The key to gender mainstreaming is to make the process a collective responsibility. Some of the essential steps in this process are the production of gender disaggregated data, the establishment and strengthening of gender management systems, the commitment of senior management personnel to the goal of gender equality as a reflection of attitudinal and behaviour change at personal and institutional levels. The discussion in part three brings to the fore the issue of women's education and training. Available data show gender and regional disparities in education and training at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. These data indicate women's limited access to formal education and lower adult literacy rates which undermine their capacity to participate in the formal and informal labour market on an equal basis with men. Part four shows the link between women's education, employment and poverty reduction. The analysis of gender participation in different sectors of the economy revealed some important patterns and trends. These include the fact that female labour force participation in the modern sector has remained below 30% over the last several years compared to men who hold a disproportionately larger share of the modern sector jobs. The majority of women are employed in the education and informal sectors. Those who work in the agricultural sector are usually engaged as casuals. Women's overall lower level of education, limited skills, and access to productive, resources, heavy domestic workload, cultural attitudes and segregation of the labour market are some of the factors associated with their limited participation in the modern sector. Gender representation in the Kenyan civil service also shows gross under-representation of women in top management and policy-making positions. This gender disparity calls for an Affirmative and/or Positive Action to deal not only with increasing women's participation in public and private sector institutions at all levels but also address the twin issue of women's entitlements and cultural barriers which are at the root of their poverty and powerlessness. The low budgetary allocations to women's programmes also reflect lack of political will, improper targeting and non-involvement of women in priority setting.

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Published 2002-09-30 Parts one and two of this paper deal with conceptual issues and focus on gender mainstreaming into investment activities for increased women's employment and poverty reduction. The central argument here is that the mainstreaming of a gender perspective into investment activities is necessarily a long-term process which involves the integration of gender issues in all national and sectoral policies and programmes.

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Gender inequities in the online dissemination of scholars’ work

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Gender inequities in the online dissemination of scholars’ work

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Female scholars works are not given the same online visibility as male scholars works which further increases the wage gap between genders. When studies of the same value are treated as different because of something like gender a problematic bias arrises and leads to unfair competition when the main factor for assessing which work succeeds should be its value not the gender of the author.

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This article talks about how women are unable to learn in a safe space due to gender inequality in schools. Similar to the wage gap, there is a large gender gap in schools around the world, with over 30% of women in parts of Africa not in schools during their teen years.

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Gender Inequality in Education — P4H Global

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Understanding the connection between gender inequality and the lack of education opportunities can improve more sustainable development outcomes. Gender inequality cripples a nation’s economy at the expense of women. Policies and gender roles affect a nation’s education system by either not having a

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The gender disparities in agriculture are covered in this article. According to the FAO, the 20–30% yield gap between men and women is not caused by disparities in competence but rather by disparities in access to resources. In reality, women would be able to produce equivalent yields and increase the total agricultural output in underdeveloped nations by 2.5–4% if they had access to the same resources as men. By doing this, the number of malnourished individuals in the world (about 100–150 million) might be decreased by 12–17%. A lower percentage of educational institutions and the government provide agriculture extension services to them, and they also often have fewer years of formal or agricultural education. I found this article to be interesting and unique.

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Gender Inequalities in Agriculture | Apeel

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Gender Inequalities in Agriculture | Apeel

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This article focuses on the gender pay gap and inequality in the art world. Though women make up a majority of art school graduates, they are consistently underrepresented in the professional art scene. Their works are sold at a fraction of the price compared to their male counterparts and are shown less in museums/galleries. Studies have shown that people hold a gendered bias when it comes to valuing art.

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Jenny Saville's work has fetched some of the highest prices for art by a female artist. (Photo by ... [+]
Getty Images for Sotheby's

The art world has a massive gender pay gap. Works by female artists sell for a fraction of the prices received for comparable works by male artists.

Of the $196.6 billion spent at art auctions between 2008 and 2019, work produced by women accounted for only $4 billion, or around 2% of the total sales. Fortunately, the tide may be turning, and works by female artists are starting to gain more recognition and remuneration.

The gender gap is most striking for works reaping the highest prices, often referred to as blue chip art. For example, the highest price ever paid for a work sold at auction is $450 million for Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi." The comparable record for a female artist is less than 10% of that value, $44.4 million for Georgia O'Keeffe's "Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1." Since women didn't have as many opportunities to produce art in da Vinci's time, this may not be a valid comparison.

Turning to the present time, the record prices attained for works by living artists reveal little has changed. The highest price fetched for a work by a currently living artist is $91 million for Jeff Koons' "Rabbit." Jenny Saville's "Propped" holds the record for a living female artist receiving $12.4 million. Although a large sum, it's a mere 14% of the dollar amount received for Koons' work.

And the gender gap doesn't just apply to multimillion-dollar sales. Using a sample of 1.9 million auction transactions from 1970 to 2016 for 69,189 individual artists, researchers found that work by female artists sells for a whopping 42% less than work by male artists.

Some equally staggering statistics reveal the breadth of the gender gap in the art world:

An analysis of 18 major U.S. art museums found their collections are 87% male and 85% white.

When men sign a work of art, it increases in value compared to a painting that isn't signed. But when a woman signs a work of art, it decreases in value.

A bestselling art book, often used as a textbook for students, Gombrich's The Story of Art, mentions just one female artist in its 688 pages, according to Mary Ann Sieghart, host of a BBC documentary on the gender gap in art.

Even in the newest medium, NFTs, there's a huge gender gap. Only 5% of the money generated from NFTs goes to female artists.

Are Male Artists More Talented Than Female Artists?

With such a dramatic gender gap in art valuation, some may question whether male artists produce more appealing work than female artists. Researchers have concluded that no gender differences in art account for the gender gap in art prices.

To reach this conclusion, researchers presented a computer-generated artwork to study participants and asked them to rate how much they liked the painting. Half of the participants saw a female name listed as the artist below the work, and half saw a male name. In both cases, the painting was the same, computer-generated painting. Participants who had an interest in art and visited museums gave higher ratings when a male artist was listed. This result clearly indicates that the preference for male artwork is a function of gender bias and not differing talent between men and women.

In another study, the researchers showed participants works painted by men and women and asked them to guess the gender of the artist. The participants guessed correctly about 50% of the time, or what you would expect from random guessing. In other words, participants couldn't tell which paintings had been painted by men and which had been painted by women, indicating that works by men don't differ in any significant way from that by women.

In the research on gender and artwork, a few differences emerged between paintings by men and women. The most prominent of these differences was that women were less likely than men to paint cattle. But these differences did not account for the gender differences in the valuation of the art.

The fact that male collectors still dominate the traditional art market may also contribute to the preference for male artists. Researchers have found that men and women use different criteria when they value art. When deciding whether to purchase art, men tend to focus more on the artist and the artist's background, while women pay more attention to the artwork. Male collectors' emphasis on the artist's potential may make it harder for underrepresented artists to break into the art world.

An Increase In Interest in Female Artists

Despite the bias against female artists, there is a growing interest in acquiring art by women, and the prices of works by female artists are starting to reflect this trend.

According to a BBC documentary, secondary market prices for work by female artists are rising 29% faster than the prices for art by men (although they are starting from a lower base). In addition, the annual Art Basel and UBS survey of high-net-worth art collectors has found a steady increase in female artists' representation in collections over the last several years. Female artists now make up 40% of these collections, up from 39% in 2020, 37% in 2019, and 33% in 2018.

Nuria Madrenas, the founder of Tacit, an online gallery and art consultancy featuring exclusively female artists, has also seen an increased interest in diversity. Madrenas says, "I've seen an increase in interest for people to have their collections have a broader representation across the board. Not only through the integration of female artists but artists of color and artists in the LGBTQ+ community. I've had specific requests from clients for that equal representation when we're curating works for their spaces."

Madrenas is also optimistic that younger generations will help level the playing field for underrepresented artists. Often referred to as the Great Wealth Transfer, between now and 2030, an estimated $15.5 trillion of assets will be inherited by the next generations, according to a recent report. According to Madrenas, future generations of art collectors will likely not spend this money on the same pieces as their parents. She says, "We've seen that art tastes have shifted from the Boomer generation to Gen X and Millennials. Millennials want to collect from their peers. They want to collect from emerging artists. They're not necessarily as interested in blue chip art because of the disparities within that space. And they want a collection that's more diverse."

For now, works by female artists seem like a promising investment. They're available at a discounted price and are increasing in value more quickly than art by men. It's unclear whether this trend is related to collectors seizing an opportunity for increased returns or whether they are truly starting to appreciate work by women-either way, it should create more opportunities for female artists.

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Of the $196.6 billion spent between 2008 and 2019 at art auctions, work produced by women accounted for only $4 billion, or around 2% of the total sales. The good news is that the tide may be turning, and the works by female artists are gaining more recognition and remuneration.

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"Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?"

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"Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?"

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Simon Cavalieri- This article on gender disparities in STEM fields highlights the significant gender gap, where only 18 percent of computer science degrees in the US are earned by women, and women in science and engineering earn 33 percent less than their male peers. The article emphasizes the importance of addressing these issues to increase diversity and innovation in STEM fields, calling for measures such as increasing access to educational opportunities for women, promoting workplace diversity and inclusion, and raising awareness of gender biases in STEM fields.

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Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science? (Published 2013)

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Hint: The answer has more to do with “The Big Bang Theory” than with longstanding theories about men’s so-called natural aptitude.

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I chose this article because I was talking with my sister about the lack of representation of women in the engineering field. She agrees that it has improved dramatically and she has had a lot of opportunities from it, yet theres still a long way to go. This article shows how only 20% of engineering degrees are earned by women, and only around 12% engineers in the workforce are women. This article deos not go into the causes of this but it would be interesting to see the reasons behind this disparity.

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| By Dorothy Lozowski

Each year since 2001, the Society of Women Engineers (SWE; www.swe.org) has analyzed the research addressing issues related to women in engineering professions. Last month, SWE released a retrospective analysis [ 1] of what has been learned over the past 20 years. Roberta Rincon, associate director of Research at SWE, says that while women have made great strides in engineering over the last 50 years, gains have plateaued. "In the 70s and 80s, we saw a huge increase in women's representation among engineering degree earners. But in the last 20 years, it's remained relatively stable."

And according to the U.S. Census Bureau "women are still vastly underrepresented in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce." It reported that while women have made gains since the 70s, and they currently account for nearly half of the workforce, women account for only 27% of STEM jobs [ 2]. Among the STEM professions, the percentage of women in engineering is the lowest, at about 15%. The numbers are not too different in Canada, where Engineers Canada ( www.engineerscanada.ca) reported that about 13% of licensed engineers in 2017 were women.

Workplace retention

Much of the attention given to the gender gap in engineering has focused on attracting women to the profession, particularly through introducing them to science and math early in academic programs. However, once STEM degrees are earned, women are either leaving their jobs, or not entering the workforce. The SWE research shows that about 20% of engineering degrees are earned by women, but the number of female engineers in the workforce is only on the order of 13-14%. The percentages of degrees earned varies by discipline, and the numbers have changed little in the past 20 years. For example, women earned about 37% of bachelor's degrees in chemical engineering in 2002 and about 37.7% in 2020. A look at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS; www.bls.gov), however, shows that only 13% of chemical engineers employed in 2021 were women.

Research shows that one of the biggest reasons that women leave the engineering profession is the workplace culture. Gender disparity in pay and promotions leads women to feel less valued in the workplace. The sense of not fitting in or belonging in the male-dominated engineering field can be felt as early as a job interview. The SWE report notes that in one study, women were "turned off" by references to a fraternity-like atmosphere during the interview process.

According to McKinsey & Company, companies want to increase the number of women working in technical roles [ 3]. It found that companies with more gender diversity on their executive teams significantly outperformed those with less diverse representation, giving a strong business case for gender diversity [ 4]. In order to retain more women, changes in workplace culture are needed. Positive changes would include improving the pay and promotion disparity between the genders. Other changes to the workplace culture are more complex, and can perhaps begin with awareness and open communication.■
Dorothy Lozowski, Editorial Director

1. Meiksins, P. and Layne, P., Analyzing 20 Years of Social Science Literature, SWE Magazine State of Women in Engineering edition, https://magazine.swe.org/lit-review-22
2. Martinez, A. and Christnacht, C., Women are Nearly Half of U.S. Workforce, but Only 27% of STEM Workers, January 26, 2021, www.census.gov
3. McKinsey & Company, Repairing the broken rung on the career ladder for women in technical roles, March 1, 2022, www.mckinsey.com
4. McKinsey & Company, Diversity wins: How inclusion matters, May 19, 2020, www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion

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The gender gap in engineering - Chemical Engineering

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By Dorothy Lozowski Each year since 2001, the Society of Women Engineers (SWE; www.swe.org) has analyzed the research addressing issues related to women in engineering professions. Last month, SWE released a retrospective analysis [ 1] of what has been learned over the past 20 years.

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Understanding Gender Bias in U.S. Military Integration

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Understanding Gender Bias in U.S. Military Integration

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Women have progressively been more accepted in the army over the years and has become better. However, women still face stereotypes about who they are and how capably they perform their duties. These attitudes and beliefs threaten the integrity of the Armed Forces as well as their mission. 70% of women stated in a women only survey that they could have used more training in a warrior type task.

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Download PDF

Captain Elizabeth M. Trobaugh, USAR, graduated from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in 2016.

Women have been part of the U.S. military and its campaigns since the American Revolution. With the advent of the Women's Army Corps in 1943, women could officially enlist for military service. During this time, female enlistees faced unofficial slander campaigns that sharply reversed enlistment. Over the last 70 years, women's roles in the Army have morphed as fast as-or in some cases faster-than society has changed. Many of these changes have been good. For instance, many women have succeeded and excelled in newly accessible jobs, specialties, and skills. However, women still face stereotypes about who they are and how capably they perform their duties. These attitudes and beliefs threaten the integrity of the Armed Forces as well as their mission.

Army team at Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center wins Commandant's Cup relay race at Presidio's Price Fitness Center Field, Monterey, California, June 15, 2016 (U.S. Army/Steven L. Shepard)

The war on terror and the U.S. military's use of counterinsurgency ushered in a new era of warfighting: there are no frontlines, and everyone must be prepared to fight. Regardless of whether society thinks women should be in combat, the reality is they already have been in the fight. Yet the current combat arms culture has been slow to adjust as evidenced by the ongoing commentary about what women can and cannot do in the military. As Marine Corps Commandant General Robert B. Neller noted in his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, we can no longer go to war without women.1

Therefore, as former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced in 2015, women will be (and subsequently have been) integrated into previously closed combat jobs and training. To promote the former Secretary's proposal, there also needs to be a change of culture within the Army (the Service in which my own experiences are rooted), as well as in the broader military, to ensure the success of women entering combat arms. Policymakers often do not notice adverse attitudes toward women serving in combat arms capacities. Although leaders may be aware of sexism when it takes the form of blatant comments, they may be less aware of more subtle forms of sexism that manifest as reduced training standards for women. Whichever the case, women may have to go above and beyond the standard to prove themselves and may routinely have their work overlooked until there is an immediate benefit. These commonplace events are indications of pervasive stereotypes that prevent women from doing their jobs effectively and accomplishing the mission.

Current Research

In 2015, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Analysis Center published its Gender Integration Study. 2 The research team conducting the study looked to the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy and to the senior noncommissioned officer corps to help identify risks that may come with female integration into combat arms. Furthermore, the research team conducted a feasibility assessment to evaluate the risks associated with integrating women into previously closed military occupational specialties (MOSs). The research team contacted 4 Brigade Combat Teams and interviewed 35 command teams for the assessment. Additionally, the study engaged with senior Army leaders at high levels for additional guidance and feedback. The results from the study stated:

The Army should proceed with integrating women into previously closed combat arms MOS/units. To successfully integrate, the Army must address the following barriers: inconsistent enforcement of existing standards and perceptions of double standards; incidents of unprofessional behavior and indiscipline; fear of sexual harassment and assault; cultural stereotypes; and ignorance of current Army policy.3

The data presented in this article underscore much of what was explored in the Gender Integration Survey. Similar conclusions were extrapolated from many of the same concerns presented from research participants. Male Soldiers are afraid of lowered physical standards, increased sexual assault and harassment, reduced readiness, and destruction of the masculine culture of brotherhood. However, much of what is discussed here goes beyond the thoughts and attitudes about women integrating into jobs in previously closed MOSs. This article explores women's thoughts about their own abilities, Soldiers' experiences with training women to perform physically demanding tasks compared with what they thought women could achieve, and how men think they would react to the presence of women.

Investigating Gender Bias

Gender stereotypes and institutional bias within the military come as no surprise to anyone, least of all women, in the military. However, how to pinpoint these incidences as they occur and to formulate solutions seems to befuddle leaders at all levels. Researchers have distinguished between two forms of sexism: hostile and benevolent.4 Whereas hostile sexism is more obviously negative, benevolent sexism is often disguised as positive, portraying women as needing and deserving greater care and protection. Both forms deem women as less capable and competent, justifying lower expectations of them and limiting their roles. These beliefs are apparent in a variety of male-dominated professions, including the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professions as well as the military.5

Drawing from my own experiences in the Army, I devised an online survey as part of an independent study for Soldiers to evaluate the areas where gender biases may prevent women from succeeding in Army culture. This survey aimed to assess where stereotypes may exist within Army training environments as well as attitudes toward female integration into previously closed jobs and schools. Army culture may be a permissive environment for attitudes that women do not belong. For this reason, the survey also aimed to address some of the institutional gender biases plaguing the Army and hopefully to inform the broader military community of such biases. Out of these findings come proposed policy recommendations to course-correct as the joint force begins to "gender integrate" all jobs within the Services.

The online survey asked female respondents about their training in warrior-type tasks. Warrior-type training, for our purposes, is defined in the survey as having the skills required to be successful on the battlefield or frontlines-for example, basic rifle marksmanship or patrolling. The online survey asked women across all officer and enlisted ranks-and across all MOSs available to women in 2015-about the quality of training received, if they struggled, why they might have struggled, if they received additional help, and if they would like to join combat arms jobs or training. The point was to identify each woman's view of her own abilities in this crucial area and to determine if she felt supported in training. Next, both male and female Soldiers were asked if they had trained women in the Army. The survey also asked respondents to think of one instance of training women in a warrior task. Furthermore, it looked at warrior-type training among men and women in order to establish whether women were or are receiving the same training and whether they were held to the same standards as male Soldiers. The survey asked respondents if they had trained women in a warrior-type task, what the quality of that training was, and, ultimately, what may have prevented women from doing better. The goal of this section was to identify attitudes toward women and their abilities in training among both male and female Soldiers, across military ranks, and across military skills.

The online survey then sought to evaluate the attitudes about women integrating into combat arms and combat arms training. It posed questions about the difficulty of such warrior tasks and the ability to perform them. These sections also asked respondents to evaluate their beliefs and attitudes about the biggest effect of integrating women into combat arms. The data collected in this section can easily be compared to data about how women were actually trained and performed during that training.

The survey also sought to discover whether women were failing en masse in warrior-type skills training. If anecdotal evidence showed that women were not failing to meet the standard, why are gender-based stereotypes so pervasive when it comes to female integration? If women were failing en masse, what was the root cause? Two outcomes could be extrapolated from questions about culture. First, trainers either have been allowing women to pass at a lower standard by turning a blind eye to their failures or were refusing to push women to retrain if they failed (I refer to this as the "if she fails, therefore she can't" syndrome). The second conclusion is its reverse. In this scenario, women were held to a harsher standard as a means to prove their capability above and beyond male standards.

Georgia Army National Guard's 648 th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade Soldier participates in Best Warrior Competition's obstacle course event, Fort Stewart, March 9, 2017 (U.S. Army/James Braswell)

Confirming the Bias

In the first section of the survey (women only), 70 percent of respondents stated that they received adequate training in warrior-type tasks in basic training or officer basic. Yet 70 percent of respondents also stated they could have used additional training in a warrior-type task. Discouragingly, nearly 53 percent responded "no" when asked if their chain of command would support additional training if they (the respondents) needed more training. The three answers most frequently cited for why female respondents may have failed a warrior-type task were, in order, "need of additional training or familiarization," "never failed or anticipated failing," and "lack of time and/or resources to properly train to meet the standards."

The survey showed female Soldiers had a generally positive view of their abilities. They were willing to and capable of completing the warrior-type tasks. Moreover, respondents noted they were not perfect and would have liked more training in some areas, but their chains of command would not support additional training. Not unsurprisingly, many women are still eager to prove themselves in combat arms jobs and training, but more often than not, they would like more training before even trying to enter combat arms.

The next section of the survey asked both male and female respondents if they had trained women in a warrior-type task. Results indicated that 72 percent of those who trained women in warrior tasks reported that they trained women the same as they trained men. Furthermore, nearly 72 percent of respondents reported that the women they trained met the standard. The data are clear in showing that most female trainees were trained about the same as their male counterparts. Yet both male and female respondents cited lack of familiarization with the task as the most prevalent deficiency that prevented female trainees from doing better. Male respondents indicated a lack of physical strength as the second most prevalent deficiency, while female respondents indicated a lack of motivation.

The last section of the survey asked both men and women what they thought about women integrating into combat arms jobs and training. This section aimed to evaluate the culture surrounding integrating women into previously closed sectors. Contrary to previous sections in the survey, wherein a lack of familiarization with the task was the most cited challenge, physical strength was the highest ranked challenge for female Soldiers who may integrate into combat arms jobs, and training was cited among men, enlisted Soldiers, combat arms, and noncombat arms jobs. A dichotomy arose in the survey: despite respondents having experienced women in training pass the standard in warrior-type tasks, they thought women were less physically capable of passing warrior-type tasks. Unlike their counterparts, however, female (regardless of rank) and male officers ranked "attitudes toward women in training" as the biggest obstacle to female integration. The officers surveyed support female integration, with 86 percent of officer respondents believing women were capable of meeting standards. However, among male officers, enlisted, and across all job demographics, negative effects of female integration were ranked highest in a list of possible results. "Logistical problems" were ranked the highest among those demographics, while female respondents ranked "increased readiness due to increased training of force" as the highest effect of integrating women into all jobs.

Even though respondents experienced women meeting the standards in their training, the section regarding thoughts and attitudes toward gender integration showed that 40 percent of male respondents believed standards would change to accommodate women. This response to integration, regardless of experience, suggests that women were not being fully trained as well as men or that there was bias among respondents about the abilities of women. Respondents may not have conducted training to standard, and they might have allowed women to "pass" even when they had not actually done so. Perhaps retraining was cumbersome, or they had to meet a quota for unit readiness.

Respondents experienced women in training passing the standard, and they indicated that "lack of familiarization" prevented them from doing better. Yet the idea of integrating women into combat arms and jobs seemed to evoke negativity about female ability. Male respondents cited "lack of physical strength" as the biggest obstacle to women entering combat arms. Combat arms jobs and training are a compilation of warrior tasks performed in succession. The endurance required may account for why respondents thought women would perform at a lower standard. However, with successful female integration into artillery, the inauguration of women into the infantry, as well as women passing Ranger training, women are demonstrating they can and will succeed. Additionally, it is unfair to state the standard would be lowered for women wanting to join the infantry if women have not been afforded the same training as men. As this survey demonstrates, women may not be receiving the same training.

Respondent Comments

To get a better sense of opinions, the survey asked respondents to provide comments or feedback. Respondents who had trained women were asked to provide comments on several questions, though not all questions. For instance, one question was, "During this same event, what were the female trainees' most significant deficiencies that might have prevented them from doing well in training?" Some responses included:

"Lack of perseverance while under duress."

"Many MOS in the Army seem to have a lower standard for women. It's almost as though they don't expect as much of them because they feel it's a waste of time. It is absolutely not true and saddens me thinking of all the lost potential."

"Stereotype that they 'couldn't do it' led to them being trained to a lesser standard."

Written responses varied concerning thoughts and feelings about integrating women. When asked, "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: If the Army decides to integrate females into combat arms and combat arms-related training, the standards will be lowered to accommodate females," some responses included:

"There are two standards. The Army standard, and the female standard. Until the female standard is removed, females will never be equal to males."

"Standards aren't the problem. [There are] plenty of strong women, the problem lies within the change in men around women. The biological and unpreventable reactions between males and females of the same species [do] not equate to a good cohesive unit. If you want to make a combat unit ineffective, assign women to it."

"Political demands will result in a degradation of standards to meet quotas and to prevent fallout from the imminent failure of a high majority of females with the current male infantry standards."

Another question was, "If the Army decides to integrate females into combat arms and combat arms-related training, do you think that those females who succeed in meeting standards will have (mark all that apply) 1. Received special treatment; 2. Met standard; 3. Been allowed to pass at a lower standard?" One person commented:

Physiologically, women are composed differently than men and many cannot perform the same physical tasks as men. It is apparent even with the APFT [Army Physical Fitness Test] grading scale where the men and women scoring scales drastically differ. Since this is such a big push by the Army to integrate women into combat arms, they will do whatever [is ] necessary to integrate as rapidly as the public wants them to regardless of the level a woman is at in comparison to her male counterparts within combat arms branches.

Two contrasting responses to the question, "Do you think that females are capable of meeting standards in combat arms units and training?" are telling:

"Can't speak for entirety of combat arms, but if you're asking if I could see a female in the ranks with the pipe swinging meat eaters of a Ranger Battalion, hell no. Can't see them carrying around a mortar tube living the gruntiest [sic] dirtiest life in the military possible either. Physically capable is indifferent to me. I have literally watched a group of professionals completely change for the worse, become petty and show offish because 1 attractive female was attached to the platoon. If you want to make combat unit ineffective, assign some women to it."

"I believe individual women certainly are [capable of meeting standards]. Once again, so long as we limit accessions to those individual women, the force should be okay. I am also far from confident we have the political and organizational will to pre-emptively weed out those [who] won't [meet standards]."

The common thread throughout these comments is an acknowledgment by Soldiers that there is an institutional difference created in the APFT. Furthermore, the differences in the test for men and women lend themselves to Soldiers believing that women are incapable even when they witnessed women meeting the standard in training. Many other comments expanded on the gender-based bias with sweeping generalizations about physical ability. Women were viewed by respondents as weaker either because their institutional standards are so much lower or because they perceive women to be physically weaker. That leads to an important question: If women pass, will male Soldiers in the military accept that women met or exceeded the same standard as men, or will women be forever viewed as having been accommodated in order to meet some political agenda? These comments also highlight male Soldiers' beliefs that they will react inappropriately around women. The very presence of women seems to elicit the belief that men themselves will become foolish, while readiness and cohesion suffer. The professionalism of men remains a concern as women integrate into these previously closed jobs.

Furthermore, other comments spoke to the culture of the combat arms being too hostile to women or demonstrated a respondent's hostility. One person commented:

As far as combat arms units go, there would be an extremely negative effect within units which are traditionally male. The things that go on there, the bonds, would be damaged. SHARPs [the Army's Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention program] stuff would be through the roof. I would almost rather die before changing my demeanor within my unit. Standards need to be met and maintained, but we should all strive to exceed the standard.

This comment, and others like it, reveal deep-seated attitudes that need to change within military culture to allow women to serve free of bias and stereotypes. Because the mission requires women to be on the battlefield, new policies could be implemented to help ease the transition of women into combat arms and break down gender-based stereotypes in order to improve readiness. One positive step Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley already implemented subsequent to the first three women passing Ranger training was to mask the names and number of women entering.6 However, more can be done to bolster an environment primed for fair gender integration.

Soldier qualifies with M4 rifle during New York Army National Guard Best Warrior Competition at Camp Smith Training Site, March 30, 2017 (U.S. Army National Guard/Harley Jelis)

Practical Policies

The Gender Integration Study provides a complex, detailed assessment of issues and attitudes facing the Army as it moves to gender-integrate the force completely. Yet many of the policy recommendations going forward are lacking in substance and practical application. Leaders at the highest levels can publish policy and issue statements in an attempt to mitigate many of the issues discussed in the study. However, without follow-through and practical guidance for all levels down to the platoon or development of a way to measure effectiveness, the policies will continue to fall flat. Stating that commands must create an equal opportunity environment and prevent sexual harassment and assault is not enough. Leaders at all levels must have practical tools to encourage a climate of tolerance while maintaining readiness.

U.S. Army Field Manual (FM) 7-22, Army Physical Readiness Training, can be improved. The easiest way is to include pictures of women demonstrating physical tasks.7 There are currently no images of women in FM 7-22 beyond how to measure a woman's body for her body mass index. Young Soldiers who need to seek guidance in the regulation regarding physical fitness will see pictures of both sexes completing tasks. Furthermore, showing women completing tasks with their male counterparts will make the institutional statement that women are capable.

The physical fitness manual should again read, as it did in 1980, "Just because women are different does not mean they are incapable of achieving satisfactory levels of performance."8 This sentence instills the belief that women are capable and are expected to perform alongside their male counterparts. The importance of this statement will reverberate through not only combat arms but also all training as well. This form of legitimacy puts all female Soldiers on notice that they are expected to meet required standards. These standards apply whether trainers or the women themselves believe they are capable of meeting such standards. The Army as a whole would benefit from the institution of the Service and its leadership putting both in writing and in pictures its confidence in its female Soldiers.

Additionally, in Army Regulation 600-20, Command Policy, the Department of the Army outlines in chapter 6, paragraph 1, that "Commanders are responsible for sustaining a positive EO [Equal Opportunity] climate within their units . . . Create and sustain effective units by eliminating discriminatory behaviors or practices that undermine teamwork, mutual respect, loyalty, and shared sacrifice of the men and women of America's Army."9 The rest of the chapter goes on to discuss in vague and legalistic terms an equal opportunity command climate. This chapter does little to influence the culture inside the Army or protect unfair treatment of minorities, including women.

The 1949 Army Pamphlet 21-41, Personal Conduct for the Soldier, did more for equal opportunity than the current regulation. It brought good order and conduct to the force. It raised the expectation that the Soldier was going to do what was right because "what was right" was in a manual in the Soldier's pocket as an inspectable item. The pamphlet outlined conduct on and off duty, on and off post. The regulation stated, "Beware of the man who speaks disrespectfully of women. Your sister or one of your friends may be his next victim," and stated of female Servicemembers, "In the Army you will frequently see members of the Women's Army Corps. Accord them the same respect and courtesies you extend male(s). . . . They are doing a fine job and have established an excellent record in the Army."10 Something similar could be outlined, such as:

Beware of the Soldier who speaks disrespectfully of others. He or she is not to be trusted. Your friends or family may be his or her next victim. You will often see members of the Army who are different from you. You are a professional and will treat all officers and noncommissioned officers with the respect due to them and their rank, regardless of how you feel about them.

The pamphlet could outline how to treat members of the opposite sex in subsequent chapters in order to further illustrate the importance of respect.

Lastly, the changing character of war reinforces the high level of physical readiness Servicemembers must achieve. Anyone, anywhere, and at any time can be engaged by the enemy regardless of gender, MOS, or age. It is imperative to maintain high physical standards. Because the current standard is so low for women, many female Soldiers are often discounted as weaker, even when they can meet the same standard as men. Female Soldiers between the ages of 17 and 21 are required to do 19 push-ups and run 2 miles in 18:54 to pass, while male Soldiers in the same age group are asked to do 42 push-ups and run 2 miles in 15:54. There is no difference for sit-ups. The differences noted above serve as the basis for institutional bias. Since the Army policy requires women to do only fewer than half the push-ups males are required to do, the message conveys that women are half as capable as men.

It would benefit the Army to close or eliminate the gap altogether. The low standard for push-ups and run time for 17- to 21-year-old women is not only insulting, but it also serves to reinforce that women are not as capable as their male counterparts. Many women may find it difficult to run faster or do more push-ups, but they should be brought up to a higher standard because war demands it. Implementing a single standard for all 17- to 21-year-olds should adequately test the baseline for a passing rate no matter the gender, such as 16:30 for 2 miles, 30 push-ups, and 53 sit-ups.

Since these examples lower the standard for men, a fear may develop among Soldiers that a broad standard may hurt the combat arms skills where physical fitness is paramount to the job. Therefore, it would be better not only to have one standard for a baseline (not based on gender), but also to apply minimally acceptable standards for each job skill, as Army leaders have discussed in recent years.11 For instance, if a score of 60 percent in each event on the APFT is passing, then a Soldier must meet an 85 percent requirement to stay within combat arms jobs, a 75 percent requirement to stay in combat support, and a 70 percent pass rate within Service support. Thus, the 60 percent would be maintained for Soldiers with professional jobs, such as lawyers, doctors, and chaplains.

Soldier learns survival skills during Exercise Kowari, designed to enhance U.S, Australian, and Chinese friendship and trust through trilateral cooperation in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, Northern Territory, Australia, August 30, 2016 (U.S. Marine Corps/Osvaldo L. Ortega III)

A benefit to restructuring the APFT is that it gender neutralizes the standard. Everyone must pass the same APFT to enter the Army, but their jobs will demand more of them with job-specific minimally acceptable standards. This model takes "male" and "female" out of the standard and replaces it with "Soldier" in combat arms, "Soldier" in combat support, and "Soldier" in service support. It incentivizes staying fit because Soldiers who love their jobs will work to maintain their job-specific standards out of fear they could be involuntarily reclassified to another job for poor physical performance. Furthermore, this kind of APFT standard emphasizes quality at a time when the Army must sacrifice quantity. Each job classification demands an appropriate level of fitness and will ensure the best Soldiers remain in the correct jobs.

A job skill differentiating standard might unintentionally create hierarchy among combat arms, combat support, and service support. Promotions might be affected to favor combat arms Soldiers. The bias might arise that since combat arms Soldiers would have to do more physically, they must be better Soldiers. An answer to this unintended consequence is to place more emphasis on education in the combat support and service support jobs. These jobs require organizational skills, technical expertise, and administrative management ability. The Army should invest in the Soldiers who perform these essential functions that require more brainpower than physical ability. Providing education would be a way to afford service support and combat support Soldiers the same promotion opportunities as their combat arms counterparts.

Instead of arguing whether we should integrate women into the force, the better question would be to ask how we can better prepare all Soldiers for upcoming global strategic challenges. The changing face of battle includes the fact that women are part of the success equation. If war is going to include winning hearts and minds, that will include the hearts and minds of women. Development is severely hindered when women are not included. Therefore, women in the military will continue to be on the battlefield. As such, they should be as battlefield-ready as their male counterparts. Furthermore, we should expect more of our male and female Soldiers, not less. The fact that women are different from men does not make them incapable of meeting satisfactory levels of fitness. Female Soldiers have to be able to pull the trigger, traverse the battlefield, and deal with casualties no differently from their male counterparts. In addition, the Army can expect its male Soldiers to act with decency and respect toward their fellow Soldiers, regardless of gender. JFQ

Notes

1 U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, "Testimony of U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Robert B. Neller," March 14, 2017.

2 Lynette Arnhart et al., Gender Integration Study (Fort Leavenworth, KS:U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Analysis Center, April 21, 2015).

4 Peter Glick and Susan T. Fiske, "The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating Hostile and Benevolent Sexism," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70, no. 3 (March 1996), 491-512.

5 Ernesto Reuben, Paola Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales, "How Stereotypes Impair Women's Careers in Science," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 12 (January 2014), 4403-4408.

6 Michelle Tan, "First Official Integrated Ranger School Underway, Army Won't Talk About the Women," Army Times, November 3, 2015.

7 U.S. Army Field Manual (FM) 7-22, Army Physical Readiness Training (Washington, DC: Headquarters Department of the Army, October 26, 2012).

8 U.S. Army FM 21-20, Physical Fitness Training (Washington, DC: Headquarters Department of the Army, 1980).

9 U.S. Army Regulation 600-20, Army Command Policy (Washington, DC: Headquarters Department of the Army, 2014), chapter 6, paragraph 1.

10 U.S. Army Pamphlet 21-41, Personal Conduct for the Soldier (Washington, DC: Headquarters Department of the Army, 1949).

11 Kevin Lilly and Michelle Tan, "Army's New Fitness Tests: New Details Emerge from Leadership," Army Times, February 18, 2016.

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industrial college of the armed forces publications

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Women, Regardless: Understanding Gender Bias in U.S. Military Integration

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Download PDF Captain Elizabeth M. Trobaugh, USAR, graduated from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in 2016. Women have been part of the U.S. military and its campaigns since the American Revolution. With the advent of the Women's Army Corps in 1943, women could officially enlist for military service.

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In recent decades, change has slowed and on some indicators stalled entirely.

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Progress towards Gender Equality has stalled

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Progress towards Gender Equality has stalled

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The article discusses a study that explores the relationship between physical exercise and brain health in older adults. The researchers tracked the exercise routines of a group of healthy, older adults over the course of six months, and found that those who engaged in moderate to high-intensity exercise had significantly increased gray matter volume in regions of the brain associated with memory and executive function. The study also found that these increases in brain volume were linked to improvements in cognitive function, suggesting that regular exercise may help maintain brain health in older adults.

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Progress toward gender equality in the United States has slowed or stalled | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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We examine change in multiple indicators of gender inequality for the period of 1970
to 2018. The percentage of women (age 25 to 54) who are employ…

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This article discusses the gender disparity in the news industry in Australia. Australia, a nation which many claim to be extremely progressive, continues to have a very high level of gender discrimination in the newsroom. The news industry is one of the most crucial industries for equal gender representation because it is displayed to the public on the daily. More women in the newsroom will allow for more motivation for the younger generation.

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Key Points

Research has found women account for just 30 per cent of quoted sources in news stories.

About 59 per cent of bylines are men's.

In sport, politics and finance reporting, there are even less women.

The Women in Media Gender Scorecard found women accounted for just 30 per cent of quoted sources and 34 per cent of quoted experts in news stories.

While efforts to achieve gender parity among media organisations has improved, with a 10 per cent upswing in byline share towards women since 2016, male voices are still prioritised.

'Too long to wait'

This is despite last year's census data revealing for the first time that more than 50 per cent of Australian residents were born overseas or had an immigrant parent.

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Women in media face inequality as men dominate newsrooms

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Key Points Research has found women account for just 30 per cent of quoted sources in news stories. About 59 per cent of bylines are men's. In sport, politics and finance reporting, there are even less women.

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How technology can help close Nigeria's gender gap

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How technology can help close Nigeria's gender gap

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This article discusses how there is a large gender imbalance in the field of information and communication technology and discusses the importance of including women in the field. The article presents different options for how women can be included in the field, such as internships to get women started in jobs and business accelerators designated for giving women a platform to start their own business.

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Exposing the issue of gender disparity in Hollywood, the article highlights the underrepresentation of women both in front of and behind the camera. While women make up half of the US population, they are significantly underrepresented in key roles in the film industry, including as lead actors, directors, and writers. Problems included the tendency to view women's stories as less profitable and the impact of gender bias in the hiring process. The article also notes the lack of progress in recent years in increasing gender diversity in Hollywood, despite increased attention to the issue. Contrastingly, it ends with success stories, such as that of Marsai Martin, an actor who at 14 founded "Genius Productions".

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Twentieth Century Fox released Hidden Figures in 2016. The movie, set in the 1950s, was an ode to three female African American NASA mathematicians who played critical roles to help launch astronaut John Glenn to orbit in an era rife with racial and gender discrimination in the workplace. Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monáe, and Octavia Spencer did absolute justice to their roles, showing how much the female mind has brought to the table.

We don't live in that world anymore, of course. The movement for gender inclusion has come a long way with women occupying strategic positions of authority across different industries. But you get a sense that there's still a lot to be done. This problem persists in Hollywood too, especially with roles and responsibilities behind the camera and generally on the business side of the industry.

"Women are more than just pretty faces and nice bodies. As wonderful as we can be on the screen, we can be even more behind the scenes," says Sayo-a Japanese A-list model - who's working on various initiatives to push women's inclusion in tech and other areas of endeavor. "The world population is about 49 per cent female. If we're to interpret this loosely, stereotyping women as only visually beneficial and denying them opportunities in business and administration means you're literally losing out on 50 per cent of global brain power."

Sayo has been modeling for over a decade and is globally known in the swimsuit industry, appearing on magazine covers like Harper's Bazaar and L'Officiel amongst others. Sayo's insistence on women's ability to break the mold has led her to broaden her horizon over the years, she has invested and been involved with different businesses and venture capital companies across industries, ranging from tech to fashion and to crypto. In her words, "I think women immediately have a challenge with showing themselves as leaders in tech and finance because the majority of the time it has been men who are occupying this area mostly. So, showing and proving my credibility has been challenging and important to demonstrate perspective and ultimately my capability as a woman in these spaces."

The gender bias in opportunities and income

The bias against women in media and entertainment might not look as obvious when it comes to on-screen opportunities. But if you were to take a tour of the crew lineup of most television and film projects, the dearth becomes more obvious. Simply put, women in entertainment are shortchanged for jobs as actors, crew members, and even in office roles and remuneration.

In a publication by Forbes, it was revealed that the top-10 highest paid actresses of 2018 made 30 cents for every dollar raked in by their male counterparts. This translated to a combined $186 million for the highest paid actresses and $748.5 million for the highest paid actors. An especially cringe-worthy example of this gender pay gap was seen in the remuneration for the 2017 movie, All the Money in the World. Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams both had approximately equal screen time, but Wahlberg reportedly received $5 million while Williams reportedly got $625,000. After Kevin Spacey's sexual assault scandal caused 22 scenes to be reshot, Wahlberg again landed an additional $1.5 million, and Williams only pocketed $1000.

Even more alarming is the fact that by 2018, female representation in entertainment and media was on the uptrend, which gives you an idea of how bad things were prior to that time.

Female representation behind the scenes, while on an upward trend, hasn't been wonderful either. Between 2008 and 2022, there have been 325 nominations for directors at major award events-only 8.9 percent of those nominations were given to female directors. In a study sponsored by San Diego State University focusing on the top 250 highest-grossing movies of 2021 in the U.S., only 25 per cent of behind-the-scenes roles were filled by women. The percentage of female editors was 22 percent and was even less at 17 per cent each for directors and writers. The number of female cinematographers was an abysmal six out of every 100. When it comes to C-suite positions in media and entertainment, only 27 per cent are held by women.

Amy Baer, former head of CBS Films, who left in 2011, responsible for overseeing My Best Friend's Wedding and Moneyball struggled to raise the few million dollars it took to start her own boutique firm - Gidden Media - at the time.

Talking to Variety she said, "I wasn't being presented the same kinds of opportunities as men that I knew who had very similar circumstances and were suddenly being handed massive deals," Baer recalls. "It wasn't because I didn't want to raise the money. I knew how to write a business plan. I had dozens of meetings and ended up raising the funds from a person who had a high net worth who was willing, by virtue of a personal relationship, to invest in me. But you can't rely on that."

Sayo isn't surprised by all the data pointing to the underrepresentation and underappreciation of women in entertainment and the wider media industry. "This has been my normal for a very long time. We've had to be aggressive to make any sort of headway in our careers. Even in my primary industry, women make up over 70 per cent of the fashion industry's workforce, but only have 25 per cent of the leadership positions of the top fashion companies," reveals Sayo. "It's a different kind of marginalization that also places a glass ceiling above our heads."

The tide is turning but it needs more speed

As mentioned earlier, the representation of women on-camera and off-camera keeps getting better year on year. Perhaps the biggest problem is that from an overall viewpoint, it isn't growing nearly fast enough.

That's why celebrities in entertainment are moving the needle themselves. This is evidenced in the fact that the only area that noticed significant growth in women's representation in 2021 was the executive producer role. Some powerful women that have made massive strides as executive producers, producers, and directors include Viola Davis, Ava DuVernay, Tina Fey, Shonda Rhimes, Margot Robbie, and Octavia Spencer, amongst others. Even one of Hollywood's shining lights, Marsai Martin, one of the kid stars of Black-ish and Mixed-ish series, belongs in this category of industry juggernauts. Still relatively young in the industry, she has already started her own production company, Genius Productions.

According to the study "Indie Women: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women in U.S. Independent Film, 2021-22" done by Dr Martha M. Lauzen the executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University lower budgets productions are seeing an increase in female representation.

"Documentaries continue to employ higher percentages of women filmmakers than narrative features, and independent films offer more opportunities for women than larger budget features," Dr. Lauzen said in a press release.

Women are also beginning to ascend to executive roles in production companies and studios. Names like Victoria Alonso (Executive VP Production, Marvel Studios), Sarah Aubrey (Head of Original Content, HBO Max), and Bela Bajaria (Head of Global TV, Netflix) come to mind. Hollywood's women are banding together, forcing themselves into the conversation and causing policy changes that protect women and avail them a wider range of opportunities in all levels of the entertainment hierarchy.

As women increasingly take on top-tier roles in entertainment, it can only lead to an increase in roles available to women and a richer, more rewarding experience as workers in the entertainment industry. More women getting into positions on the screen, behind the scenes, and in the corner offices of Hollywood and beyond can only be a good thing for entertainment and the wider world.

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From The Screen To The Corner Office: What's Happening With The Gender Disparity In Hollywood?

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Twentieth Century Fox released Hidden Figures in 2016. The movie, set in the 1950s, was an ode to three female African American NASA mathematicians who played critical roles to help launch astronaut John Glenn to orbit in an era rife with racial and gender discrimination in the workplace. Taraji P.

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This an article from McKinsey & Company, a management consulting company. It explores the gendered disparities in healthcare, along with healthcare research and drug development. It first outlines how female specific healthcare has been a niche market in the past, which looks like women being underrepresented in medical trials or their physiology not being taken into account. In fact this article says that because of this disparity, women are twice as likely as men to experience adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals and are less likely to be treated for their pain. Right now only 1 percent of healthcare research and innovation is invested in female-specific conditions beyond oncology and conditions that primarily effect men are more likely to get funding. Sometimes even entire categories of conditions experienced by women are sometimes even ignored, like menopause. However, its not all bleak, as researchers and companies are becoming more aware of these disparities and working to correct them.

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One half of the world's population is women. Women also account for 80 percent of consumer purchasing decisions in the healthcare industry. Yet, remarkably, women's health has been considered a niche market and a mere subset of healthcare. Now, that's starting to shift, leading to better health outcomes for women and presenting new opportunities for investors, companies, employees, and other stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem. In this article, we seek to provide a practicable definition of "women's health," to present a brief historical background of how men's physiology was often the default setting, and to identify value-creating opportunities for meeting women's healthcare needs. In a related article, " The dawn of the FemTech revolution," we take a deeper dive into FemTech specifically and explore the unique role that it plays.

Defining women's health

Women's health encompasses much more than just reproduction. Our definition takes a broad approach. When we consider women's health, we incorporate both female-specific conditions, whether tied to women's reproduction or some other facet of women's biology, and general health conditions that may affect women differently or disproportionately (Exhibit 1).

Conditions that pertain generally to females include, of course, reproduction: contraception, fertility, and maternal health. Female conditions also include gynecology, gynecological infections, menopause, and women's oncology. General health conditions connected to women's health are those that affect women differently (for example, cardiovascular disease), disproportionately (such as autoimmune disease, migraines, and osteoporosis), or are characterized by gender-based discrepancies in care (for example, pain and mental health). Women's health also includes general health conditions for which sex differences are not precisely known or are not sufficiently studied, as is the case with Alzheimer's disease. Scientists and physicians increasingly recognize that multiple diseases and conditions affect women differently than men and that treatments and therapies can differ in both subtle and significant ways.

Tracing the transformation

The recognition of sex-based differences is long overdue but has been accelerating rapidly in recent years.

As highlighted in recent books such as Invisible Women (Penguin Random House, March 2019), Doing Harm (HarperOne, March 2019), and Sex Matters (Hachette Book Group, June 2021), modern medicine was developed with male physiology as the default. A predisposition to the male body type has long been reflected in medical training, diagnoses, and therapeutic development, which has influenced how physicians and scientists have come to understand human physiology. As a result, men and women historically can have very different health outcomes.

Bias is complicated. For example, nausea, ingestion, and general discomfort might typically suggest heartburn. Women, however, experience these symptoms in the event of a heart attack more commonly than men do. Early research in cardiovascular disease, a top killer among both men and women, largely involved male subjects, leading to the hallmark symptoms of heart attacks being taught as pain in the left arm and chest. Women, however, owing to different underlying biology and risk factors, are reported to be more likely to experience other symptoms, which are often labeled as "atypical." As a result, women have been found to be 50 percent more likely than men to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack and more likely than men to die from heart attacks.

Women have also experienced differences in healthcare delivery. Despite reporting more severe levels, frequency, and duration of pain, reports show that women are less likely to be treated for pain; their symptoms are at times expressed as "emotional" or "psychosomatic." Disparities can also be found in some provider policies. One analysis of gender-specific procedures found that physician fees in Medicare led to a bias in procedure selection because fees for male procedures were higher than for female procedures, more than 80 percent of the time, and were 28 percent higher on average-even though male procedures were typically no more complex. In another example, the associated physician's fee in Medicare for the removal of a penile lesion is currently three times as high as for the removal of a vaginal lesion.

Emerging opportunities

The current global innovation pipeline reveals mismatches between health investments and health needs. The gap highlights some remarkable opportunities for improving women's health within female-specific conditions (Exhibit 2).

There are significant opportunities for healthcare providers to consider reallocating resources to female conditions, including the following:

Maternal health: More than 800 women die globally every day from pregnancy- and childbirth-related causes, including hemorrhages and infections. The tragedies are not confined to emerging economies; even before the outbreak of COVID-19, the maternal mortality rate in the United States doubled between 2002 and 2018, with Black women disproportionately affected.

Endometriosis: One in ten women of reproductive age is estimated to have endometriosis (growth of endometrial tissue outside of the uterus), which can cause debilitating pelvic pain and infertility. The underlying pathophysiology is poorly understood, diagnosis takes ten years on average, and there is currently no cure.

Menopause: Women spend more than a third of their lives in peri- or post-menopause, and trends indicate that 1.2 billion women globally will be in these life stages by 2030. The vast majority of women find that menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, and sleep disturbances interfere with their lives, yet only a quarter obtain treatment. The economic impact is significant, with one study estimating nearly $1,400 in health costs and $770 in lost productivity per person per year for untreated hot flashes alone.

There is great potential to begin addressing these conditions in new ways. A suite of scientific advances can now be harnessed in women's health. Recent advances in genomics, tissue engineering, and cell and gene therapy are ushering in a new wave of healthcare innovations that can be applied to underserved female-specific conditions. For example, researchers are studying transcriptomics (the study of all RNA molecules in a cell) for treating otherwise elusive conditions such as preeclampsia or preterm birth. Others are now using tissue engineering to create uterine organoids in order to push the knowledge frontier on endometriosis. The potential is vast to redefine a host of conditions, including endometriosis, preeclampsia, and unexplained infertility, and to achieve advances to the degree that researchers are already achieving with oncology and immunology. Investors, researchers, and companies alike have an opportunity to participate in this rising wave of innovation and to deliver a new era in women's health.

Women's health is not a niche market, and it includes much more than just maternal or reproductive care. Indeed, women's healthcare presents enormous opportunities for value creation and for improving the lives and livelihoods of women, with positive effects that redound across society. The first waves of major change are already on the rise.

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Unlocking opportunities in women's healthcare

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Advances in women's healthcare are accelerating, with implications for investors and stakeholders across the value chain and beyond.

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There Really Is No ‘gender Wage Gap.’ There’s a ‘gender Earnings Gap’ but ‘paying Women Well’ Won’t Close That Gap

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There Really Is No ‘gender Wage Gap.’ There’s a ‘gender Earnings Gap’ but ‘paying Women Well’ Won’t Close That Gap

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I really like this article because clears up all of the media construct that “for every dollar a man earns, a woman earns 77 cents”. This isn’t so black and white. There is a misconstruction around this topic. Women and men doing the exact same job, don’t get paid differently because of their genders. In fact, there is almost no evidence that men and women working in the same position with the same background, education and qualifications are paid differently.  However, what happens is that men and women do different jobs overall. This hugely skews those average figures like the 77 cents per dollar that are bandied about. At the end, the article also talks about how men are more willing to work the worst shifts than women, work longer hours, travel for work, more willing to choose demanding intense jobs, etc..

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This article explores the gender imbalance within the field of data science, and explores reasons as to why this imbalance exists including social norms, confidence, inclusivity, and competitiveness.

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With the rapid growth of data, the demand for data scientists grows as well. According to Smith Hanley Associates, data scientists are being sought for positions in a variety of fields such as healthcare, pharmaceuticals, retail, and other industries. This is great news for those interested in becoming data scientists, especially for those whose jobs were affected by COVID-19, having a secure job is important.

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With the rapid growth of data, the demand for data scientists grows as well. According to Smith Hanley Associates, data scientists are being sought for positions in a variety of fields such as healthcare, pharmaceuticals, retail, and other industries.

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Higher Education's Impact on the Gender Gap in the Workforce

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Higher Education's Impact on the Gender Gap in the Workforce

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This article discusses the impact of higher education on women entering leadership roles after college. Although women make up a majority of undergraduate students they only hold 25% of senior executive positions. Despite more women earning degrees than men, male dominance in the workplace has not changed. In higher education men make up most of the leadership positions and an analysis of academic journals found that only 17.5% of board members at top universities were women. The lack of women in academic leadership roles is replicated in the workforce as young women are socialized into secondary roles. Female students have also been found to be less likely to apply to competitive graduate programs at top universities compared to male students of the same academic standing. Gender roles impact female students' confidence in taking risks and the lack of accessible female role models in higher education further limits female students' likelihood of becoming leaders in the workforce.

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Last year, I was in conversation with a male peer of mine about our professional careers after college. About halfway through the conversation, he stopped me abruptly and said, "You know, you really are lucky."I shot him a confused look and he continued, "You have the safety net of marriage after college. If things don't work out with my degree, I really don't have any other options."

I stared at him, frozen with astonishment, before deciding that this was a conversation that I'd rather avoid. So, I bit my tongue, brushed over the comment with a forced laugh and changed the subject. For the past year, I've contemplated my decision at that moment - my decision to avoid that difficult, but necessary conversation about female perception and representation in higher education. Consider this article to be my recompense: It's time to open up the dialogue.

The year 1970 represented a shift in the American education system. It was during this year that, for the first time in history, the number of women outnumbered the number of men on American college campuses. Since that moment, this trend has only continued to increase, with the gender ratio on campuses nationwide approaching 60 women for every 40 men.

The University of Michigan is not immune to this phenomenon, with undergraduate enrollment statistics also reflecting a female majority. The gender ratio in the workforce displays a more even split, currently exhibiting a nearly equal 50-50 distribution. The problem? Despite the fact that women constitute the majority of the college-educated population and just under half of the workforce, they only hold 25% of senior executive positions. When considering the leadership positions in S&P 500 companies, this number decreases even further, dropping down to 5%. Women are more educated and more professionally inclined than ever before, but, paradoxically, the male dominance of the workplace has remained unchanged.

Numerous studies have shown that gender gaps in the workforce are fueled by a variety of factors. Socioeconomic barriers, sexual harassment and deeply ingrained gender roles are just a few of the forces that contribute to this phenomenon. However, these inequalities are not isolated to the workforce - they are deeply entrenched within the American education system as well.

As stated above, the female demographic in higher education has now become the majority. Yet, cases of gender inequality and discrimination still remain rampant. A study by the Public Library of Science academic journal found that the composition of leadership in higher education often mirrors, and potentially contributes to, these workplace inequities. Although the male population has now become a minority in higher education, most of the leadership positions are still held by men. An analysis of leadership on editorial boards for academic journals at top-ranked universities found that only 17.5% of the 4,112 board members were women.

Because the climate of higher education acts as a social and professional primer for students entering the labor force, any inequalities that exist in the education system are, in turn, often replicated within the workplace. As a result, these barriers to female leadership in academic clubs, editorial boards and pre-professional societies aren't only obstructing women from gaining valuable experience to prepare them for their careers - they are also serving to amplify the deeply rooted gender inequalities that women are subconsciously socialized into adopting.

A lack of female leadership opportunities in the education system reinforces the presence of social role theory, which identifies widely shared gender stereotypes as stemming from the gendered division of labor within a society. In this way, a scarcity of female representation in the workforce and in academic leadership is counterproductive to equality. Often lacking role models in the presence of male-dominant leadership, female advancement is hindered as young girls are continually socialized into these secondary, background roles. Across the education system, these latent systems of gendered socialization all preach the same harmful message: men are natural leaders and women are natural followers.

The presence of these stereotypes and gender roles also results in strong tendencies of risk aversion among women in professional environments. According to the findings of a study by LinkedIn, women often apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the criteria. In another study that analyzed undergraduate male and female students with identical academic standings, the females were shown to be significantly less likely to apply to graduate programs at top universities due to the competitive nature of the assignment process. In essence, the issue of gender gaps in leadership and the workforce is not the result of explicit discrimination, but rather an implicit inequality - an inequality that is continually constructed and maintained through rigid social dynamics.

As women, it is imperative that we continue to push for equal representation in on-campus leadership positions. Undergraduate education is a vital predecessor to the workforce, making it a highly formative period for women and their career paths. Fortunately, certain clubs and organizations are already taking strides to correct these issues such as Kappa Alpha Pi, a pre-professional law fraternity at the University. Molly Sherry and Mariya Jahan are both undergraduate students currently serving on the executive board of Kappa Alpha Pi, and provided insight into how their organization has taken strides to support female involvement.

"Within the internal e-board, I've felt very respected," Sherry said. "However, it is important that more women have the opportunity to access these leadership roles, that's what it's about - acknowledging and giving credit to women."

And indeed, whether done directly or indirectly, it is time that we stop placing professional limitations on women. Contrary to the words of my male colleague, the prospect that women often must make the difficult choice between children and a career is not a comfort, but a genuine concern. In an educational system that claims to support and produce strong women, it is due time that we stop being told to choose between such demeaning ultimatums.
Tate Moyer is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at moyert@umich.edu

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How higher education reinforces the gender gap Ask economists

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Last year, I was in conversation with a male peer of mine about our professional careers after college. About halfway through the conversation, he stopped me abruptly and said, "You know, you really are lucky."I shot him a confused look and he continued, "You have the safety net of marriage after college.

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Gender inequality and self-publication are common among academic editors

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Gender inequality and self-publication are common among academic editors

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It's really long, so no need to read the whole thing, but glossing over it shows some surprising statistics regarding this field. This article delves into the many factors in why women become academic editors at a significantly smaller rate than men.

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Gender inequality and self-publication are common among academic editors - Nature Human Behaviour

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Using publication and editorial team composition records from more than 1,000 journals, Liu and coauthors uncover pervasive gender inequalities among academic editors. Only 8% of editors-in-chief are women. Nearly 6% of editors publish one-third of all their papers in the journal they edit, and this self-publication pattern is stronger among men editors.

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This article reports on the pay gap that women have in comparison to men, it also mentions the pay gap between Hispanic/lack women.

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Fast Facts

In recent years, women were underrepresented in management positions and the gender pay gap was greater for certain groups. Published Census Bureau data showed that in 2021:

Women made up about 44% of the total workforce but only 41% of managers

Overall, women earned about $.82 for every dollar men earned; Hispanic or Latina women earned about $.58 and Black women earned about $.63 for every dollar White men earned

The gender pay gap varied by level of education: it was greatest for women with less than a high school diploma or equivalent, and was smallest for women with a bachelor's degree

Highlights

What GAO Found

In recent years, women were underrepresented in management positions and the gender pay gap was greater for certain groups of women, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's (Census Bureau) published American Community Survey (ACS) data on full-time workers. For example, in 2021:

Women made up an estimated 44 percent of the overall workforce, but an estimated 41 percent of managers.

Women earned an estimated 82 cents for every dollar that men earned (an overall pay gap of 18 cents on the dollar).

Compared to the overall pay gap, the gender pay gap was greater for full-time female managers, who earned an estimated 77 cents for every dollar earned by full-time male managers (a pay gap of 23 cents on the dollar).

The gender pay gap was also greater for women in certain sectors. For example, among workers who were self-employed in their own incorporated business, women earned an estimated 69 cents for every dollar earned by men (a pay gap of 31 cents on the dollar). In private, for-profit companies, women earned an estimated 78 cents for every dollar earned by men (a pay gap of 22 cents on the dollar). In government agencies and non-profit organizations, women earned an estimated 85 cents for every dollar earned by men (a pay gap of 15 cents on the dollar).

Compared to pay for White men, the pay gap was greater for women in most historically underserved racial and ethnic groups than for White women. For example, for every dollar earned by White men, Hispanic or Latina women earned an estimated 58 cents (a pay gap of 42 cents on the dollar), and Black or African American women earned an estimated 63 cents (a pay gap of 37 cents on the dollar), while White women earned an estimated 79 cents (a pay gap of 21 cents on the dollar).

The gender pay gap also varied by level of education. For example, among workers-including both full-time and part-time workers-with less than a high school diploma, women earned an estimated 66 cents for every dollar earned by men (a pay gap of 34 cents on the dollar). Among workers with a bachelor's degree, women earned an estimated 70 cents for every dollar earned by men (a pay gap of 30 cents on the dollar).

This report is descriptive, and it neither confirms nor refutes the presence of discriminatory practices.

Why GAO Did This Study

Prior research has shown that women in the U.S. workforce earn less than men and face challenges in advancing their careers. GAO's March 2022 report found that in 2019, women were underrepresented in management positions.

GAO was asked to assess disparities for women in the U.S. workforce, including the gender pay gap, in recent years. This is an interim report, and GAO plans to issue a more detailed report in spring 2023. This interim report examines (1) the representation of women, and the difference in pay between women and men, in the overall workforce; and (2) how pay differences between women and men in the overall workforce vary based on race and ethnicity and level of education. To assess women's workforce representation and pay, GAO reviewed published summary-level data from the Census Bureau's ACS from 2018, 2019, and 2021. GAO did not review ACS data from 2020 because the Census Bureau determined that those data did not meet statistical quality standards due to data collection disruptions early in the COVID-19 pandemic .

For more information, contact Thomas M. Costa at (202) 512-4769 or costat@gao.gov.

Full Report

GAO Contacts

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Women in the Workforce: The Gender Pay Gap Is Greater for Certain Racial and Ethnic Groups and Varies by Education Level

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Fast Facts In recent years, women were underrepresented in management positions and the gender pay gap was greater for certain groups.

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New data show women and girls far less likely to receive COVID-19 relief

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New data show women and girls far less likely to receive COVID-19 relief

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This article explains how women across America have not only been more severely impacted by the effects of COVID-19, but are also less likely to receive COVID-19 relief. For example 29% of women with children lost their job compared to only 20% of men with children. Of the remaining women in the workforce, 56% received reduced pay compared to 44% of men. The UN Women's organization found that women were also significantly less likely to be granted cash relief from the government compared to men. This data was compiled using RGAs, or Rapid Gender Assessment Surveys across the country.

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Women and girls left behind: Glaring gaps in pandemic responses compiles and analyses the results of 45 Rapid Gender Assessment surveys (RGAs) on the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 produced by UN Women in partnership with national statistics offices, governmental entities and international partners. The RGAs include nearly 100,000 respondents across all regions surveyed from April 2020-March 2021.

In the economic sphere, the RGAs reveal uneven impacts by sex and age. Although job losses affected nearly a quarter of women and men, 29 per cent of working-aged mothers living with children lost their jobs compared to only 20 per cent of working-aged men living with children. Young women living with children were also hard-hit, with 56 per cent seeing reduced paid work hours versus only 44 per cent of young men living with children.

When it comes to care and domestic work, partnered women with children in the household were most likely to report increased domestic work (67 per cent women versus 63 per cent men) and childcare (70 per cent women versus 65 per cent men), and were more likely to report that the intensity of their work had increased (defined as time spent on three or more activities).

Women were also more likely to report strained physical and mental health, with younger women most affected - 71 per cent of women aged 18-24 experienced mental and/or emotional stress, compared to 59 per cent of young men. Widowed women living with children were also more likely than men in the same situation to report strained mental and emotional well-being (72 per cent versus 68 per cent).

The RGA data also confirm that relief and social protection schemes have fallen short of their potential. Women were significantly less likely to report receiving pandemic-related cash relief from governments (10 per cent of women versus 16 per cent of men). Single women living with children were particularly left behind, being less than half as likely as single men living with children to receive cash relief (12 per cent of women versus 25 per cent of men). Women without children (whether single, widowed or partnered) were also less likely to receive cash relief (8 per cent women versus 17 per cent of men).

When it comes to social protection, women were half as likely as men to report being covered by unemployment insurance (7 per cent of women versus 14 per cent of men) in 19 countries. In particular, single women with children were far less likely than their male counterparts to be covered by unemployment insurance (5 per cent of women versus 16 per cent of men) or to receive support from NGOs (8 per cent of women versus 25 per cent of men). Single women without children were also far less likely than single men without children to be covered by unemployment insurance (8 per cent of women versus 23 per cent of men).

Notably, younger women (aged 18-24) were also less likely to report receiving cash relief (9 per cent versus 21 per cent of men), unemployment insurance (5 per cent versus 18 per cent of men) or support from NGOs (6 per cent versus 7 per cent of men).

These findings are particularly surprising given the data about how younger women, single moms and partnered women with children have been hardest hit by COVID-19. This suggests that many governments and NGOs have not been effectively targeting relief policies to reach those in the greatest need, despite compelling age- and sex-disaggregated data clearly illustrating impacts.

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New data show women and girls far less likely to receive COVID-19 relief | UN Women - Headquarters

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UN Women's newest report reveals that women and girls have disproportionately suffered the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 - be it through lost jobs and reduced work hours, increased intensity of care and domestic work, and strains on their physical and mental health.

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This set of data shows numerical evidence of the struggles women face in today's society, providing strong context of what is a problem and what can be done to remedy it. It showcases how women are less likely to hold leadership jobs and access proper medical care, while also showcasing how women are much more likely to be victims of sexual assault and to deal with hunger. These data comparisons allow for a clear look into the problems in our world facing women, and provide important information for the fight to true equality.

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Poverty and Hunger

Gender inequality is a major cause and effect of hunger and poverty: it is estimated that 60 percent of chronically hungry people are women and girls. (Source: WFP Gender Policy and Strategy.)

On average, women make up about 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries. Evidence indicates that if these women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30 percent, raising total agricultural output in these countries by 2.5 to 4 percent. This would reduce the number of hungry people in the world by around 12 to 17 percent.

Almost 70 percent of employed women in South Asia work in agriculture, as do more than 60 percent of employed women in sub-Saharan Africa. This highlights the importance of developing policies and programmes that address their needs, interests and constraints.

Less than 20 percent of the world's landholders are women. Women represent fewer than 5 percent of all agricultural landholders in North Africa and West Asia, while in sub-Saharan Africa they make up an average of 15 percent.

Women in sub-Saharan Africa collectively spend about 40 billion hours a year collecting water. Per week, women in Guinea collect water for 5.7 hours, compared to 2.3 hours for men; in Sierra Leone women spend 7.3 compared to 4.5 hours for men; and in Malawi this figure is 9.1 compared to 1.1 hours. This significantly impacts women's employment opportunities.

Research indicates that when more income is put into the hands of women, child nutrition, health and education improves. In South and Central America, rural children are about 1.8 times more likely to be underweight than their urban counterparts. Other regions do not fare much better.

Education

Women make up more than two-thirds of the world's 796 million illiterate people.

According to global statistics, just 39 percent of rural girls attend secondary school. This is far fewer than rural boys (45 percent), urban girls (59 percent) and urban boys (60 percent).

Every additional year of primary school increases girls' eventual wages by 10-20 percent. It also encourages them to marry later and have fewer children, and leaves them less vulnerable to violence.

While progress has been made in reducing the gender gap in urban primary school enrolment, data from 42 countries shows that rural girls are twice as likely as urban girls to be out of school.

In Pakistan a half-kilometre increase in the distance to school will decrease girls' enrolment by 20 percent. In Egypt, Indonesia and several African countries, building local schools in rural communities increased girls' enrolment.

In Cambodia, 48 percent of rural women are illiterate compared to 14 percent of rural men.

Rural women's deficits in education have long-term implications for family well-being and poverty reduction. Vast improvements have been seen in the mortality rates of children less than 5 years old since 1990, but rural rates are usually much higher than urban ones.

Data from 68 countries indicates that a woman's education is a key factor in determining a child's survival.

Children of mothers with no education in the Latin American and Caribbean region are 3.1 times more likely to die than those with mothers who have secondary or tertiary education, and 1.6 more likely to die that those whose mothers have primary-level education.

Employment

In most countries, women in rural areas who work for wages are more likely than men to hold seasonal, part-time and low-wage jobs. Women also receive lower wages for the same work. (Source: FAO, 2011. "The State of Food and Agriculture: Women in Agriculture, Closing the Gender Gap for Development.)

Men's average wages are higher than women's in both rural and urban areas. Rural women typically work longer hours than men, due to additional reproductive, domestic and care responsibilities.

In Benin and Tanzania, women work 17.4 and 14 hours more than men per week, respectively.

Decision-Making

A large gender gap remains in women's access to decision-making and leadership.

Women make up fewer elected representatives in most rural councils. In Asia, this ranges between 1.6 percent in Sri Lanka and 31 percent in Pakistan.

Women's participation as chairs or heads in rural councils is also much lower than men's, as seen in Bangladesh (0.2 percent) and Cambodia (7 percent).

Educated women are more likely to have greater decision-making power within their households.

Maternal Health

Between 1990 and 2008, the proportion of rural women receiving prenatal care at least once during pregnancy grew from 55 to 66 percent.

However, only one-third of rural women receive prenatal care compared to 50 percent in developing regions as a whole. (Source: United Nations, The Millennium Development Goals Report 2010 and 2011, available from www.un.org/millenniumgoals/reports.shtml.)

Violence against Women

More rural women experience domestic violence, and yet few seek services, according to a multi-country study by the World Health Organization (WHO). In Peru, less than 5 percent of the total amount of rural domestic violence survivors (60 percent) sought help, compared to approximately 16 percent of urban women (out of 49 percent).

HIV and AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases

Rural women understand less about how HIV spreads compared to urban women; WHO figures from 25 countries indicate the margins of understanding between the two to be between 20 and 50 percent. Bolivia, Egypt, Indonesia and India are among the countries with the wider of such gaps.

HIV exacerbates property insecurity, especially for widows whose husbands have died from AIDS-related causes, but who may not have rights to inherit or own their land.

The burden of care is also carried by women. Women and girls account for 66 to 90 percent of all AIDS care givers; conditions are most difficult for women and girls in rural areas, and this can increase their own vulnerability to infection.

Environmental Sustainability

There is still far less access to clean or improved water sources in rural areas than in urban areas. In 2008, an estimated 743 million people living in rural areas relied on unimproved sources for drinking water, compared to 141 million in urban areas.

People in the least developed countries rely on open fires and traditional cooking stoves (for example, wood, crop waste and charcoal) to earn a living and feed their families. It is usually women who walk the long distances every day to collect fuel (and water). (Source: UNIDO, 2011. Contribution to the LDC IV Conference on Energy Access.)

Environmental degradation has an impact on natural resources and can affect rural women differently from men. For example, since rural women tend to have fewer occupational options and less mobility than men, many rely on natural resources from forests.

Natural disasters, climate change and conflict can undermine the health, education and livelihoods of rural women, differently to men. For example, although women usually manage the small plots of agricultural land in each family for income or sustenance in developing countries, land titles are most likely to be held by the men. This means that following a disaster, many women cannot independently claim state-offered reconstruction funds. Women can also be more at risk of harm during flooding in countries where boys are taught to swim at an early age, but girls rarely are.

Evidence from 25 developed and developing countries indicates that countries with higher female parliamentary representation are more likely to set aside protected land areas.

Facts and figures are drawn from the inter-agency report, "Rural Women and the Millennium Development Goals, produced by the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Rural Women, unless other sources cited.

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Gender inequality is a major cause and effect of hunger and poverty: it is estimated that 60 percent of chronically hungry people are women and girls.

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Male vs. Female  Professional Sports Salary Comparison

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Male vs. Female  Professional Sports Salary Comparison

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This article shows how there is clearly a bias in wages for male professional athletes and female professional athletes. As well shows much data of athletes and compares all of them. It contains few words just interesting to see and try to comprehend the difference in wages for each sport and each gender.

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Male vs Female Professional Sports Salary Comparison

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From the highest-paid athletes to the newest rookies, professional male athletes are still making significantly more money than women. In this article, we compare salaries in sports like soccer, basketball and tennis, and consider some notable changes over the past decade.

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Gender Inequality in Latin America and Caribbean 

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Gender Inequality in Latin America and Caribbean 

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This article talks about how manager position held by women are extremely low (coming in at only 15%) in the world of  Latin American and the Caribbean. According to this article, women represent only 35% of the workforce that uses advance technologies. The article explains how gender inequality has hindered economic growth and social development and it is definitely worth investing in female leadership and promoting women-owned businesses in order to carry strong and continual growth throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

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There are large gender gaps in the business world of Latin America and the Caribbean, where women hold only 15% of management positions and own only 14% of companies, according to a study by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The study, entitled "An Unequal Olympiad: Gender Equity in Latin American and Caribbean Companies" (available in Spanish), also reveals that only in one out of ten companies is the main manager position held by a woman.

According to the report, the participation of women in leadership positions, the level of training of the workforce, the use of advanced technologies, and a favorable business culture are the main factors that affect gender equality in companies in the region.

"Gender inequality, particularly in the labor market, has hampered economic growth and social development in the region for too long. That is why investing in female leadership and promoting women-owned businesses is essential to drive strong and sustainable growth throughout Latin America and the Caribbean", said IDB President Mauricio Claver-Carone.

Gender equality is one of the five pillars of " Vision 2025", the IDB's plan to achieve a sustainable recovery and economic and social development in the region. This strategy includes the design of incentives to finance initiatives and companies led by women, as well as improvements in access to financial systems.

The study was based on interviews with women entrepreneurs and a survey of 1,015 companies from 20 countries in the region on female participation in their organizations, policies towards their employees and the impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study includes recommendations such as the implementation of gender quota legislation, the transparent publication of salary information, the creation of training programs and the development of an agenda that facilitates the balance between paid and unpaid work assumed by the majority of women. women.

Among the main findings are:

Women participation predominates significantly in areas considered soft, such as communication and public relations. In harsh areas, such as foreign trade, women represent less than 35% of the people employed.

There is a higher rate of women in lower positions (36%) than in higher positions (25%).

Women represent only 35% of the workforce that uses advanced technologies.

Six out of 10 companies do not provide any type of maternity leave beyond what is determined by law.

Only 15% of companies analyze whether there are salary gaps within their organization.

The study was carried out by the Integration and Trade Sector of the IDB and its Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean (INTAL), IDB Invest, which collaborates with the private sector, and the Gender Division of the IDB.

"Gender equality contributes to poverty reduction and improves the quality of human capital for future generations," said Fabrizio Opertti, manager of the Integration and Trade Sector. "We focus on understanding the link between the level of internationalization of firms and their gender equity. The results indicate that it is key that the governments of the region can negotiate trade agreements that include gender clauses to create more and better jobs for women" he added.

Gema Sacristán, IDB Invest's business general director, said that "We are facing a unique opportunity for international investors to finance the recovery of Latin America and the Caribbean through women. Also, for local investors, especially institutional ones, who are increasingly interested in the sustainable agenda".

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Study reveals high gender inequality in companies in Latin America and the Caribbean

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There are large gender gaps in the business world of Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Stanford Professor Thomas Sowell: Pay disparity for women a true statistical fraud

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Stanford Professor Thomas Sowell: Pay disparity for women a true statistical fraud

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Thomas Sowell is an African American senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University

The article argues that the "war on women" political slogan is misleading and that the claim that women only earn 77 percent of what men earn is a statistical fraud. The author argues that this statistic is based on the assumption that women and men are doing the same work, with the same amount of training and experience, which is not always the case. The author cites various studies that show differences in hours worked and job titles between women and men and argues that these differences contribute to differences in income. The author argues that when women and men are compared based on relevant factors, the pay difference shrinks to the point of being negligible, with some categories of women earning more than men with the same range of characteristics. Sowell recognizes that there is a paygap but backed by hundreds of years of data he explains that this gap is due to differences in experience and work hours.

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The "war on women" political slogan is in fact a war against common sense.

It is a statistical fraud when Barack Obama and other politicians say that women earn only 77 percent of what men earn - and that this is because of discrimination.

It would certainly be discrimination if women were doing the same work as men, for the same number of hours, with the same amount of training and experience, as well as other things being the same. But study after study, over the past several decades, has shown repeatedly that those things are not the same.

Constantly repeating the "77 percent" statistic does not make them the same. It simply takes advantage of many people's ignorance - something Barack Obama has been very good at doing on many other issues.

What if you compare women and men who are the same on all the relevant characteristics?

First of all, you can seldom do that, because the statistics you would need are not always available for the whole range of occupations and the whole range of differences between women's patterns and men's patterns in the labor market.

Even where relevant statistics are available, careful judgment is required to pick samples of women and men who are truly comparable.

For example, some women are mothers and some men are fathers. But does the fact that they are both parents make them comparable in the labor market? Actually the biggest disparity in incomes is between fathers and mothers. Nor is there anything mysterious about this, when you stop and think about it.

How surprising is it that women with children do not earn as much as women who do not have children? If you don't think children take up a mother's time, you just haven't raised any children.

How surprising is it that men with children earn more than men without children, just the opposite of the situation with women? Is it surprising that a man who has more mouths to feed is more likely to work longer hours? Or take on harder or more dangerous jobs, in order to earn more money?

More than 90 percent of the people who are killed on the job are men. There is no point pretending that there are no differences between what women do and what men do in the workplace, or that these differences don't affect income.

During my research on male-female differences for my book "Economic Facts and Fallacies," I was amazed to learn that young male doctors earned much higher incomes than young female doctors. But it wasn't so amazing after I discovered young male doctors worked over 500 hours more per year than young female doctors.

Even when women and men work at jobs that have the same title - whether doctors, lawyers, economists or whatever - people do not get paid for what their job title is, but for what they actually do.

Women lawyers who are pregnant, or who have young children, may have good reasons to prefer a 9 to 5 job in a government agency to working 60 hours a week in a high-powered law firm. But there is no point comparing male lawyers as a group with female lawyers as a group.

Unless, of course, you are not looking for the truth, but for political talking points to excite the gullible.

Even when you compare women and men with the "same" education, as measured by college or university degrees, the women usually specialize in a very different mix of subjects, with very different income-earning potential.

Although comparing women and men who are in fact comparable is not easy to do, when you look at women and men who are similar on multiple factors, the sex differential in pay shrinks drastically and gets close to the vanishing point. In some categories, women earn more than men with the same range of characteristics.

If the 77 percent statistic was for real, employers would be paying 30 percent more than they had to, every time they hired a man to do a job that a woman could do just as well. Would employers be such fools with their own money? If you think employers don't care about paying 30 percent more than they have to, just go ask your boss for a 30 percent raise!
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is http://www.tsowell.com.

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Thomas Sowell: Pay disparity for women a true statistical fraud

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The "war on women" political slogan is in fact a war against common sense. It is a statistical fraud when Barack Obama and other politicians say that women earn only 77 percent of what men earn - and that this is because of discrimination.

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After the two journalists who are women, Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, reported on the death of Mahsa Amini, who was witnessed to have died from police brutality by the Iranian morality police for failing to comply with the country's dress code, the treatment of women in journalism and the oppression of women generally rose to extreme popularity around the world. Regarding general news stories, the article touches upon the statistic that women are mentioned in the media 25% of of the news stories they sampled as well as 24% quoted of the time in news stories. Further in the study the article touches upon is that the global average for "overall presence of women in print, radio and television news" is 25% but is on an upward trend. It was also shown that women are less active in reporting on topics of politics & government and the economy, being 20% and 24% respectively while 47% of gender related subject and sources were from women. The increase of women's sources is a positive thing as women make up around half of the population but make up minimal amounts of representation in journalism so our news sources would be more representative of the entire population instead of certain perspectives.

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As we mark this year's International Women's Day, new and emerging challenges continue to prevent the achievement of gender equality globally. At Internews, we are acutely aware that many of these challenges are related to how information is produced, disseminated, and consumed: whose views, solutions, needs, and priorities shape the news; who counts as experts and newsworthy subjects; whose perspectives set and influence public policy agendas; and who has safe access to information that matters to their lives.

"Women and gender minorities are underrepresented in every aspect of media production."

The voices and perspectives of women and gender minorities are underrepresented in every aspect of media production, circulation, and consumption. According to global research conducted by the Global Media Monitoring Project in 2020, on average, women are only 25% of those seen, heard, and read about in news stories, and 24% of the expert sources quoted by the news media. The silencing of women's voices contributes to a culture that devalues women and girls while reinforcing harmful gender norms. While in many regions women are increasingly entering the field of journalism and forging their own paths to media ownership in digital spaces, they remain chronically underrepresented in leadership positions, particularly in traditional media.

When it comes to online spaces, women and gender minorities, especially journalists and those conducting public-facing work or rights-based activism, face a barrage of threats and attacks. Online gender-based violence and gendered disinformation (false, misleading, or harmful content that exploits gender inequalities or invokes gender stereotypes and norms, including to target specific individuals or groups) lead to self-censorship among journalists, disempower leaders and activists, increase offline threats and physical attacks, and ultimately devalue lives and weaken democracies.
An unheard voice is an unheard story #BreakTheBias
On this International Women's Day, Internews reasserts its commitment to challenge discriminatory gender norms and advance equality across gender identities in the media and information sector. We have just updated our gender equality and inclusion strategy, to reflect our ongoing commitment to equality inclusive of gender and sexual minorities. The strategy mirrors Internews' mission: to support healthy information environments for all.

"When the media reports on the struggles and successes of a woman, in any field, then other women learn from this coverage: it's like a road map for them to follow."
- Clara Matimo, Tanzanian Journalist, in Reflect Reality, an Internews methodology to increase sourcing of women experts in the news.

Reflecting the perspectives, priorities, information needs, and expertise of women and gender minorities in the media is not only a matter of fairness; it's a key component of good journalism, it builds trust and relevance with the audiences, it boosts media revenue, and it's fundamental to building better societies.

"The media cannot profess to be the guardian of public interest if it does not consciously, aggressively and proactively articulate and give due representation of women's interests in news."
- Adnan Rehmat, Media and Rights Activist in "Where are the Women?", a research report by Internews' Earth Journalism Network (EJN) about the missing perspectives of women in environmental reporting.

Internews understands that effective gender transformation requires changes at individual, community, institutional, and policy levels. While we are proud of the work we do, we also understand that we need to do more.
#BreakTheBias, today!
We can all start today by asking: "Does my work help #BreakTheBias, and if not, what do I need to do to revise it, so it does?" We encourage you to check out gender equality research and resources produced by Internews, our partners, and colleagues in the industry; support local women-led outlets and/or those championing gender equality issues; and make use of the tools and strategies available in the Reflect Reality toolkit - such as a collection of databases of women experts per region and strategies to ensure gender parity in your reporting.

Paula Orlando is a Senior Program Officer for K nowledge and Gender at Internews.

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Reflecting and Improving the World: The Urgent Need for Gender Equality in the Media - Information Saves Lives | Internews

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As we mark this year's International Women's Day, new and emerging challenges continue to prevent the achievement of gender equality globally. At Internews, we are acutely aware that many of these challenges are related to how information is produced, disseminated, and consumed: whose views, solutions, needs, and priorities shape the news; who counts as experts [...]

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This article discusses the disproportionate effects of the climate crisis on women. In addition, it discusses the correlation between gender inequality and the impacts of the climate crisis in various countries.

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Efforts to tackle gender inequality can play a key role in how countries adapt to the growing risks posed by climate change, a new study says.

There is a growing body of evidence showing that women are generally more vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change than their male counterparts.

Now new research, published in Nature Communications, shows that empowering women through improved healthcare, education, and representation in government could help societies adapt more quickly and easily to the impacts of a changing climate.

At present, more than 70% of girls experience high levels of gender inequality - predominantly in developing countries - the study says. However, it finds that if society can follow a pathway of sustainable development in the coming decades, progress towards achieving gender equality could see this number could drop below 25% by 2030.

Role of women in climate adaptation

A country's vulnerability to the impacts of climate change depends largely on how quickly and easily it can adapt to changes. For example, a country that can quickly build defences to protect against rising sea levels may be less vulnerable to the negative impacts of flooding than a country that cannot.

Countries in which people, institutions, and systems can respond quickly to the impacts of climate change are said to have a high " adaptive capacity ". Developed countries often have higher adaptive capacities than developing nations - in part because they have more wealth to invest in adaptive measures.

However, there are also a range of factors - including income, occupation and education - that can affect a person's vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. In many countries, women are particularly disadvantaged by these factors due to entrenched social norms and socio-economic structures. ( Carbon Brief recently explored the published literature on this topic.)

Women cut the remains of the loops of rubber slippers in homework, Manila, Philippines. Credit: Friedrich Stark / Alamy Stock Photo.

As a result, women are often more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, explains Marina Andrijevic, a research analyst at Climate Analytics and the lead author of the study. She tells Carbon Brief:

"There's a solid base of evidence showing that women are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change, not because there is something inherently vulnerable about women, but because of socio-cultural structures that deprive women of access to resources, decision-making, information, agency, etc."

Andrijevic has also found through her work that the least gender-equal societies are often the most vulnerable to climate change.

The plots below show the relationship between gender inequality to climate vulnerability (left) and climate action (right). In these plots, each dot represents an individual country, with the red and blue lines showing the trends. A higher gender inequality number indicates a higher level of inequality between men and women.

Plots showing a) the link between gender inequality and vulnerability to climate change, and b) the link between gender inequality and climate action. Indices used: Gender inequality, ( Gender Inequality Index from the United Nations Development Programme), vulnerability ( ND-GAIN index) using 2017 country-level estimates, climate action ( CLIMI index) using 2005-2010 average country level estimates. Source: Andrijevic et al (2020).

The plot on the left shows that countries with a high level of gender inequality generally have a higher vulnerability to the negative impacts of climate change. Climate vulnerability is measured using an indicator that combines a range of factors - including food, water and health.

The plot on the right shows that countries with high levels of gender inequality usually see lower levels of climate action. Climate action is calculated using a measure of the climate change mitigation policies set by countries.

This highlights that countries with lower levels of gender inequality usually take more action on climate change and are less vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change, Andrijevic says. She notes that "improvements in gender equality contribute to climate resilience", adding that gender equality is crucial "not only for women but for the society as a whole".

Dr Astghik Mavisakalyan, a principal research fellow at Curtin University - who was not involved in the study - tells Carbon Brief that there is a two-way relationship between improved gender equality and increased climate resilience. She adds that progress in one can drive progress in the other to create a "virtuous circle of sustainable and equitable development".

Measuring gender inequality

Gender inequality is a complex issue and can be tricky to measure. This study measures the gender inequality of a country using the " Gender Inequality Index" (GII), which was developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). (We note that this study does not include non-binary people in its analysis, or investigate transgender inequality.)

Female workers in a chinese operated textile factory in Thanaut Tee village, Takeo province, Cambodia, Asia. Credit: Friedrich Stark / Alamy Stock Photo.

The index ranges from zero to one, where a higher number indicates higher levels of inequality between men and women. In this study, a GII value below 0.3 indicates low levels of gender inequality, whilst a value above 0.3 signifies high levels of inequality.

The GII is made up of three parts. The first part measures health using a combination of maternal mortality ratio (deaths due to complications from pregnancy or childbirth), and adolescent birth rate. Lower levels of maternal mortality and adolescent birth rate indicate better healthcare for women, and signify better gender equality.

The second part measures education and political empowerment by comparing the percentage of males and females in parliamentary seats and with secondary education. Mavisakalyan has found in her research that a greater representation of women in government can drive progress on climate policies. She tells Carbon Brief:

"Female representation in national parliaments leads countries to adopt more stringent climate change policies; and through this effect on the stringency of climate change policies, female representation leads to lower CO2 emissions."

There are a range of possible reasons for this result. Mavisakalyan suggests that qualities such as "cooperation and carefulness" could be "more emphasised in females". She also explains that female politicians reflect the needs of female civilians:

"It may be that female politicians' preferences are similar to those of females in the general population, so they are indeed more concerned about climate change than their male counterparts, and they do reflect this concern in their policymaking."

The final component of GII measures levels of female employment. Improving equality in the labour force provides women with "access to financial resources, to information and to different networks of decision making", Andrijevic explains, making it key for improving "women's adaptive capacity and resilience".

How might gender inequality change in the future?

Scientists have developed a set of five narratives called " shared socioeconomic pathways " (SSPs) that outline how global society, demographics and economics might change over the next century. Much of the new study focuses on the first three SSPs, as these three scenarios cover the full range of possibilities concerning gender inequality.

SSP1 is a pathway focused on sustainability and equality. Development in this scenario emphasises inclusive development and low-carbon emissions, where gender inequality is low.

SSP2 is often called the "middle-of-the-road" scenario. In this scenario, social, economic and technological trends broadly follow their historical patterns. This means a continued, gradual improvement in levels of gender equality over the coming decades.

In SSP3, countries focus on achieving energy and food security goals within their own regions at the expense of broader-based development, with existing inequalities persisting or worsening over time. This scenario is characterised by high levels of gender inequality.

The plot below shows how global levels of gender inequality are expected to change in future SSPs by 2030 compared to their 2017 values. Each doughnut represents the total number of girls (top) or women (bottom) in the world in 2017, 2030 in SSP1, 2030 in SSP2, and 2030 in SSP3, respectively.

The orange segment of each doughnut shows the proportion of girls living in countries with high levels of gender equality, whilst the purple segment shows the proportion living in countries with high levels of inequality.

Share of women affected by inequality globally in 2020 and 2030. Countries with GII values greater than 0.3 are considered to have high levels of inequality. This is based on the present day range of GII in OECD countries. Two age groups are presented here, a) 0-14 years, b)15+ years. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

This plot shows that in 2017, 72% of girls and 54% of women were significantly affected by gender inequality. Whilst all of the SSPs tested show clear in gender equality for by 2030, the sustainable development pathway SSP1 shows the most significant improvements.

Gender inequality in developing countries

However, improvements in gender equality will not be the same across all countries. The maps below show the gender inequality in different countries in 2000 and 2017, as well as projected possible levels of gender inequality in 2050 in SSP1, SSP2 and SSP3. A high number indicates high levels of gender inequality.

Using the buttons in the chart legend, users can also see the breakdown of female health (red), empowerment (blue) and gender equality in the labour market (purple) in 2000 and 2017.

Gender inequality in 2000 and 2017, 2050 SSP1, 2050 SSP2, and 2050 SSP3. A higher number indicates a higher level of gender inequality. Female health (red), empowerment (blue) and gender equality in the labour market (purple) are also shown for 2000 and 2017. Graphic by Joe Goodman and Tom Prater.

In this chart, each country is shaded according to its level of gender inequality. Countries with a GII below 0.3 have orange shading and low levels of gender inequality, whilst countries with a GII above 0.3 have purple shading and high levels of gender inequality.

The map shows that, in 2017, Europe, Australia, the US, and Canada had the lowest levels of gender inequality in the world, whilst Africa, South America and parts of Asia had notably high levels of inequality. Similar trends are seen for female health, empowerment and participation in the labour market.

In the sustainable development pathway SSP1, all countries see improvements in gender equality over the coming decades. Africa and South Asia see particularly rapid improvements within the next 20-30 years and, by 2050, only a few countries in Africa still have notably high levels of gender inequality. By 2100, the entire planet is expected to achieve a GII score of zero.

By contrast, SSP3 shows very little progress in gender equality from any countries, so the imbalance between developed and developing nations is maintained. This suggests that in SSP3, developed nations may also have a low ability to adapt to the changing climate, and would be particularly vulnerable to the resulting impacts.

Dr Laura McKinney, an associate professor at Tulane University who was not involved in the study, notes that SSP scenarios are not definite pathways of future social development. Instead they "use the data in a predictive manner to forecast hypothetical scenarios, based on assumptions of how we believe the data will behave", she tells Carbon Brief.

Andrijevic adds that these scenarios provide a range of "possible futures" and are "a tool to explore 'what-if' scenarios of socio-economic development". She adds that her paper "doesn't mean that achieving gender equality automatically means climate-resilient societies".

However, Natalie Elwell, a senior advisor at the World Resources Institute - who also was not involved in the study - believes that "social equity is an integral component of effective climate action". As socioeconomic pathways are widely used in the climate community, they could be a good way to tie in gender inequality with climate change, she adds:

"I appreciate that the authors found a way to validate and present the evidence indicating the importance of gender equality for improved climate outcomes in a way that fits within the scenario planning tools that are widely used by the climate community...Perhaps this framing of the issue will provide some motivation to act and clarity on the pathway for action."

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Tackling gender inequality is 'crucial' for climate adaptation - Carbon Brief

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Efforts to tackle gender inequality can play a key role in how countries adapt to the growing risks posed by climate change, a new study says. There is a growing body of evidence showing that women are generally more vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change than their male counterparts.

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In 2020, women earned only 84% of what men earned in both the part-time and full-time work sectors. It would take an extra 42 days of work for women to achieve equal incomes to that of men. Additionally, four-in-ten working women said they had experienced gender discrimination at work.

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The gender gap in pay has remained relatively stable in the United States over the past 20 years or so. In 2022, women earned an average of 82% of what men earned, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of median hourly earnings of both full- and part-time workers. These results are similar to where the pay gap stood in 2002, when women earned 80% as much as men.

As has long been the case, the wage gap is smaller for workers ages 25 to 34 than for all workers 16 and older. In 2022, women ages 25 to 34 earned an average of 92 cents for every dollar earned by a man in the same age group - an 8-cent gap. By comparison, the gender pay gap among workers of all ages that year was 18 cents.

While the gender pay gap has not changed much in the last two decades, it has narrowed considerably when looking at the longer term, both among all workers ages 16 and older and among those ages 25 to 34. The estimated 18-cent gender pay gap among all workers in 2022 was down from 35 cents in 1982. And the 8-cent gap among workers ages 25 to 34 in 2022 was down from a 26-cent gap four decades earlier.

The gender pay gap measures the difference in median hourly earnings between men and women who work full or part time in the United States. Pew Research Center's estimate of the pay gap is based on an analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) monthly outgoing rotation group files ( IPUMS) from January 1982 to December 2022, combined to create annual files. To understand how we calculate the gender pay gap, read our 2013 post, "How Pew Research Center measured the gender pay gap."

The COVID-19 outbreak affected data collection efforts by the U.S. government in its surveys, especially in 2020 and 2021, limiting in-person data collection and affecting response rates. It is possible that some measures of economic outcomes and how they vary across demographic groups are affected by these changes in data collection.

In addition to findings about the gender wage gap, this analysis includes information from a Pew Research Center survey about the perceived reasons for the pay gap, as well as the pressures and career goals of U.S. men and women. The survey was conducted among 5,098 adults and includes a subset of questions asked only for 2,048 adults who are employed part time or full time, from Oct. 10-16, 2022. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center's American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP's methodology.

Here are the questions used in this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.

The U.S. Census Bureau has also analyzed the gender pay gap, though its analysis looks only at full-time workers (as opposed to full- and part-time workers). In 2021, full-time, year-round working women earned 84% of what their male counterparts earned, on average, according to the Census Bureau's most recent analysis.

Much of the gender pay gap has been explained by measurable factors such as educational attainment, occupational segregation and work experience. The narrowing of the gap over the long term is attributable in large part to gains women have made in each of these dimensions.
Related: The Enduring Grip of the Gender Pay Gap
Even though women have increased their presence in higher-paying jobs traditionally dominated by men, such as professional and managerial positions, women as a whole continue to be overrepresented in lower-paying occupations relative to their share of the workforce. This may contribute to gender differences in pay.

Other factors that are difficult to measure, including gender discrimination, may also contribute to the ongoing wage discrepancy.

Perceived reasons for the gender wage gap

When asked about the factors that may play a role in the gender wage gap, half of U.S. adults point to women being treated differently by employers as a major reason, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in October 2022. Smaller shares point to women making different choices about how to balance work and family (42%) and working in jobs that pay less (34%).

There are some notable differences between men and women in views of what's behind the gender wage gap. Women are much more likely than men (61% vs. 37%) to say a major reason for the gap is that employers treat women differently. And while 45% of women say a major factor is that women make different choices about how to balance work and family, men are slightly less likely to hold that view (40% say this).

Parents with children younger than 18 in the household are more likely than those who don't have young kids at home (48% vs. 40%) to say a major reason for the pay gap is the choices that women make about how to balance family and work. On this question, differences by parental status are evident among both men and women.

Views about reasons for the gender wage gap also differ by party. About two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (68%) say a major factor behind wage differences is that employers treat women differently, but far fewer Republicans and Republican leaners (30%) say the same. Conversely, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say women's choices about how to balance family and work (50% vs. 36%) and their tendency to work in jobs that pay less (39% vs. 30%) are major reasons why women earn less than men.

Democratic and Republican women are more likely than their male counterparts in the same party to say a major reason for the gender wage gap is that employers treat women differently. About three-quarters of Democratic women (76%) say this, compared with 59% of Democratic men. And while 43% of Republican women say unequal treatment by employers is a major reason for the gender wage gap, just 18% of GOP men share that view.

Pressures facing working women and men

Family caregiving responsibilities bring different pressures for working women and men, and research has shown that being a mother can reduce women's earnings, while fatherhood can increase men's earnings.

Employed women and men are about equally likely to say they feel a great deal of pressure to support their family financially and to be successful in their jobs and careers, according to the Center's October survey. But women, and particularly working mothers, are more likely than men to say they feel a great deal of pressure to focus on responsibilities at home.

About half of employed women (48%) report feeling a great deal of pressure to focus on their responsibilities at home, compared with 35% of employed men. Among working mothers with children younger than 18 in the household, two-thirds (67%) say the same, compared with 45% of working dads.

When it comes to supporting their family financially, similar shares of working moms and dads (57% vs. 62%) report they feel a great deal of pressure, but this is driven mainly by the large share of unmarried working mothers who say they feel a great deal of pressure in this regard (77%). Among those who are married, working dads are far more likely than working moms (60% vs. 43%) to say they feel a great deal of pressure to support their family financially. (There were not enough unmarried working fathers in the sample to analyze separately.)

About four-in-ten working parents say they feel a great deal of pressure to be successful at their job or career. These findings don't differ by gender.

Gender differences in job roles, aspirations

Overall, a quarter of employed U.S. adults say they are currently the boss or one of the top managers where they work, according to the Center's survey. Another 33% say they are not currently the boss but would like to be in the future, while 41% are not and do not aspire to be the boss or one of the top managers.

Men are more likely than women to be a boss or a top manager where they work (28% vs. 21%). This is especially the case among employed fathers, 35% of whom say they are the boss or one of the top managers where they work. (The varying attitudes between fathers and men without children at least partly reflect differences in marital status and educational attainment between the two groups.)

In addition to being less likely than men to say they are currently the boss or a top manager at work, women are also more likely to say they wouldn't want to be in this type of position in the future. More than four-in-ten employed women (46%) say this, compared with 37% of men. Similar shares of men (35%) and women (31%) say they are not currently the boss but would like to be one day. These patterns are similar among parents.
This is an update of a post originally published on March 22, 2019. Anna Brown and former Pew Research Center writer/editor Amanda Barroso contributed to an earlier version of this analysis. Here are the questions used in this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.

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Gender pay gap in U.S. hasn't changed much in two decades

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In 2022, women earned an average of 82% of what men earned, according to a new analysis of median hourly earnings of full- and part-time workers.

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This article discusses the effects that the pandemic has had on gender pay inequality, highlighting the fact that men during the pandemic were less likely to accept their current salaries, asked for raises more often, and planned to ask for raises more as well. In the end, this highlights a major issue that has caused an increasing disparity in pay, while also discussing possible reasons for its origin.

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Women aren't getting the credit - or the pay - they deserve during COVID.

Seventy-three percent of women have not asked for a pay raise during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to 58% of employed men, according to a survey by Glassdoor. In the coming months, less than half of employed women plan to ask for a pay raise, bonus or cost-of-living increase in the next year.

"This trend is a continuation of what we were seeing before the pandemic," says Alison Sullivan, career expert at Glassdoor. "In a pandemic, an uncertain economy or job market leads to [women] putting off pay conversations because they don't want to rock the boat."

When going through the recruiting process, 33% of women say they accepted their salary for their most recent position without negotiating, compared to 29% for male employees. Unchecked, this trend leads to women making $900,000 less than their male counterparts over the course of their careers, potentially stunting their ability to succeed professionally and financially long-term.
Read more: Men are in the dark about pay equality
The pay gap has been a long-standing global issue. Efforts to close the gap have progressed slowly - at the current rate, it will take 250 years for women and men to receive equal pay, according to the United Nations. But with a quarter of employees seeing a significant decrease in pay during the COVID-19 pandemic, Glassdoor experts anticipate the worst.

"Before the pandemic, Glassdoor economists looked at the gender pay gap and saw that there was a 21.4% gap between what men and women earned," Sullivan says. "Because of the pandemic, we don't quite know what that looks like yet but the early takeaways from this study are worrisome."

The total number of women who left the workforce rose to over 2 million in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of those women, the majority are mothers and women of color - LatinX women under the age of 20 have nearly doubled their pre-pandemic unemployment rates at 8.8%, according to the National Women's Law Center. Close behind are Black and Asian women at 8.5% and 7.9%, respectively.To compare, 1.8 million men have left the labor force since February 2020.

Shrinking the pay gap isn't the only thing companies could be doing to better compensate their female employee base, according to Sullivan. Finding ways to cater to their other needs is a good first step.
Read more: How PwC is helping working mothers get through COVID
The leading causes behind the mass exodus of women in the workforce are insufficient caregiving options, deteriorating mental health and a lack of a sustainable work/life balance. Companies like PwC and Salary.com have tried to bridge the divide by offering paid sabbatical leaves and developing new tools to help employers identify pay disparities.

Women can also practice asking for more money and know when to identify the right opportunities, according to Glassdoor. But conversations about pay aren't a one-way street.

"Pay can feel very taboo for a worker to bring up or to discuss with their coworkers," Sullivan says. "A role that employers can play is cultivating a culture that embraces talking to you about pay and making sure they're talking to managers and training them on how to have productive conversations with employees."

While 74% of women believe there is a gender pay gap, 73% of men believe that both genders are paid equally, according to a study by job searching platform Monster. While women should feel empowered to begin a dialogue, employers should prioritize cultivating a culture that embraces talking about pay at an executive level.

"Not talking about pay can have an outsized effect on the potential of [a woman's] career," Sullivan says. "Being able to converse about pay and being confident in bringing it up now and throughout their career is really critical."

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Glassdoor reveals why women aren't asking for pay raises

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Women aren't getting the credit - or the pay - they deserve during COVID. Seventy-three percent of women have not asked for a pay raise during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to 58% of employed men, according to a survey by Glassdoor.

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Dispelling Myths about the Gender Pay Gap

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Dispelling Myths about the Gender Pay Gap

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This Article dives in to the complex topic of the gender pay gap. The author uses data to make a Controlled pay gap “the amount that a woman earns for every dollar that a comparable man earns,”. The usual 80% figure doesn't take into account a variety of factors, including: profession, qualifications, type of employer, seniority, or hours worked. When these factors are used to determine the actual pay gap, it is revealed that women earn .98 for every dollar a comparable man earns.

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A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that Professor Jennifer Freyd filed against the University of Oregon for alleged gender-based pay discrimination. While it is widely reported that women face a pay gap when compared to men, this lawsuit is a good example of how misleading that claim is. These unsupported claims, along with such claims as women receive smaller first-time research grants than their male colleagues, are not in the best interest of women or men. It is obviously discouraging for women to be told that they will be paid less simply because of their gender and it disparages men to say that they haven't really earned their salaries or grants. These things are not true even though they are endlessly repeated.

This post will start with the specifics of Professor Freyd's lawsuit and then discuss the research more generally. Freyd is a very distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and is widely published in her field. By coincidence, a recent post of mine cites some of her research. As befits a professor of her stature, she is well paid by her university. The federal decision dismissing her claim notes that she is "compensated at a higher rate than the majority of professors in the [University of Oregon's ] College of Arts and Sciences" and that she "is the sixteenth highest paid faculty member in her department of ninety professors."

Nonetheless, Professor Freyd claims she is the victim of gender discrimination and cites as evidence that four of her male psychology colleagues are paid more than she is. The reason that her claim has been dismissed by the court is that all of these men have quite different responsibilities than she does. One of them "also served as the Director of Clinical Training within the Psychology Department." Another "founded the Center for Translational Neuroscience, of which he is the current co-director." That professor's "salary is offset by Harvard University because he performs work for Harvard, a role for which he reports to that university directly." Another is the chair of the department. The fourth male professor "was externally appointed to the Center on Diversity and Community as an interim director, a university-wide role." The court lists several more reasons that the four particular men to whom Professor Freyd compares herself have significantly different job responsibilities than she does.

Apart from the differences in job responsibilities, the university found that Professor Freyd's colleagues had received retention raises, meaning that they had received attractive enough offers from other schools that the University of Oregon had to raise their pay to retain them. Professor Freyd had never sought a retention raise. Interestingly, her prior employer, Cornell University, did offer her a retention raise but she turned that money down to go to Oregon.

What about the bigger picture? There are many media reports of a gender gap, often claiming that women are paid only about 80% of what men are paid. But that number is comparing the total amount of salary paid to men and to women in this country. It does not take into account such crucial factors as profession, qualifications, type of employer, seniority, hours worked or many other things that go into deciding compensation. When these basic factors are taken into account, the gender pay gap vastly decreases. For example, PayScale issued a report entitled: " The State of Gender Pay Gap 2019 " based on a survey of 1.8 million wage earners. It reported that "women still make only $0.79 for every dollar men make in 2019." But the controlled pay gap, "the amount that a woman earns for every dollar that a comparable man earns," was a small fraction of that. When comparing two people in the same profession, with the same seniority, working the same number of hours, and so forth, women earn $0.98 for every dollar that a man earns.

Of course, even a two penny per dollar gender pay gap is two pennies too much. However, it is far from clear that even this small gap can be attributed to gender discrimination. As the Freyd lawsuit illustrates, many factors go into a person's salary that won't be picked up even by surveys that ask about a person's profession, hours worked, etc. Especially for the more highly educated professions there are too many factors that go into compensation for even the best-designed studies to account for. Has the person aggressively pursued outside offers? Did he or she place a great deal of weight on salary when negotiating their job offer? Do they pursue side ventures that augment their income?

Also, in order to get statistically significant results, studies need to be comparing reasonably large groups of men and women to one another. That means that these surveys generally compare, say doctors to doctors, not orthopedic surgeons to orthopedic surgeons. According to the American Medical Association, men are over-represented in various higher-paying specialties while women are over-represented in various lower-paying specialties. Therefore, there is no reason to assume that even the two percent gap is a result of gender discrimination.

The same is true about the widely reported finding that female researchers get smaller first-time grants than male researchers. The report is comparing grant size without looking at the applications themselves. It does not take into account, for example, the size of the grant request. In other words, the study does not report finding that female researchers are getting less of what they requested. If a female researcher asks for $100,000 while a male researcher asks for 20% more and they both get fully funded, that is not gender discrimination. One would be hard-pressed to learn any of this from the breathless coverage of the study that would leave any reader with the impression that female researchers faced daunting discrimination and that almost uniformly failed to discuss the limited nature of the findings.

Of course, none of this closes the discussion on sexism. It is important to ask, for example, why women might not be as ambitious in asking for higher salaries or larger grants and why they gravitate to, say, pediatrics over orthopedic surgery. It is possible that gender discrimination significantly contributes to all this. But researchers should be asking the right questions. If nobody is asking whether women ask for smaller grants, then universities won't find out what's behind that phenomenon if it is true. That doesn't help anybody. And it hardly encourages young women to go into science if they are being told without evidence that they will get stiffed on salary and grants if they do so.

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Dispelling Myths About The Gender Pay Gap

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A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that Professor Jennifer Freyd filed against the University of Oregon for alleged gender-based pay discrimination. While it is widely reported that women face a pay gap when compared to men, this lawsuit is a good example of how misleading that claim is.

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Gender disparities in Hollywood directors

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Gender disparities in Hollywood directors

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This article highlights how there is a clear favoritism towards male directors and cinematographer and how the male favoritism alters how story-telling is produced in Hollywood.

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The report has tracked women's employment in top-grossing films for 20 years."In 2017, women comprised 18 percent of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 domestic grossing films," wrote Martha Lauzen, the author of the report and a professor of film and television at San Diego State University. In the last two decades, the gender wage gap in America has narrowed and women have eclipsed men in the ranks of new college graduates. But behind the camera in Hollywood, nothing has changed since the late 1990s.

Lauzen / The Atlantic

The emphasis on accused celebrities like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey is appropriate, but brutish behavior against women emerges naturally from a industry that deprives most of them from the power to produce, direct, write, or film. Sociological studies on sexual harassment have shown that the worst industries for harassment combine several factors: male domination in positions of power; work arrangements that are relatively transient; and young, single women in more-vulnerable and low-paying occupations.

All three descriptors apply to the movie business. First, men clearly outnumber women four-to-one among producers, directors, cinematographers, writers, and key assistants. Second, every movie or miniseries is essentially a miniature start-up, where predators and jerks can abuse or harass actors and assistants knowing they might never have to work them again after a three-month shoot.

Finally, actresses are vulnerable, not only because men dominate powerful occupations, but also because women are cast to portray the very quality of vulnerability. In my book, I reported on a study by the Geena Davis Foundation that analyzed speaking roles in 120 popular films released between 2010 and 2013 for demographics, sexualization, occupation, and career. Just 23 percent of these films had a girl or woman as a main character. The ratio of men to women portrayed at the highest levels of local or national government authority was 115-to-12 (and three of the 12 female roles were portrayals of one person: Margaret Thatcher). Meanwhile, girls and women were twice as likely as boys and men to be shown in sexually revealing clothing, and five times more likely to be called out for being attractive. If these movies collectively formed a single nation, women in this world would account for less than one-third of the workforce and two-thirds of its sex workers.

Altogether, these surveys and studies suggest something quite simple: The ratio of women in an industry (like film) or in an occupation within that industry (like directing) shapes how women are treated. While more than 80 percent of women say they have been harassed at work, they are 50 percent more likely to say so in male-dominated industries.

In Hollywood, as in media or any industry dominated by powerful men, it is important yet insufficient to name, shame, and expel the worst offenders. More fundamentally, it is critical to address the sheer number of women who work in the industry in positions of authority. Black dresses and pins get people talking. But in the end, it'll be the math that matters.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes about economics, technology, and the media. He is the author of Hit Makers and the host of the podcast Crazy/Genius.

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The Brutal Math of Gender Inequality in Hollywood

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The report has tracked women's employment in top-grossing films for 20 years."In 2017, women comprised 18 percent of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 domestic grossing films," wrote Martha Lauzen, the author of the report and a professor of film and television at San Diego State University.

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This article compares data on gender disparities from around the world through a variety of interesting visualizations and subsequent analysis.

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In this topic page we present data and research on economic inequalities between men and women. Whenever the data allows it, we also discuss how these inequalities have been changing over time.

As we show, although economic gender inequalities remain common and large, they are today smaller than they used to be some decades ago.
Related topics:
Women's Employment - rising female labor force participation has been one of the most remarkable economic developments of the last century. In this topic page we present the key facts and drivers behind this important change.
See all interactive charts on economic inequality by gender ↓
The 'gender pay gap' comes up often in political debates, policy reports, and everyday news. But what is it? What does it tell us? Is it different from country to country? How does it change over time?

Here we try to answer these questions, providing an empirical overview of the gender pay gap across countries and over time.

The gender pay gap measures inequality but not necessarily discrimination

The gender pay gap (or the gender wage gap) is a metric that tells us the difference in pay (or wages, or income) between women and men. It's a measure of inequality and captures a concept that is broader than the concept of equal pay for equal work.

Differences in pay between men and women capture differences along many possible dimensions, including worker education, experience and occupation. When the gender pay gap is calculated by comparing all male workers to all female workers - irrespective of differences along these additional dimensions - the result is the 'raw' or 'unadjusted' pay gap. On the contrary, when the gap is calculated after accounting for underlying differences in education, experience, etc., then the result is the 'adjusted' pay gap.

Discrimination in hiring practices can exist in the absence of pay gaps - for example, if women know they will be treated unfairly and hence choose not to participate in the labor market. Similarly, it is possible to observe large pay gaps in the absences of discrimination in hiring practices - for example, if women get fair treatment but apply for lower-paid jobs.

The implication is that observing differences in pay between men and women is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove discrimination in the workplace. Both discrimination and inequality are important. But they are not one and the same. (You can read about discrimination and 'equal pay for equal work' in our post here).

In most countries there is a substantial gender pay gap

Cross-country data on the gender pay gap is patchy, but the most complete source in terms of coverage is the United Nation's International Labour Organization (ILO). The visualization here presents this data. You can add observations by clicking on the option 'add country' at the bottom of the chart.

The estimates shown here correspond to differences between average hourly earnings of men and women (expressed as a percentage of average hourly earnings of men), and cover all workers irrespective of whether they work full time or part time.

As we can see: (i) in most countries the gap is positive - women earn less than men; and (ii) there are large differences in the size of this gap across countries.

(NB. By this measure the gender wage gap can be positive or negative. If it is negative, it means that, on an hourly basis, men earn on average less than women. This happens in some countries, such as Malaysia.)

In most countries the gender pay gap has decreased in the last couple of decades

How is the gender pay gap changing over time? To answer this question, let's consider this chart showing available estimates from the OECD. These estimates include OECD member states, as well as some other non-member countries, and they are the longest available series of cross-country data on the gender pay gap that we are aware of.

Here we see that the gap is large in most OECD countries, but it has been going down in the last couple of decades. In some cases the reduction is remarkable. In the UK, for example, the gap went down from almost 50% in 1970 to about 17% in 2016.

These estimates are not directly comparable to those from the ILO, because the pay gap is measured slightly differently here: The OECD estimates refer to percent differences in median earnings (i.e. the gap here captures differences between men and women in the middle of the earnings distribution); and they cover only full-time employees and self-employed workers (i.e. the gap here excludes disparities that arise from differences in hourly wages for part-time and full-time workers).

However, the ILO data shows similar trends for the period 2000-2015.

The conclusion is that in most countries with available data, the gender pay gap has decreased in the last couple of decades.

The gender pay gap is larger for older workers

The United States Census Bureau defines the pay gap as the ratio between median wages - that is, they measure the gap by calculating the wages of men and women at the middle of the earnings distribution, and dividing them.

By this measure, the gender wage gap is expressed as a percent (median earnings of women as share of median earnings of men) and it is always positive. Here, values below 100% mean that women earn less than men, while values above 100% mean than women earn more. Values closer to 100% reflect a lower gap.

The next chart shows available estimates of this metric for full-time workers in the US, by age group.

First, we see that the series trends upwards, meaning the gap has been shrinking in the last couple of decades. Secondly, we see that there are important differences by age.

The second point is crucial to understand the gender pay gap: the gap is a statistic that changes during the life of a worker. In most rich countries, it's small when formal education ends and employment begins, and it increases with age. As we discuss in our analysis of the determinants, the gender pay gap tends to increase when women marry and when/if they have children.

The gender pay gap is smaller in middle-income countries - which tend to be countries with low labor force participation of women

The scatter plot here shows available ILO estimates on the gender pay gap (vertical axis) vs GDP per capita (on a logarithmic scale along the horizontal axis). As we can see there is a weak positive correlation between GDP per capita and the gender pay gap. However, the chart shows that the relationship is not really linear. Actually, middle-income countries tend to have the smallest pay gap.

The fact that middle-income countries have low gender wage gaps is, to a large extent, the result of selection of women into employment. Olivetti and Petrongolo (2008) explain it as follows: "if women who are employed tend to have relatively high‐wage characteristics, low female employment rates may become consistent with low gender wage gaps simply because low‐wage women would not feature in the observed wage distribution."

Olivetti and Petrongolo (2008) show that this pattern holds in the data: unadjusted gender wage gaps across countries tend to be negatively correlated with gender employment gaps. That is, the gender pay gaps tend to be smaller where relatively fewer women participate in the labor force.

So, rather than reflect greater equality, the lower wage gaps observed in some countries could indicate that only women with certain characteristics - for instance, with no husband or children - are entering the workforce.

Women in management positions

The chart here plots the proportion of women in senior and middle management positions around the world. It shows that women all over the world are underrepresented in high-profile jobs, which tend to be better paid.

Firms with female managers

The next chart provides an alternative perspective on the same issue. Here we show the share of firms that have a woman as manager. We highlight world regions by default, but you can add specific countries by using the option 'add country'.

As we can see, all over the world firms tend to be managed by men. And, globally, only about 18% of firms have a female manager.

Firms with female managers tend to be different to firms with male managers. For example, firms with female managers tend to also be firms with more female workers.

Despite having fallen in recent decades, there remains a substantial pay gap between the average wages of men and women.

But what does gender inequality look like if we focus on the very top of the income distribution? Do we find any evidence of the so-called 'glass ceiling' preventing women from reaching the top? How did this change over time?

Answers to these questions are found in the work of Atkinson, Casarico and Voitchovsky (2018). Using tax records, they investigated the incomes of women and men separately across nine high-income countries. As such, they were restricted to those countries in which taxes are collected on individual basis, rather than as couples.

In addition to wages they also take into account income from investments and self-employment.

Whilst investment income tends to make up a larger share of the total income of rich individuals in general, the authors found this to be particularly marked in the case of women in top income groups.

The two charts present the key figures from the study.

One chart shows the proportion of women out of all individuals falling into the top 10%, 1% and 0.1% of the income distribution. The open circle represents the share of women in the top income brackets back in 2000; the closed circle shows the latest data, which is from 2013.

The other chart shows the data over time for individual countries. You can explore data for other countries using the 'Change country' button on the chart.
The two charts allow us to answer the initial questions:

Women are greatly under-represented in top income groups - they make up much less than 50% across each of the nine countries. Within the top 1% women account for around 20% and there is surprisingly little variation across countries.

The proportion of women is lower the higher you look up the income distribution. In the top 10% up to every third income-earner is a woman; in the top 0.1% only every fifth or tenth person is a woman.

The trend is the same in all countries of this study: Women are now better-represented in all top income groups than they were in 2000.

But improvements have generally been more limited at the very top. With the exception of Australia, we see a much smaller increase in the share of women amongst the top 0.1% than amongst the top 10%.

Overall, despite recent inroads, we continue to see remarkably few women making it to the top of the income distribution today.

Above we show that women all over the world are underrepresented in high-profile jobs, which tend to be better paid. As it turns out, in many countries women are at the same time overrepresented in low-paying jobs.

This is shown in the chart here, where 'low-pay' refers to workers earning less than two-thirds of the median (i.e. the middle) of the earnings distribution.

A share above 50% implies that women are 'overrepresented', in the sense that among those with low wages, there are more women than men.

The fact that women in rich countries are overrepresented in the bottom of the income distribution goes together with the fact that working women in these countries are overrepresented in low-paying occupations. The chart shows this for the US.

Women often have no control over their personal earned income

The chart plots cross-country estimates of the share of women who are not involved in decisions about their own income. The line shows national averages, while the dots show averages for rich and poor households (i.e. averages for women in households within the top and bottom quintiles of the corresponding national income distribution).

As we can see, in many countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, a large fraction of women are not involved in household decisions about spending their personal earned income. And this pattern is stronger among low-income households within low-income countries.

Percentage of women not involved in decisions about their own income - World Development Report (2012)

In many countries women have limited influence over important household decisions

Above we focus on whether women get to choose how their own personal income is spent. Now we look at women's influence over total household income.

In the next chart we plot the share of currently married women who report having a say in major household purchase decisions, against national GDP per capita.

We see that in many countries, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, an important number of women have limited influence over major spending decisions.

The chart above shows that women's control over household spending tends to be greater in richer countries. In the chart we show that this correlation also holds within countries: Women's control is greater in wealthier households. Household's wealth is shown by the quintile in the wealth distribution on the x-axis - the poorest households are in the lowest quintiles (Q1) on the left.

There are many factors at play here, and it's important to bear in mind that this correlation partly captures the fact that richer households enjoy greater discretionary income beyond levels required to cover basic expenditure, while at the same time, in richer households women often have greater agency via access to broader networks as well as higher personal assets and incomes.

Land ownership is more often in the hands of men

Economic inequalities between men and women manifest themselves, not only in terms of wages earned, but also in terms of assets owned. For example, as the chart shows, in nearly all low and middle-income countries with data, men are more likely to own land than women.

Women's lack of control over important household assets, such as land, can be a critical problem in case of divorce or the husband's death.

Closely related to the issue of land ownership is the fact that in several countries women do not have the same rights to property as men. These countries are highlighted in the map.

( This map from the World Development Report (2012) provides a more fine-grained overview of different property regimes operating in different countries.)

Gender equal inheritance systems have been adopted in most, but not all countries

Inheritance is one of the main mechanisms for the accumulation of assets. In the map we provide an overview of the countries that do, and do not have gender-equal inheritance systems.

If you move the slider to 1920, you will see that while gender equal inheritance systems were very rare in the early 20th century, today they are much more common. And still, despite the progress achieved, in many countries, notably in North Africa and the Middle East, women and girls still have fewer inheritance rights than men and boys.

Gender differences in access to productive inputs are often large

Above we show that there are large gender gaps in land ownership across low-income countries. Here we show that there are also large gaps in terms of access to borrowed capital.

The chart shows the percentage of men and women who report borrowing any money in the past 12 months to start, operate, or expand a farm or business.

As we can see, almost everywhere, including in many rich countries, women are less likely to get borrowed capital for productive purposes.

This can have large knock-on effects: In agriculture and entrepreneurship, gender differences in access to productive inputs, including land and credit, can lead to gaps in earnings via lower productivity.

Indeed, studies have found that, when statistical gender differences in agricultural productivity exist, they often disappear when access to and use of productive inputs are taken into account.

Women's Economic Opportunity Index

The previous discussion focused on particularly aspects one by one. What is the the picture on economic inequality in the aggregate?

Tracking progress across multiple dimensions of gender inequalities can be difficult, since changes across dimensions often go in different directions and have different magnitudes. Because of this, researchers and policymakers often construct synthetic indicators that aggregate various dimensions.

The Women's Economic Opportunity Index (WEO) published by The Economist Intelligence Unit, is one such effort to aggregate various aspects of female economic empowerment into a single metric.

The WEO index defines women's economic opportunity as "a set of laws, regulations, practices, customs and attitudes that allow women to participate in the workforce under conditions roughly equal to those of men, whether as wage-earning employees or as owners of a business." It is calculated from 29 indicators drawing on data from many sources, including the UN and the OECD.

Here is a map showing scores on this index (higher scores denote more economic opportunities for women).

The Gender Inequality Index from the Human Development Report

The Human Development Report produced by the UN includes a composite index that captures gender inequalities across several dimensions, including economic status.

This index, called the Gender Inequality Index, measures inequalities in three dimensions: reproductive health (based on maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth rates); empowerment (based on proportion of parliamentary seats occupied by females and proportion of adult females aged 25 years and older with at least some secondary education); and economic status (based on labour market participation rates of female and male populations aged 15 years and older).

The map shows scores, country by country.

Historical Gender Equality Index

The Gender Inequality Index from the Human Development Report only has data from 1995. Considering this, Sarah Carmichael, Selin Dilli and Auke Rijpma, from Utrecht University, produced a similar composite index of gender inequality, using available data for the period 1950-2000, in order to make aggregate comparisons over the long run.

This index covers four dimensions:

(i) Health, measured by sex rations in life expectancy;

(ii) Socio-economic resources, measured by sex ratios in average years of education and labour force participation;

(iii) Gender disparities in the household, captured by sex ratios in marriage ages; and

(iv) Gender disparities in politics, measured by sex rations in parliamentary seats.

The results from this study are shown in the chart.

As we can see, the second half of the 20th century saw global improvements, and the regions with the steepest increase in gender equality were Latin America and Western Europe.

Interestingly, this chart also shows that in Eastern Europe there was important progress in the period 1950-1980, but there was a reversal after the fall of the Soviet Union.

In almost all countries, if you compare the wages of men and women you find that women tend to earn less than men. These inequalities have been narrowing across the world. In particular, over the last couple of decades most high-income countries have seen sizeable reductions in the gender pay gap.

How did these reductions come about and why do substantial gaps remain?

Before we get into the details, here is a preview of the main points.

An important part of the reduction in the gender pay gap in rich countries over the last decades is due to a historical narrowing, and often even reversal of the education gap between men and women.

Today, education is relatively unimportant to explain the remaining gender pay gap in rich countries. In contrast, the characteristics of the jobs that women tend to do, remain important contributing factors.

The gender pay gap is not a direct metric of discrimination. However, evidence from different contexts suggests discrimination is indeed important to understand the gender pay gap. Similarly, social norms affecting the gender distribution of labor are important determinants of wage inequality.

On the other hand, the available evidence suggests differences in psychological attributes and non-cognitive skills are at best modest factors contributing to the gender pay gap.

Differences in human capital

The adjusted pay gap

Differences in earnings between men and women capture differences across many possible dimensions, including education, experience and occupation.

For example, if we consider that more educated people tend to have higher earnings, it is natural to expect that the narrowing of the pay gap across the world can be partly explained by the fact that women have been catching up with men in terms of educational attainment, in particular years of schooling.

Indeed, since differences in education partly contribute to explain differences in wages, it is common to distinguish between 'unadjusted' and 'adjusted' pay differences.

When the gender pay gap is calculated by comparing all male and female workers, irrespective of differences in worker characteristics, the result is the raw or unadjusted pay gap. In contrast to this, when the gap is calculated after accounting for underlying differences in education, experience, and other factors that matter for the pay gap, then the result is the adjusted pay gap.

The idea of the adjusted pay gap is to make comparisons within groups of workers with roughly similar jobs, tenure and education. This allows us to tease out the extent to which different factors contribute to observed inequalities.

The chart here, from Blau and Kahn (2017) shows the evolution of the adjusted and unadjusted gender pay gap in the US.

More precisely, the chart shows the evolution of female to male wage ratios in three different scenarios: (i) Unadjusted; (ii) Adjusted, controlling for gender differences in human capital, i.e. education and experience; and (iii) Adjusted, controlling for a full range of covariates, including education, experience, job industry and occupation, among others. The difference between 100% and the full specification (the green bars) is the "unexplained" residual.

Several points stand out here.

First, the unadjusted gender pay gap in the US shrunk over this period. This is evident from the fact that the blue bars are closer to 100% in 2010 than in 1980.

Second, if we focus on groups of workers with roughly similar jobs, tenure and education, we also see a narrowing. The adjusted gender pay gap has shrunk.

Third, we can see that education and experience used to help explain a very large part of the pay gap in 1980, but this changed substantially in the decades that followed. This third point follows from the fact that the difference between the blue and red bars was much larger in 1980 than in 2010.

And fourth, the green bars grew substantially in the 1980s, but stayed fairly constant thereafter. In other words: Most of the convergence in earnings occurred during the 1980s, a decade in which the "unexplained" gap shrunk substantially.

Education and experience have become much less important in explaining gender differences in wages in the US

The chart here shows a breakdown of the adjusted gender pay gaps in the US, factor by factor, in 1980 and 2010.

When comparing the contributing factors in 1980 and 2010, we see that education and work experience have become much less important in explaining gender differences in wages over time, while occupation and industry have become more important.

In this chart we can also see that the 'unexplained' residual has gone down. This means the observable characteristics of workers and their jobs explain wage differences better today than a couple of decades ago. At first sight, this seems like good news - it suggests that today there is less discrimination, in the sense that differences in earnings are today much more readily explained by differences in 'productivity' factors. But is this really the case?

The unexplained residual may include aspects of unmeasured productivity (i.e. unobservable worker characteristics that cannot be controlled for in a regression), while the "explained" factors may themselves be vehicles of discrimination.

For example, suppose that women are indeed discriminated against, and they find it hard to get hired for certain jobs simply because of their sex. This would mean that in the adjusted specification, we would see that occupation and industry are important contributing factors - but that is precisely because discrimination is embedded in occupational differences!

Hence, while the unexplained residual gives us a first-order approximation of what is going on, we need much more detailed data and analysis in order to say something definitive about the role of discrimination in observed pay differences.

Gender pay differences around the world are better explained by occupation than by education

The set of three maps here, taken from the World Development Report (2012), shows that today gender pay differences are much better explained by occupation than by education. This is consistent with the point already made above using data for the US: as education expanded radically over the last few decades, human capital has become much less important in explaining gender differences in wages.

This blog post from Justin Sandefur at the Center for Global Development shows that education also fails to explain wage gaps if we include workers with zero income (i.e. if we decompose the wage gap after including people who are not employed).

Looking beyond worker characteristics

Job flexibility

All over the world women tend to do more unpaid care work at home than men - and women tend to be overrepresented in low paying jobs where they have the flexibility required to attend to these additional responsibilities.

The most important evidence regarding this link between the gender pay gap and job flexibility is presented and discussed by Claudia Goldin in the article ' A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter', where she digs deep in the data from the US. There are some key lessons that apply both to rich and non-rich countries.

Goldin shows that when one looks at the data on occupational choice in some detail, it becomes clear that women disproportionately seek jobs, including full-time jobs, that tend to be compatible with childrearing and other family responsibilities. In other words, women, more than men, are expected to have temporal flexibility in their jobs. Things like shifting hours of work and rearranging shifts to accommodate emergencies at home. And these are jobs with lower earnings per hour, even when the total number of hours worked is the same.

The importance of job flexibility in this context is very clearly illustrated by the fact that, over the last couple of decades, women in the US increased their participation and remuneration in only some fields. In a recent paper, Goldin and Katz (2016) show that pharmacy became a highly remunerated female-majority profession with a small gender earnings gap in the US, at the same time as pharmacies went through substantial technological changes that made flexible jobs in the field more productive (e.g. computer systems that increased the substitutability among pharmacists).

The chart here shows how quickly female wages increased in pharmacy, relative to other professions, over the last few decades in the US.

The motherhood penalty

Closely related to job flexibility and occupational choice, is the issue of work interruptions due to motherhood. On this front there is again a great deal of evidence in support of the so-called 'motherhood penalty'.

Lundborg, Plug and Rasmussen (2017) provide evidence from Denmark - more specifically, Danish women who sought medical help in achieving pregnancy.

By tracking women's fertility and employment status through detailed periodic surveys, these researchers were able to establish that women who had a successful in vitro fertilization treatment, ended up having lower earnings down the line than similar women who, by chance, were unsuccessfully treated.

Lundborg, Plug and Rasmussen summarise their findings as follows: "Our main finding is that women who are successfully treated by [in vitro fertilization] earn persistently less because of having children. We explain the decline in annual earnings by women working less when children are young and getting paid less when children are older. We explain the decline in hourly earnings, which is often referred to as the motherhood penalty, by women moving to lower-paid jobs that are closer to home."

The fact that the motherhood penalty is indeed about 'motherhood' and not 'parenthood', is supported by further evidence.

A recent study, also from Denmark, tracked men and women over the period 1980-2013, and found that after the first child, women's earnings sharply dropped and never fully recovered. But this was not the case for men with children, nor the case for women without children.

These patterns are shown in the chart here. The first panel shows the trend in earnings for Danish women with and without children. The second panel shows the same comparison for Danish men.

Note that these two examples are from Denmark - a country that ranks high on gender equality measures and where there are legal guarantees requiring that a woman can return to the same job after taking time to give birth.

This shows that, although family-friendly policies contribute to improve female labor force participation and reduce the gender pay gap, they are only part of the solution. Even when there is generous paid leave and subsidized childcare, as long as mothers disproportionately take additional work at home after having children, inequities in pay are likely to remain.

Ability, personality and social norms

The discussion so far has emphasised the importance of job characteristics and occupational choice in explaining the gender pay gap. This leads to obvious questions: What determines the systematic gender differences in occupational choice? What makes women seek job flexibility and take a disproportionate amount of unpaid care work?

One argument usually put forward is that, to the extent that biological differences in preferences and abilities underpin gender roles, they are the main factors explaining the gender pay gap. In their review of the evidence, Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn (2017) show that there is limited empirical support for this argument.

To be clear, yes, there is evidence supporting the fact that men and women differ in some key attributes that may affect labor market outcomes. For example standardised tests show that there are statistical gender gaps in maths scores in some countries; and experiments show that women avoid more salary negotiations, and they often show particular predisposition to accept and receive requests for tasks with low promotion potential. However, these observed differences are far from being biologically fixed - 'gendering' begins early in life and the evidence shows that preferences and skills are highly malleable. You can influence tastes, and you can certainly teach people to tolerate risk, to do maths, or to negotiate salaries.

What's more, independently of where they come from, Blau and Kahn show that these empirically observed differences can typically only account for a modest portion of the gender pay gap.

In contrast, the evidence does suggest that social norms and culture, which in turn affect preferences, behaviour and incentives to foster specific skills, are key factors in understanding gender differences in labor force participation and wages. You can read more about this in our blog post dedicated to answer the question 'How well do innate gender differences explain the gender pay gap?'.

Discrimination and bias

Independently of the exact origin of the unequal distribution of gender roles, it is clear that our recent and even current practices show that these roles persist with the help of institutional enforcement. Goldin (1988), for instance, examines past prohibitions against the training and employment of married women in the US. She touches on some well-known restrictions, such as those against the training and employment of women as doctors and lawyers, before focusing on the lesser known but even more impactful 'marriage bars' which arose in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These work prohibitions are important because they applied to teaching and clerical jobs - occupations that would become the most commonly held among married women after 1950. Around the time the US entered World War II, it is estimated that 87% of all school boards would not hire a married woman and 70% would not retain an unmarried woman who married.

The map here highlights that to this day, explicit barriers across the world limit the extent to which women are allowed to do the same jobs as men.

However, even after explicit barriers are lifted and legal protections put in their place, discrimination and bias can persist in less overt ways. Goldin and Rouse (2000), for example, look at the adoption of "blind" auditions by orchestras, and show that by using a screen to conceal the identity of a candidate, impartial hiring practices increased the number of women in orchestras by 25% between 1970 and 1996.

Many other studies have found similar evidence of bias in different labor market contexts. Biases also operate in other spheres of life with strong knock-on effects on labor market outcomes. For example, at the end of World War II only 18% of people in the US thought that a wife should work if her husband was able to support her. This obviously circles back to our earlier point about social norms.

Strategies for reducing the gender pay gap

In many countries wage inequality between men and women can be reduced by improving the education of women. However, in many countries gender gaps in education have been closed and we still have large gender inequalities in the workforce. What else can be done?

An obvious alternative is fighting discrimination. But the evidence presented above shows that this is not enough. Public policy and management changes on the firm level matter too: Family-friendly labor-market policies may help. For example, maternity leave coverage can contribute by raising women's retention over the period of childbirth, which in turn raises women's wages through the maintenance of work experience and job tenure.

Similarly, early education and childcare can increase the labor force participation of women - and reduce gender pay gaps - by alleviating the unpaid care work undertaken by mothers.

Additionally, the experience of women's historical advance in specific professions (e.g. pharmacists in the US), suggests that the gender pay gap could also be considerably reduced if firms did not have the incentive to disproportionately reward workers who work long hours, and fixed, non-flexible schedules.

Changing these incentives is of course difficult because it requires reorganizing the workplace. But it is likely to have a large impact on gender inequality, particularly in countries where other measures are already in place.

Implementing these strategies can have a positive self-reinforcing effect. For example, family-friendly labor-market policies that lead to higher labor-force attachment and salaries for women, will raise the returns to women's investment in education - so women in future generations will be more likely to invest in education, which will also help narrow gender gaps in labor market outcomes down the line.

Nevertheless, powerful as these strategies may be, they are only part of the solution. Social norms and culture remain at the heart of family choices and the gender distribution of labor. Achieving equality in opportunities requires ensuring that we change the norms and stereotypes that limit the set of choices available both to men and women. It is difficult, but the evidence shows that social norms, too, can be changed.

Gender pay gap

The gender pay gap (or the gender wage gap) is a metric that tells us the difference in pay (or wages, or income) between women and men. It's a measure of inequality and captures a concept that is broader than the concept of equal pay for equal work.

Differences in pay between men and women capture differences along many possible dimensions, including worker education, experience and occupation. When the gender pay gap is calculated by comparing all male workers to all female workers - irrespective of differences along these additional dimensions - the result is the 'raw' or unadjusted pay gap. On the contrary, when the gap is calculated after accounting for underlying differences in education, experience, etc., then the result is the adjusted pay gap.

Discrimination in hiring practices can exist in the absence of pay gaps - for example, if women know they will be treated unfairly and hence choose not to participate in the labor market. Similarly, it is possible to observe large pay gaps in the absences of discrimination in hiring practices - for example, if women get fair treatment but apply for lower-paid jobs.

The implication is that observing differences in pay between men and women is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove discrimination in the workplace. Both discrimination and inequality are important. But they are not one and the same.

How is the unadjusted gender pay gap measured?

Percent differences in average or median earnings

The gender wage gap is often measured as the difference between average earnings of men and average earnings of women expressed as a percentage of average earnings of men. By this measure the gender wage gap can be negative. This is the definition used by the ILO. (We explore the ILO data above.)

Comparisons of averages can often be misleading because averages are very sensitive to extreme data points. Hence, it is also common to measure gender gaps by comparing earnings for the individuals at the median - or middle - of the earnings distribution. This is the definition used by the OECD. (We explore the OECD data above.)

Ratios of average or median earnings

In addition to percent differences, it is also common to express the gender pay gap as a simple ratio between wages. This is the measure adopted by the United States Census Bureau.

By this measure, the gender wage gap is expressed as a percent (median earnings of women as share of median earnings of men) and it is always positive. Here, values below 100% mean that women earn less than men, while values above 100% mean than women earn more. Values closer to 100% reflect a lower gap.

Data hubs dedicated to gender statistics

World Bank - Gender Statistics

United Nations - Gender Statistics

OECD - Development Centre's Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI)

OECD - Gender data portal

Data Source: Multiple sources

Description of available measures: The OECD Gender Data Portal includes selected indicators shedding light on gender inequalities in education, employment, entrepreneurship, health and development, showing how far we are from achieving gender equality and where actions is most needed. The data cover OECD member countries, as well as partner economies including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and South Africa.

Link: http://www.oecd.org/gender/data/

Wikigender statistics

World Economic Forum - Global Gender Gap Report

Other sources referenced in this article

International Labor Organization (ILO)

Data Source: ILO

Description of available measures: Unadjusted gender gap in average hourly wages, Female share of low pay earners

Time span: 1990-2016

Geographical coverage: Global by country

Link: http://www.ilo.org/ilostat/

World Bank - World Development Indicators

UN Human Development Report

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What is determining the inequality in incomes, jobs, and wealth between men and women?

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Former Apple engineer shares struggles with gender wage gap, why she ultimately left industry

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Former Apple engineer shares struggles with gender wage gap, why she ultimately left industry

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This article exposes gender pay gaps in many industries, but focuses more specifically on the pay gap in tech.

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Former Apple engineer shares struggles with gender wage gap, why she ultimately left industry

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According to an ABC7 News Data Analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data averaged between 2018 and 2020, in California, women make $0.88 for every dollar a man makes.

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Although women take up 52% of the total population, they still struggle to gain an equal amount of leadership in all fields. They are 45% of legal associates but only 22.7% of partners and 19% of equity partners. In the medical field, they represent 40% of all physicians and surgeons but only 16% of medical school deans. Women constitute 61% of accountants and auditors and 53% of financial managers, but they are only 12.5% of chief financial officers. This is crazy to think that there is still sexism in all areas of the work force.

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Using new data, this fact sheet update shows that despite making up a majority of the U.S. population, women lag substantially behind men when it comes to their representation in leadership positions.

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This article focuses on the gender disparities in the movie industry. It highlights how men dominate the industry's lead and minor characters, demonstrating a need to address the hiring process to ensure that it is equitable.

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Here's how gender stereotypes are plaguing Hollywood films despite progress

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Progress on the film world's gender bias is slowly being made as women claim more leading roles. But a new report says there is still a long way to go to achieve equality in the industry.

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No Sex Neutrality in Criminal Justice Sentencing

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No Sex Neutrality in Criminal Justice Sentencing

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This article highlights that sex bias and "anti-men" sentiment has led to a large gender disparity within the criminal justice system, where men are incarcirated at a much higher rate than women. Not only that, but men often recieve more severe punishment and longer sentences by about 63%.

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Criminal justice is a core function of the state. Deprivation of personal liberty through incarceration is a highly significant state action. The U.S. has extraordinarily high prevalence of incarceration. The sex ratio of incarcerated persons is strongly skewed toward men. Highly sex-disparate incarceration has attracted little public concern. Anti-men gender bias in criminal justice is not merely a justice system problem. It's also a more general problem of public communication.

Criminal justice sentencing is not sex-neutral in practice. A high-quality empirical study of U.S. federal criminal cases concluded:

Conditional on arrest offense, criminal history, and other pre-charge observables, men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do. Women are also significantly likelier to avoid charges and convictions, and twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted.^

Other studies have found similar results.^ ^ Sex bias in criminal justice system action is simply apparent in comparing sex ratios of commitments to prisons and jails to sex ratios of persons held in prisons and jails. Because the criminal justice system tends to hold men for longer, the ratio of men to women in prison or jails is about 50% higher than the ratio of men to women committed to prisons or jails. Publications of the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics obscure this sex disparity.

Under a 1984 sentencing reform act, the U.S. Sentencing Commission was formed and directed to "assure that {sentencing} guidelines and policy statements are entirely neutral as to the race, sex, national origin, creed, and socio-economic status of offenders."^ Leading authorities associated with the Commission recognized sex disparities in sentencing, e.g. "female bank robbers are likely to serve six months less than their similarly situated male counterparts."^ Lack of sex neutrality in administering justice is a serious injustice.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission's directive that sentencing guidelines be "entirely neutral" with respect to sex did little to address disparate treatment in sentencing. In its 2004 report, Fifteen Years of Guideline Sentencing, the Sentencing Commission noted:

Unlike race and ethnic discrimination, the evidence is more consistent that similar offenders are sometimes treated differently based on their gender. Gender effects are found in both drug and non-drug offenses and greatly exceed the race and ethnic effects discussed above. The typical male drug offender has twice the odds of going to prison as a similar female offender. Sentence lengths for men are typically 25 to 30 percent longer for all types of cases. Additional analyses show that the effects are present every year.^ ^

The report found that the sex disparity in sentencing was larger in 2001 than in 1984.^ Covering this high-profile sentencing report, The Wall Street Journal issued a news article entitled "Commission Finds Racial Disparity in Jail Sentences." The article did not mention gender disparities.^ The New York Times titled its news article, "Sentencing Guideline Study Finds Continuing Disparities." That article reported:

The panel {conducted by the U.S. Sentencing Commission} examined how well the guidelines had brought uniformity to punishments, and found that while sentencing had become "more certain and predictable," disparities still existed among races and regions of the country, with blacks generally receiving harsher punishment than whites.^

A syndicated version of the article was entitled, "Study examines sentencing rules; Racial disparities persist, despite guidelines."^ Neither article mentioned gender disparities. The Sentencing Commission's finding that men generally receive longer prison sentences than women apparently wasn't newsworthy. Perhaps everyone knows that's true and no one cares.

Men are invisible in legal deliberation about bias in the criminal justice system. In 2003, in an influential speech to the annual meeting of the American Bar Association (ABA), a high-ranking U.S. judicial official raised fundamental questions about the fairness of the criminal justice system. He noted:

We must confront another reality. Nationwide, more than 40% of the prison population consists of African-American inmates. About 10% of African-American men in their mid-to-late 20s are behind bars. In some cities more than 50% of young African-American men are under the supervision of the criminal justice system.^

The ABA President promptly organized an ABA commission to examine the criminal justice system. The ABA Commission considered:

Why more than 60 percent of our 2.1 million prison population are people of color and more than 20 percent are Hispanic.^

The ABA Commission did not consider why about ten men were in prison per woman in prison. It focused on racial and ethnic bias, detached from any reference to men. Thus, in accordance with the ABA Commission's recommendations, the ABA resolved:

That the American Bar Association urges states, territories and the federal government to strive to eliminate actual and perceived racial and ethnic bias in the criminal justice system. By enacting measures that would:

(1) Establish Criminal Justice Racial and Ethnic Task Forces ....

(2) Require law enforcement agencies to develop and implement policies and procedures to combat racial and ethnic profiling ...

(3) Require legislatures to conduct racial and ethnic disparity impact analyses to evaluate the potential disparate effects on racial and ethnic groups of existing statutes and proposed legislation; ...propose legislative alternatives intended to eliminate predicted racial and ethnic disparity at each stage of the criminal justice process.^

Does the highly disproportionate imprisonment of men not matter? Are men of color not men?

Legal deliberation that addresses gender disparities in the criminal justice system often emphasizes differences that would be illegal or highly impolitic to emphasize in other policy discussions. A typical argument is that women's care for their children is more important than men's care for their children, and that the separation of women from their children hurts children more than the separation of men from their children. That would be a highly contentious assertion in considering daycare policy or employment discrimination.^ Yet in deliberation about the criminal justice system, such arguments pass as accepted wisdom. A high-ranking judge in the English legal system recently noted:

Many years ago, when training as a baby judge, I heard a very experienced judge comment that he was reluctant to send a woman to prison because she was usually the more useful member of the family.^

An employer who offered such an explanation for not sending female business executives on out-of-town trips could face a massive employment discrimination lawsuit. A leading legal historian addressed sex discrimination in sentencing with an anecdote:

One judge in the Washington, D.C. area, who allowed he was, in fact, more lenient to women, could not explain why, except to say that "I love my mother very much."^

Sex bias in sentencing can be considered using systematic empirical evidence, but such evidence has attracted relatively little attention. Responses not otherwise tolerable apparently suffice for addressing the large sex disparity among persons in prison.

Scholarly discussions of gender and criminal justice center on arguments that the criminal justice system should discriminate more so as to imprison fewer women. Women's crime is different from men's crime. Women offenders are victims, while men offenders are offenders. Women experience prison differently from men (women suffer more in prison, while men have been taught to take it like a man). Women prisoners have special needs, while men are regularly disposed in prison (or in death or in exile), or alternatively, in military service. All these assertions of difference are deeply rooted in gender stereotypes. Scholarly discussion of gender and criminal justice typically has not challenged these gender stereotypes, but rather has exploited them and re-enforceed them.^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Consider, for example, an article entitled, "Gender, crime, and the criminal justice system." The Principal Research Officer in the U.K. Home Office Research and Planning Unit authored this article. It was published in 1995. About twenty-five men were then in prison in England and Wales for every woman in prison there. The article set out to consider "whether there is any research or statistical evidence to support the view that women and girls are discriminated against in the criminal justice system." Frustrating its framework of inquiry, the article concluded that "women appear to receive less severe sentences than men." The article then suggested that existing research evidence indicates that the sentencing bias against men is a "legitimate reflection" of various (unaccounted for) circumstances, but also that the evidence "is equivocal." As is conventional for authors interested in doing research, the author concluded, "more large-scale studies which control for a wide range of legal and social factors are required."^ The suicides of six female prisoners in 2003-2003 subsequently generated many studies putting forward proposals that would raise the ratio of men in prison per woman in prison.

Men leaders have designed prisons primarily for men, who make up the vast majority of prisoners. Men's leadership in imprisoning men is unremarkable. A recent scholarly article noted, "As the unmarked gender category, men are 'the norm,' the universal nongendered offender." But rather than exploring possibilities for lowering the ratio of men in prison to women in prison, the article suggests

we might imagine a form of gender neutrality that is female-normed, and we might fashion an equal treatment punishment scheme in which women, not men, are the standard.^

An "awkwardly simple" alternative is to reduce greatly the number of men in prison, so as to make men prisoners much less numerically prominent.^ That alternative seems unutterable within public deliberation about criminal justice.

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No Sex Neutrality in Criminal Justice Sentencing

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Criminal justice is a core function of the state. Deprivation of personal liberty through incarceration is a highly significant state action. The U.S. has extraordinarily high prevalence of incarceration. The sex ratio of incarcerated persons is strongly skewed toward men. Highly sex-disparate incarceration has attracted little public concern.

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Gender Inequality in Sports Sponsorships

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Gender Inequality in Sports Sponsorships

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This article mentioned the gender gap between sponsorships in sports. It focuses on a lack of media coverage of women, yet they provide a more rounded value since sponsoring them would allow companies to reach new audiences, something that most companies strive to do.

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Sponsorship in sports is a marketing technique for brands to generate brand awareness and customer loyalty by investing in athletes either individually or in groups. Male athletes have always dominated the industry and it is apparent that they are the primary choice of sponsors compared to women. This is apparent from the statistics of last year where it is shown that women's sports sponsorships accounted for just 0.4% of all sports sponsorships. There are obvious differences between sponsorships in male and female athletes due to gender inequality issues and this article expands on the reasons behind these differences.

There are several factors that led to this trend in sponsorships. For example, one major factor , is the serious lack of media coverage for female athletes. TV programs, sports news and the like, promote male athletes and male sports rather than female athletes and women's sports. In the United States of America nearly 40% of athletes are female, but they only receive 2%-4% of media coverage. The more the athlete is exposed to media, the more publicity the athlete gets and thus publicity is a strong criterion for the athlete to gain sponsors.

Despite the fact that the audience of women's sports has inevitably grown, it seems that it is not coupled by a corresponding change in media coverage. The purpose of sponsorship is to reach new audiences; supporters of women athletes seem to present a great target audience for many sponsoring brands. As a result, sponsors should consider flipping the coin and changing their attitude towards female athletes by starting to consider that sponsoring more female athletes could prove to be financially beneficial.

Another differentiating factor between sponsoring male and female athletes has to do with male and female stereotyping. Male athletes are assessed based on popularity, fame and ability whereas female athletes are assessed based mostly on appearance rather than athletic ability and achievement in sports. For example, athletic clothing of male athletes covers their center body not always showing their arms and legs. On the other hand, in athletic clothing for female athletes, the torso and cleavage are consistently exposed. This might create the feeling of disrespect towards not only the female body, but also the athlete herself as the focus is not on her sport but on how feminine and attractive she may be. This could nurture the impression that if a female athlete does not have the ideal athletic female body because she is more masculine or does not have the "right type" of a female body, she will probably not be the ideal candidate for sponsoring brands.

The lack of sponsoring female athletes has a huge effect on their overall income. Male and female athletes competing in the same sport and on the same level, do not earn the same levels of commercial income; the male athlete earns 5 times more than the female athlete due to more generous sponsorships, attributed to the notion that the female athlete is less profitable than the male athlete.

This gender inequality in sports has started to cause irritation to female athletes who are stepping up and are raising their voice against this phenomenon. The Women's US Soccer team has filed a lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation for gender discrimination and one could argue that the low percentage of sponsorships in female athletes has been caused due to lack of support of female athletes in general.

In conclusion, female athletes are less likely to get sponsorships because sponsors tend to have the notion that the image of a female athlete is not as lucrative as that of its male counterparts. However, this needs to be countered to stop the inequality that appears to exist in sports. The fact that the interest in female athletes is increasing rapidly, should be a significant factor to change this notion. Statistics in Australia show that 84% of Australian sport fans are interested in women's sports, which in itself presents an untapped potential for sponsors. Let's hope that in the coming years the numbers of sponsorships of female athletes will escalate and that we will hopefully reach a point where sports sponsorships are free of any gender discrimination.

For more information and exchange of views, you may contact us at info@apc-sport.com.

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Gender Inequality in Sports Sponsorships - The Sports Financial Literacy Academy

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Sponsorship in sports is a marketing technique for brands to generate brand awareness and customer loyalty by investing in athletes either individually or in groups. Male athletes have always dominated the industry and it is apparent that they are the primary choice of sponsors compared to women.

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The U.S Women's soccer team are earning less than the U.S men's soccer team

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The U.S Women's soccer team are earning less than the U.S men's soccer team

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This article talks about how many of the players on the U.S Women's national team are earning much less that U.S men's national team players. They argue that they are preforming much better in the World Cup, since the women won it and the men didn't even qualify, but they are still earning much less than the U.S men's national teams and men's national teams around the world. An example of this is how the French National Team won $400 million dollars for winning the world cup, while the U.S Women's team only won $38 million dollars for winning the world cup.

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Progress toward gender equality in the United States has slowed or stalled

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Progress toward gender equality in the United States has slowed or stalled

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In this article, multiple authors talk about the slowing down of gender equality in the United States. After a dramatic increase, where the percentage of women (age 25 to 54) who were employed reached its highest (75%), studies show how this number has slowed its pace. Some important statistics that stood out were, "Women’s employment rose almost steadily from 1970 to 2000, moving from 48% employed in 1970 to 75% employed in 2000. It then declined, plateaued, and declined more in the Great Recession, reaching a bottom of 69% and rebounding to 73% in 2018"

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Progress toward gender equality in the United States has slowed or stalled | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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We examine change in multiple indicators of gender inequality for the period of 1970
to 2018. The percentage of women (age 25 to 54) who are employ…

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This article talks about how players in the Women's College Basketball Tournament feel about how they feel regarding the financial support they get in comparison to the Men's National Tournament

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This article talks about how players in the Women's College Basketball Tournament feel about how they feel regarding the financial support they get in comparison to the Men's National Tournament

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When UCLA junior guard Charisma Osborne scored 31 points during a win at Oregon State that vaulted the Bruins into the WNIT Final Four, it locked in another costly, grueling day of travel.

After 13 hours of travel to get to Brookings, S.D., funded by UCLA, she wasn't going to let the moment pass without pointing out the inequity of the WNIT that gets far less financial support than the men's NIT.

"Just talking with the team, I think it's important to just bring awareness," she said before the Bruins played South Dakota State. "So that people in the future can have better opportunities than what we have right now."

Osborne tweeted after that game, "This needs way more attention! It took us 3 different flights resulting in 13 hours of travel to get to Oregon. There's no reason the WNIT shouldn't be receiving the same benefits as the men! Why does the @NCAA own the Men's NIT but not the @WomensNIT ? Women deserve better!"

This needs way more attention! It took us 3 different flights resulting in 13 hours of travel to get to Oregon 🥴 There's no reason the WNIT shouldn't be receiving the same benefits as the men! Why does the @NCAA own the Men's NIT but not the @WomensNIT ? 🤔 Women deserve better! https://t.co/KwFVCbeldl
- Charisma 🦋 (@CharismaOsborne) March 27, 2022

Inequity across the men's and women's NCAA tournaments has become a hot topic as women's players and coaches began to point out the disparities between the two.

The gap in the men's and women's NIT tournaments, though, is likely larger, and UCLA decided to highlight it during its postseason run with the hope it helps future teams enjoy a more equitable experience.

Unlike the men's NIT, which is run by the NCAA, women's teams have to hope their respective athletic departments will take on the cost to keep their seasons - and, for seniors and graduate students, their careers - going.

The women's tournament is operated by Triple Crown Sports, a for-profit company that created the tournament in 1994. The NCAA fronts the cost for men's NIT teams to charter across the country and pay the schools to participate; the women do not enjoy the same financial support.

It becomes challenging for schools to find flights, especially charters, since they are paying essentially on a game-by-game basis. UCLA coach Cori Close said after the Bruins' win at Oregon State that UCLA put in a bid to host South Dakota State, but the Jackrabbits ended up with the home game. Teams have to bid on each game, meaning they have to absorb the cost of hosting or quickly coordinating team travel.

That led to UCLA traveling to Corvallis, Ore.; Laramie, Wyo.; and Brookings, none of them with easy commercial flights from Los Angeles.

"It's an opportunity to grow our mental toughness," Close said. ".... But when you talk about a difference in experiences, wanting to have the best student-athlete experience and the most competitive equity we can, it doesn't quite line up."

Close has led her Bruins through the WNIT before, winning the championship in 2015. They fell short this season, falling to South Dakota State in the Final Four during the Bruins' their third consecutive road game.

Close wanted to make it clear, the Bruins weren't using those road games as an excuse, but that they happened at all was a notable difference between the WNIT and NIT.

"I feel really grateful for our athletic department, this is a cost, to play in this tournament," Close said. "It is an inequitable experience."

UCLA had to take five different commercial flights to reach Sioux Falls and then make a one-hour drive to get to Brookings, S.D., for its semifinal game on Thursday. The Bruins got to Brookings at 1:30 a.m. the day before their game.

UCLA grad student Jaelynn Penn won a WNIT title with Indiana, but her 2022 WNIT journey with the Bruins was uniquely challenging.

"My experience was a little different," Penn said. "I had the privilege of playing all of our games in Indiana at home, so we didn't have to travel at all."

Ahead of the 2021 women's NCAA tournament, Oregon's Sedona Prince posted a viral video of the weak accommodations the women had in their bubble training room compared to what the men had. In 2022, the women were allowed to use the NCAA's March Madness branding for the first time.

Those inequities have been highlighted for a year, but UCLA athletes say the WNIT format has to be part of that conversation.

Close tweeted about the differences between the Texas A&M men's team's experience compared to what UCLA had to deal with just for the chance to compete ahead of the Bruins game with the Jackrabbits.

The NCAA paid $5 million this season to close some of the gap between the men's and women's tournaments. The UCLA women's basketball team sees it as a good start, but far from true equity.

"We have a much more equitable experience than the generations before us," Close said. "We need to be grateful and full of joy about how far we've come, [but] we need to have a relentless quest for how far we still need to go."

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UCLA players say WNIT run highlights gender inequality in college basketball

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When UCLA junior guard Charisma Osborne scored 31 points during a win at Oregon State that vaulted the Bruins into the WNIT Final Four, it locked in another costly, grueling day of travel.

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This article focused mainly on women with professional tech jobs(or lack thereof). Women hold only 25% of these jobs and even in the few positions they hold, receive less money on average. While the amount of women in tech has steadily increased over the years, we still have a long time before equality between men and women in this industry.

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Source: iStock/Nuthawut Somsuk

We recently wrote a piece about the gender gap in tech that got a huge response from readers. Clearly, we touched a nerve in terms of what women in tech are facing, as well as the importance of gender equality (not to mention equality in general) in tech organizations. After all, these are the companies building the tools that are, quite literally, changing the world. Representation here matters because it impacts the algorithms that power big decisions, the products that are built and the ways in which we decide to solve (or not solve) some very big problems.

Just to catch you up, women only hold 25% of professional computing occupations in the U.S. and 28% of STEM jobs. In addition, despite the fact that women's workforce participation has increased steadily since the 1970s, the number of women in tech has remained relatively static for decades.

What's going on here? We wanted to hear from readers about their experiences with the gender gap, so we sent out our annual Gender Gap survey. (You can check out last year's survey results here.) Our survey of 300 people in the tech industry revealed that not everyone agrees on just how much of a problem gender bias presents - or whether or what should be done about it.
Read: 3 Myths About Women Working in Tech, Busted
A Look at the Respondents

In our survey, we received responses from nearly 300 people from across the United States and Canada. Responses were relatively evenly split between men and women; they included people from across the age spectrum and in a number of different roles in the tech industry.

Gender Representation in Tech Companies

We asked respondents about gender representation in the companies at which they were currently employed. Overall, respondents told us they believed that 30% of their companies' management teams and 27% of their companies' executive teams were female.

30% of respondents' management teams and 27% of respondents' executive teams were female.

Although these numbers are estimates and are self-reported, they are in line with other available data.

That said, individual responses varied widely in terms of representation. Some respondents said their company's leadership included no female representation at all, while other, smaller organizations reported rates of female representation as high as 94%.

Gender parity at the department level told a different story; more than 45% of respondents said that there were no or only a few women in their department. When women are under-represented at lower levels in the company, it paints a grim picture in terms of the prospects for better representation at the management and executive levels in the future.

More than 45% of respondents said that there were no or only a few women in their department.

Workers' Experiences with Gender Bias

The vast majority (77%) of our female respondents said they had experienced gender bias in the workplace at some point in their careers; nearly 50% had experienced gender bias within the past year.

Interestingly, the survey's male respondents said they'd experienced gender bias as well, although at lower rates.

Also of note: 26% of men said they had seen women experience discrimination based on gender; 54% said they had not. Almost 50% of women said they'd experienced discrimination in the workplace based on gender.

Almost 50% of women said they'd experienced discrimination in the workplace based on gender.

Hiring Equality

33% of respondents said gender equality in hiring is a high priority where they work, and more than 64% said it was a priority, if not a high one.

Male respondents rated gender equality in hiring to be a higher priority than female respondents; 39% of men said gender equality was a high priority in their company, while 31% of women said the same.

30% of female respondents said gender equality was not a priority in their company's hiring practices, compared to 18% of men.

We know that an equal workforce starts with hiring, so we asked respondents whether their companies prioritize gender equality in hiring. Respondents were fairly evenly split on the subject:
Read: Not a Monolith: 3 Top Women in Tech Share Their Journeys
We also asked respondents about where they felt their organizations were lacking in terms of supporting women and gender equality. The most common answers across the board were the hiring process, lack of work/life balance and lack of mentorship.

It is notable, however, that men and women answered this question quite differently. Compared to men, women cited lack of mentorship and the hiring process as greater problems than male respondents.

We also received a lot of comments from respondents that their companies only hire and promote based on merit - or should. While merit-based hiring and promotion is a worthy goal, studies actually show that a culture based on merit may promote gender inequality rather than reducing it, depending on the conditions. This is because meritocracy tends to rely on managers' discretion in terms of assessing employee performance. When managers are empowered to assume that their assessments are fair and unbiased without oversight or guidelines around how those assessments affect hiring decisions, it may actually make them more likely to display their implicit biases.

Why Women Choose Tech (Or Not)
Read: 4 Things Successful Women in Tech Want Students to Know
One comment we got from respondents throughout the survey is that maybe there weren't as many women in tech because "they aren't interested" or "they don't want to be." Our survey respondents said they were in tech because they were passionate about it - 63% of women said that was their key motivation for entering the field, compared to 56% of men respondents.

60% of men said the pandemic impacted both men and women equally; 13% said it impacted men more, while 9% said it impacted women more.

56% of women said the pandemic impacted both genders equally, but 23% said it impacted women more than men.

Broader statistics bear out the notion that the reasons behind the relative lack of women in tech have far less to do with ability and desire than with the gender stereotyping that tends to shape their career choices. For example, a large survey of university students conducted by PWC found that only 16% of females had had a career in tech suggested to them, compared with 33% of males. Combine this with the relative lack of female role models in tech jobs and the field can start to look like a place where only men succeed. (For example, can you name a famous female in tech? The same survey suggested that only 22% of respondents were able to do so, while 66% could call a famous male in tech to mind.)

COVID-19's Impact on Working Women

Several reports show that COVID-19 had an immediate and dramatic impact on working women. A 2021 report by McKinsey found that in every year prior to 2019, men were opting out of the workforce at higher rates than women. That changed dramatically during COVID-19, when one in four women said they were considering leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers, compared to one in five men. A 2021 study of the impacts of COVID-19 on women in tech, in particular, called it "devastating," citing high rates of burnout. Overall, the pandemic served to widen the gender gap in tech. In our survey:

In terms of the changes our respondents experienced as a result of the pandemic, 46% of women said they experienced no change, while 23%said that the pandemic had negatively affected their employment, including 10% who lost their jobs, 7% who had to take a position with lower pay or fewer hours, 4% who reduced their hours, and another 4% who quit their job and had yet to secure another. That said, 21% of female respondents also said they had moved to a better or higher paying job during the pandemic. This may be due to some of the increased opportunities and demand for tech professionals the pandemic provided.

Although 23% of female respondents said that COVID-19 had negatively affected their employment, 21% also said they had moved to better or higher paying jobs during the pandemic.

Closing the Gender Gap

We wanted to know what our respondents thought were the reasons behind the under-representation of women in the tech workforce. The No.1 answer women respondents in our survey gave to this question was that it's hard for women to get promoted to senior level positions; 53% of women respondents cited this as a reason for the gender gap in tech. This could impact the number of women entering the field in two key ways: First, it would mean they wouldn't have the support at the senior level from women who would be more likely to hire, promote and mentor them. It may also mean that women don't see tech as an area where they can succeed compared to other career paths with greater female representation.

53% of the women in our survey said that the gender gap in tech persists because it's hard for women to get promoted to senior-level positions.

Other top reasons for the gap according to women respondents included tech's "bro culture" (46%), schools' and universities' lack of promotion of tech careers to women (43%) and the fact that women know the field is male-dominated, which serves to discourage them from entering (38%).

Men respondents, on the other hand, did not agree that it was harder for women to be promoted to senior-level positions in the tech industry; only 30% of men respondents cited this as a top reason for the gender gap, compared to 53% of women. (The broader statistics are not on their side here - research by Pew Research Center found that majority-male workplaces report higher rates of gender discrimination. This suggests fields dominated by men may, in fact, be less hospitable to women.)

While 28% of respondents also told us that their company offered training programs and opportunities just for women, 57% of respondents said their companies did not.

Survey respondents agreed that increasing the number of women in tech will require more support at the university level, more mentorship and support, and better education around what a tech career entails. This applied both to helping more women get into tech, as well as retaining them once they arrived. (Research shows that women leave the tech industry at a rate that is 45% higher than men.)

What the Future Looks Like

As a final note, we asked respondents how long they thought it would take for gender distribution to be equal in the tech industry. Responses were pretty evenly divided between options, with respondents suggesting parity could be achieved in as little as five years, to it taking more than 20 years. Most respondents (32%), however, said they didn't think equal gender distribution would ever happen in tech.

Most respondents (32%) said they didn't think equal gender distribution would ever happen in tech.

While that sense of hopelessness is understandable, that outcome is hardly a given. In the U.S., female participation in the labor force as a whole has grown steadily since this 1970s. That shift largely occurred as a result of greater access to education, more demand for workers, and reduced barriers to entry for certain careers. In other words, those changes occurred on a societal and structural level. In order to make the next move for women in tech, the barriers that prevent them from entering and staying in these careers must be removed.

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Source: iStock/Nuthawut Somsuk We recently wrote a piece about the gender gap in tech that got a huge response from readers. Clearly, we touched a nerve in terms of what women in tech are facing, as well as the importance of gender equality (not to mention equality in general) in tech organizations.

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This article examines the wage gap in medicine careers between women and men. It also expands upon the small difference in salary can have a significant impact over a long period of time which is why the wage gap is an important topic.

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Women in STEM see more gender disparities at work, especially those in computer jobs, majority-male workplaces

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Women in STEM see more gender disparities at work, especially those in computer jobs, majority-male workplaces

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STEM related careers experience the lowest representation for women. As a result, over 50% of women in STEM are more likely to say that gender discrimination is the culprit for the lack of representation in STEM, ironically a field that requires diversity in order to streamline innovation. Considering 24% of men in the STEM workforce cite "lack of interest" as the reason for lack of representation, over 50% women in these respective fields report having experienced one of eight forms of gender discrimination in the workplace.

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Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project

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There are wide gaps between men and women working in science, technology, engineering and math jobs when it comes to perceptions of fair treatment for women at work and experiences of workplace discrimination.

Women in STEM jobs are much more likely than men in such jobs to say they have experienced discrimination at work because of their gender and to consider discrimination a major reason that more women are not working in STEM. While the majority of STEM workers say their gender has made no particular difference in their success, women in STEM jobs are more inclined than men to say their gender has made it harder for them to succeed at work. Those that feel this way raise a number of concerns including pay gaps and unequal treatment from their coworkers stemming from gender stereotypes.

Experiences with workplace discrimination and concerns about gender inequities are more pronounced among women working in computer positions; among those working in workplaces where men outnumber women; and among women with advanced degrees, more of whom presumably work in higher level, professional positions compared with other women in STEM jobs.

Although a higher share of women in STEM jobs say they have experienced at least one form of discrimination at work because of their gender, similar shares of women in STEM jobs and non-STEM jobs say they have personally experienced sexual harassment. Women in STEM jobs also tend to share similar perspectives with working women in non-STEM jobs when it comes to the value of gender diversity and the amount of attention paid to gender diversity at work.

Most Americans value gender diversity at work; more than four-in-ten say diversity contributes to organizational success

Americans are largely supportive of gender diversity in the workplace, with about half of U.S. adults (52%) characterizing it is as "extremely" or "very" important and 26% saying it is "somewhat" important.

When asked to cite reasons for increasing gender diversity in the workplace, 46% of Americans say an important consideration is that gender diversity provides other perspectives that contribute to the overall success of companies and organizations. A similar share, 43%, cite giving people an equal opportunity to succeed as an important reason, while one-third (33%) say gender diversity makes good business sense because it increases the supply of potential workers.

Americans' level of support for gender diversity depends, in part, on their own gender. Whereas more than half of women in STEM jobs and non-STEM jobs alike believe that such diversity is highly important (61% and 56%, respectively), fewer men in STEM and non-STEM jobs say the same (49% and 43%, respectively).

Support for gender diversity also depends, in part, on levels of education. Those who hold advanced degrees, whether they work in STEM or non-STEM jobs, express more support for the importance of gender diversity, on average.

Around seven-in-ten (68%) employed adults believe their workplaces are giving sufficient attention to increasing gender diversity. Similar shares of women and men, in both STEM and non-STEM jobs, share that assessment.

But two-in-ten women in STEM jobs (20%) and 15% of men in such jobs say there is too little attention to diversity where they work.

Men in STEM jobs are about twice as likely to think there is too much attention given to gender diversity (13% vs. 5% of women in STEM jobs) in their workplace.

On this issue, workers in non-STEM positions look similar to those in STEM, with men more likely than women to say there is too much attention to gender diversity but majorities of both genders say attention is sufficient.

About half of women in STEM consider discrimination a major factor behind women's limited representation in STEM occupations

When asked to explain why there are not more women working in STEM jobs, a major reason, cited by around four-in-ten (44%) people in STEM jobs, is lack of encouragement for girls in these subjects from an early age. On this, men and women in STEM jobs tend to agree (43% of men and 45% of women in STEM jobs say this).

However, women in STEM jobs are far more likely than their male counterparts to cite discrimination in hiring and promotions as a major reason why there are not more women working in STEM (48% vs. 29%).

In addition, somewhat higher shares of female than male STEM workers cite the difficulty of balancing work and family in STEM jobs (40% vs. 28%), lack of belief among women that they can succeed (32% vs. 23%), the shortage of female role models in STEM (30% vs. 22%) and the slowness of the training "pipeline" (28% vs. 22%) as major reasons why there are not more women working in STEM fields.

The one reason listed by larger shares of men than women is interest: about a quarter of men in STEM jobs (24%) say that a major reason there are not more women working in these positions is that women are less interested than men in STEM. Just 15% of women with STEM jobs say the same.

Half of women working in STEM say they have experienced gender discrimination at work; about a fifth have personally encountered sexual harassment

Half (50%) of women in STEM jobs say that they have experienced at least one of eight forms of gender-related discrimination in the workplace, more than women in non-STEM jobs (41%) and far more than men in STEM positions (19%).

The most common forms of gender discrimination reported by women in STEM jobs are earning less than a man doing the same job (29%), having someone treat them as if they are not competent because of their gender (29%), experiencing repeated, small slights in their workplace (20%), and receiving less support from senior leaders than a man who was doing the same job (18%).

Previous Pew Research Center surveys have found more women than men report experiencing gender discrimination. The share reporting these experiences tends to vary depending on whether or not the questions are focused on the workplace, per se, and whether they rely on a summary judgment of experienced discrimination or ask separately about specific types of discriminatory behaviors.

When it comes to the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace, workers are more likely to judge harassment as a problem in their industry than in their own workplace.

Among all those working in a STEM job, 53% consider sexual harassment at least a small problem in their industry sector, compared with 32% who say the same about their own workplace.

Women in STEM jobs are more likely than their male counterparts to say sexual harassment is at least a small problem in their workplace (36% vs. 28%) though similar shares say it is at least a small problem in their industry (55% vs. 50%). But, there are no gender differences among non-STEM workers about the degree to which sexual harassment is a problem. Some 36% each of men and women in non-STEM jobs consider sexual harassment to be at least a small problem where they work.

Overall, 53% of STEM workers say sexual harassment is at least a small problem in their industry sector, compared with 46% of non-STEM workers. About a third of STEM workers (32%) and 36% of non-STEM workers say sexual harassment is at least a small problem where they work.

Women in STEM jobs are also about three times as likely as men in these jobs (22% vs. 7%) to say that they have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. Similarly, working women in non-STEM occupations are more likely than their male counterparts to say they have experienced sexual harassment at work (22% and 7%, respectively).

Workers who have experienced sexual harassment at work - whether men or women - are more likely to say that sexual harassment is a big problem in their workplace (22% do vs. 8% of those who have not been sexually harassed at work) and in the industry where they work (28% vs. 9%).

These findings were gathered before the string of prominent sexual harassment allegations in Hollywood and beyond that sparked a public discussion of these issues, including the social-media-driven #MeToo movement.

Perception of fair treatment for women in promotion opportunities differs by gender, and the gaps tend to be wider among those in STEM than non-STEM positions

Overall, most workers in the U.S. believe that women are "usually treated fairly" where they work when it comes to recruitment and hiring (72%) as well as in opportunities for promotions and advancement (64%). Smaller shares say women are sometimes treated fairly and sometimes treated unfairly when it comes to hiring (21%) or opportunities for advancement (27%), while fewer than one-in-ten say that women are usually treated unfairly where they work during either process.

Women in STEM positions are somewhat less likely than their male counterparts to consider women's treatment when it comes to opportunities for advancement as usually fair. Some 63% of women in STEM jobs say women are usually treated fairly where they work when it comes to promotion and advancement opportunities, compared with 78% of men in STEM jobs. There is a similar, though less pronounced, gender gap in perceptions of fair treatment in opportunities for promotion and advancement among non-STEM workers.

One-in-five female STEM workers see their gender as a barrier to workplace success; this group raises a variety of concerns from inequalities in pay to evaluations of performance

The majority of American workers say their gender has either made little difference (68%) or has made it easier to succeed in their job (17%), while 13% of workers say their gender has made it harder to succeed at work.

More women (20%) than men (7%) in STEM positions believe their gender has made it hard for them to succeed at work. Majorities of both groups say gender has made no particular difference in their workplace success. On the flip side, a quarter (25%) of men and 8% of women in these jobs believe their gender has made it easier to succeed.

In this regard, women in STEM share common ground with those in other occupations. Some 19% of women in non-STEM jobs say their gender has made it harder to succeed in their job, compared with 7% of men in non-STEM occupations.

STEM workers who said that their gender has made it harder to succeed in their job were asked to explain why they said this. The most commonly cited hardship due to gender involved barriers to hiring and promotions and lower pay, including being turned down for leadership positions and being passed over for the best opportunities in the workplace (22% of this group).

Some examples of these concerns in their own words include:

"I make 75% of the salary of my male counterparts" - Multiracial woman, professor in allied health profession, 58

"There is a perception that men are better with technology and have the edge when it comes to promotions." - White woman, systems analyst, 55

Some 19% of people who said their gender made it harder to succeed on the job gave examples of unfair treatment from coworkers. Examples of these concerns include:

"People automatically assume I am the secretary, or in a less technical role because I am female. This makes it difficult for me to build a technical network to get my work done. People will call on my male co-workers, but not call on me." - White woman, technical consultant, 36

"I am more likely to be dismissed when I contribute. It took a lot longer for my efforts to be recognized than my male counterparts. More credence is given to male coworkers' ideas who have not proven themselves yet." - Black woman, software engineer, 36

Another 14% of those working in STEM who say their gender has made it harder to succeed at work describe needing to work harder than others to achieve the same success. Some examples:

"A woman has to be significantly better at her job to be judged just as good. The reality has not changed in 36 years even though there are more women in engineering now." - White woman, engineer, 58

"I have to work harder to advance [to] the same place as a man. I am also held to higher standards and feel like it is riskier when I make a mistake." - White woman, GIS consultant, 28

Another reason for difficulty with job success due to gender - cited by 13% of those who responded - referenced the general workplace environment, especially when women are underrepresented. For example:

"The upper [management] can be a 'boys club' and it is hard to get into it. Additionally, there are occasions when male employees are given more lenience in their work than females, they are considered 'big thinkers' and not doers, females are the 'doers.'" - White woman, programmer analyst, 46

"My workplace is run as a 'boys club.' It is harder for me to get my opinion heard over the males. The men can do no wrong." - White woman, science teacher, 25

Among STEM workers who say that their gender has made it harder for them to succeed in their job, 13% say that they have been affected by reverse discrimination. Survey respondents in this group were exclusively men. Most in this group say that in they have been discriminated against in their workplaces in favor of hiring and promoting women:

"Today the white male is the enemy. I've seen too many qualified white males passed over for promotions or advancement in favor of a woman and/or minority. Qualifications don't matter these days, rather your gender and race matter." - White man, engineer, 47

"In the tech industry, with so many males in engineering roles, males are treated unfairly when applying to other roles. Women are treated unfairly because they are promoted and selected ... with less experience and less qualifications so that management (and the company) can be seen as 'diverse' at the expense of someone who has objectively more experience and qualifications who happens to be male for middle management and higher." - Asian man, software requirements engineering and management, 38

"Women have less competition for advancement and are given preference over equally qualified men in an attempt to get a politically correct gender diversity." - Multiracial man, computer worker, 57

Wide gender gaps among computer workers and those working in majority-male workplaces over fair treatment at work

On average, women working in STEM jobs are more likely to report experiences with and concerns about gender inequities in the workplace compared with men in these jobs. Among women in STEM, those working in computer positions, those in workplaces where men outnumber women, and those with advanced degrees are particularly likely to have concerns about gender equity and to have experienced gender discrimination.

Roughly three-quarters (74%) of women in computer occupations say they have experienced gender discrimination at work, compared with 16% of men working in computer jobs. (Computer jobs include positions such as software development or data science, and include some who work in the technology industry and some who work in other sectors.)

Women in computer jobs are more likely than women in STEM, overall, to say they have experienced discrimination (74% vs. 50%) and these women are particularly likely to report pay inequities (46% vs. 29% of all women in STEM) and 40% say have been treated as if they were not competent at work because of their gender (29% of all women in STEM jobs say this).

Female computer workers are also more likely than male computer workers to say that their gender has made it harder to succeed in their job (31% vs. 6%), that they have personally experienced sexual harassment at work (30% vs. 7%), and that their workplace pays too little attention to increasing gender diversity (31% vs. 13%).

When it comes to judgments of workplace fairness for women, women working in computer occupations are less likely than men in computer jobs to say women are treated fairly in opportunities for promotion and advancement or in the recruitment and hiring process. While the majority of male computer workers (77%) say that women in their workplace are usually treated fairly in opportunities for promotion and advancement, fewer female computer workers (43%) say the same. Similarly, 83% of male computer workers say women in their workplace are usually treated fairly in recruitment and hiring, compared with 67% of female computer workers.

The same Pew Research Center survey asked about people's perceptions of gender discrimination in the technology industry. There, too, women who work in computer jobs are more likely than men in these jobs to consider gender discrimination a major problem in the tech industry (43% to 31%); about twice as many men (32%) as women (15%) who work in these jobs say gender discrimination is not a problem in the industry.

About half of women in STEM workplaces with a majority of men think their gender has made it harder to succeed in their job

The 19% of women in STEM jobs working in majority-male workplaces stand out in their views and experiences at work. These women are significantly more likely than women in majority-female workplaces or those in workplaces with an even mix of men and women to say they have experienced at least one of eight forms of gender-related discrimination at work (78% compared with 43% of those in majority-female workplaces) and to think their gender has made it harder to succeed in their job (48% vs. 12% of women in STEM jobs who work in majority-female workplaces).

A far greater share of STEM women in majority-male workplaces think there is too little attention to gender diversity at work (43% compared with 16% of women in majority-female workplaces). And, these women are more likely than those in majority-female organizations to consider sexual harassment a problem where they work (48% vs. 32%).

Further, women working in STEM jobs in mostly male workplaces are significantly less likely than women in majority-female workplaces or those with an even mix of men and women to say that woman are usually treated fairly in recruitment and hiring (55% say this, compared with 85% of women in workplaces with mostly women) or opportunities for promotion and advancement (38% vs. 70%).

By contrast, among men in STEM jobs, gender context is largely unrelated to views on gender equity in the workplace. One exception is that men working in STEM jobs with mostly women are more likely to say they have experienced any of eight types of gender-related discrimination at work (32% say this) than men in mostly male workplaces (15%) or workplaces with an even gender distribution (16%).

Women with advanced degrees in the STEM workforce are more likely to see inequities at work

There are also differences among women in STEM jobs by their level of education. Women with advanced degrees working in STEM jobs are more likely than other women in STEM jobs to report that they have experienced discrimination in their workplace because of their gender and to say that their gender has made it harder to succeed at work. And, women in STEM jobs who hold a postgraduate degree are less inclined to think women are usually treated fairly when it comes to opportunities for advancement where they work.

Similarly, highly educated women working in non-STEM jobs are more likely than women in such jobs with less education to report that they have experienced gender-related discrimination in the workplace either at a current or previous job.

By contrast, there are small or no differences among men in STEM jobs by education level across these measures. See Appendix for details.

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3. Women in STEM see more gender disparities at work, especially those in computer jobs, majority-male workplaces

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There are wide gaps between men and women working in science, technology, engineering and math jobs when it comes to perceptions of fair treatment for women at work and experiences of workplace discrimination.

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This article explores the gender inequality in a few different sectors and the differences in pay that women receive in those jobs.

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Gender Inequality and Women in the US Labor Force

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Gender pay gaps persist around the world, including in the United States. According to public information collected by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the global gender pay gap ranges from 3 percent to 51 percent with a global average of 17 percent (ITUC 2009).

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This article gives light to a Twitter account that exposes the gender pay gaps in companies. The account often responds to hypocritical posts about International Women’s Day from companies that pay men more than women. The account has more than 205,000 followers. In the United States, women’s annual earnings were 82.3 percent of men’s in 2020.

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Britain requires companies with 250 or more employees to report gender pay gap data. On International Women's Day, one couple used it to raise awareness about lingering discrepancies.

Francesca Lawson said that she and Ali Fensome created a Twitter bot, @PayGapApp, "to hold these companies to account for their role in perpetuating inequalities." Credit... Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Each International Women's Day, photos of smiling women appear in a steady stream on social media alongside testimonials from brands eager to show their support for gender equality.

This week, however, the stream was disrupted by a Twitter account that spat back pay gap data of companies, schools and nonprofits.

The account, @PayGapApp, targets companies in Britain, where the public has access to mountains of data about employers' pay disparities and men working full time earned 7.9 percent more than women as of April 2021.

Each time a university or hospital in Britain promoted International Women's Day on Twitter this week with certain keywords or hashtags, including #IWD and #BreakTheBias, the pay gap account automatically retweeted the message with a note about how the median hourly pay for women employed at the organization compared with that of men.

Francesca Lawson, a copywriter and social media manager in Manchester, England, created the automated account, or bot, with her partner, Ali Fensome, a software consultant.

"The bot exists in order to empower employees and members of the public to hold these companies to account for their role in perpetuating inequalities," said Ms. Lawson, 27. "It's no good saying how much you empower women if you have a stinking pay gap."

Since 2018, the British government has required companies with 250 or more employees to report salary differences between men and women each year. The reports are available to the public on a searchable government website.

Ms. Lawson said she created the Twitter account so the public could retrieve this information more easily. "For it to have influence, people need to be able to find it," Ms. Lawson said.

On Wednesday, the day after International Women's Day, the pay gap account had more than 205,000 followers. Some organizations had deleted tweets that the pay gap account had highlighted, while others responded with their plans to address the pay gap.

English Heritage, a charity that manages historical sites such as Stonehenge, responded to a note that its women workers were paid 3.9 percent less than men with a link to its report on the data, from April 2020.

"Since then, we've been working hard to reduce our pay gap & it is closing," English Heritage said on Twitter. "But regardless of its size, a gap is still a gap and the charity is committed to eliminating it."

The pay gap account highlights median hourly pay data, but companies in Britain are also required to provide information on gaps in average bonuses. Some companies also voluntarily provide more data and context in their reports.

Australia and Germany have also ordered companies to report on their pay gaps, but there has been no comparable requirement for businesses in the United States, where women's annual earnings were 82.3 percent of men's in 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The gap is even wider for Black and Hispanic women.

Ms. Lawson said she hoped the popularity of her account would show that there was demand for more data like this. "I would hope that other governments would want to start making reporting that data compulsory as a result," she said.

The couple first created the account the weekend before International Women's Day in 2021 and used it as a test run to see what worked and what did not. Now, they are trying to figure out how to best use the attention the account has generated to promote other issues related to inequality. Ms. Lawson said she would like to see some copycat efforts.

"The more people who are doing this work," she said, "then the fewer places there are for companies to hide."

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Twitter Bot Highlights Gender Pay Gap One Company at a Time

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Britain requires companies with 250 or more employees to report gender pay gap data. On International Women's Day, one couple used it to raise awareness about lingering discrepancies. Each International Women's Day, photos of smiling women appear in a steady stream on social media alongside testimonials from brands eager to show their support for gender equality.

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Is there (still) a gender gap in politics?

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Is there (still) a gender gap in politics?

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https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/there-still-gender-gap-politics

This UC Davis article explores some of the statistics behind the participation of women in politics and the disparities between men and women in politics.

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"A few years ago I took my children on a tour of the state Capitol building. My daughter was very interested in the art - the woodwork, the decorative tiles, and the paintings. After viewing the gallery of governor portraits, she turned to me and asked, 'Where are all the girls?'"

Bernadette Austin, associate director of the University of California, Davis, Center for Regional Change, studies regional issues and demographics in California, and told this story in a recent newsletter to stakeholders.

"We know that representation matters," she wrote. "When we see people like ourselves in positions of leadership, it signals that someone who shares our history and worldview is making decisions that reflect our interests and values."

California, as Austin's daughter observed, has never had a woman governor, although nationwide, 44 women have served or serve as governors of U.S. states, with a handful having served as governors of U.S. territories. Nine women currently serve as governor of a state.

Persistent gender gap over most of half century

As the 2020 elections draw near, an all-time record of six women ran for president on the Democratic ticket. One candidate, Sen. Kamala Harris, dropped out in late fall 2019. Some might call that number - which tripled the previous record - a victory for women's representation in politics.

Not so fast.

While women have made great strides in entering the workforce, running companies and getting elected to Congress, there has remained a persistent gender gap in politics over the past 40 years, according to Xiaoling Shu, a UC Davis professor of sociology who studies this phenomenon.
The facts about women in political office:

U.S. House of Representatives: 102; or 23 percent

Senate: 25, or 25 percent

Heads of state: About 24 women at any given time

Women remain less than a third of all elected officials in the nation in 2019 (Source: Rutgers)

Shu's latest research shows those attitudes have changed slightly since 2016, when the U.S. electorate nominated the first woman ever to a major political party, Hillary Clinton. She ran against Donald Trump for president and won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes, but ultimately lost in the Electoral College, which cost her the election.
The 2020 Presidential Election
As of February 2019, six women had formally announced their candidacy for president:

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii)

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York)

Sen. Kamala Harris* (D-California)

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts)

Marianne Williamson

This is the first time in history that more than two women competed in the same major party's presidential primary process. (Source: Center for American Women and Politics, Rutgers)

*Harris dropped out of the race as this story was being written. Read UC Davis research about how Harris' support may transfer to other candidates.

"Of all (gender) attitudes analyzed," said Shu and her co-author of a recent paper, Kelsey D. Meagher, also of UC Davis, "Americans hold the most liberal attitudes toward women in politics, with no gender gap and little educational difference on this issue." Their findings were published in May 2019 by the American Sociological Association. Women and men agree that both sexes are equally suited emotionally for politics, according to the survey the researchers used - General Social Survey of 57,000 people - but the period between 2016-18 saw a larger increase among women than men in supporting for women in politics.

"Women's support for women in politics jumped between 2016 and 2018 after two decades of minimal growth," Shu said.

Public polls tell a similar story. In 2018, a Pew Research Center study found that 61 percent of Americans felt positive about more women running for office in 2018. The number of people voicing support for women in politics was higher than in previous Pew surveys. There was little consensus, however, in these surveys, as to whether more women in politics would bring change to policy and politics, and even less agreement on whether women were being elected in larger numbers for a reason, such as the #MeToo movement, President Trump, or because Hillary Clinton was almost elected.

In recent decades, women in the United States have cast ballots in elections at higher numbers than men.

In the 2016 general election, 63 percent of the citizen voting-age population of women in the U.S. turned out to vote in the 2016 general election compared to 59.3 percent of that population for men, according to Mindy Romero, a UC Davis alumna who is founder and director of the California Civic Engagement Project at University of Southern California. She researches political behavior and race and ethnicity in voting for the university's Sol Price School of Public Policy in Sacramento.

A hundred years of voting

Still, 100 years after women got the right to vote by amendment to the U.S. Constitution, women make up more than half the population, yet account for less than one-third of all elected officials at city, state and national levels combined.
Women in Congress

Women have increased their representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as the Senate, in recent years. Today's House of Representatives has 126 women, which amounts to 23.6 percent of seats. In the Senate, there are 25 women, accounting for a quarter of the seats. The 116th Congress was the first to include Native American and Muslim women.
Credit: Center for American Women and Politics, Rutgers University

The share of candidates who are women varies by office type. Whereas women make up 42 percent of all school board candidates, they are only 27 percent of all city council candidates, according to research co-written by UC Davis assistant professor Rachel Bernhard. She is a political science researcher who focuses on gender, class and race in politics.

An even smaller share of mayoral candidates are women, coming in at 21 percent, researchers said.

"One thing we really see in this study is that women are doing great - but mostly in offices where people assume they are qualified due to their gender, like school board races." - Rachel Bernhard

"When the stereotype is that women aren't qualified - mostly in executive offices like mayors - they do worse than male candidates, even though they have more government experience," Bernhard added.

There are tremendous challenges to achieving parity, echoes a nationwide study, "Unfinished Business: Women Running in 2018 and Beyond," from Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics.

For instance, women of color made historic gains in the 2018 election, but remain far behind Caucasian women and certainly behind Caucasian men, who dominate politics. Moreover, gains for women in the 2018 election were concentrated among Democratic women at every level of office, while the number of Republican women in office fell short of previous highs, according to Rutgers researchers.

"Achieving gender parity among candidates and officeholders will be unlikely without Republican women," the Rutgers researchers said.

"The Republican Party's reaction to women's losses in 2018 and recruitment efforts in 2020 will serve as one indicator of whether the party serves as a gateway or gatekeeper to Republican women's candidacy and officeholding."

Women's rights and suffrage

Despite the persisting political gap in officeholders, American women have a long history of fighting for their rights in politics. The United States was a "pioneer in the development of women's rights, ideas and activism," wrote Ellen Carol DuBois, UCLA professor of history emerita, in "Women's Rights, Suffrage, and Citizenship, 1789-1920." This is the 20th chapter in The Oxford Handbook of American Women's and Gender History, edited by UC Davis historians Lisa Materson and Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor.

"Nothing about the history of women's rights, especially women's political rights on a national level, reflected the automatic workings of American democracy," DuBois continued. Instead, she wrote, it was women who were determined to have an equal place in the nation's political affairs, who pushed long and hard, who were able to achieve anything. It took more than a half century of steady political effort.

Women played an active role in the republic being established as 13 colonies broke free of British rule. They persevered, for example, in rejecting imported fabric in favor of the cloth they made at their wheels and looms. They formed "daughters of liberty" clubs to match the "sons." One of the first histories of the American Revolution was written by a woman, Mercy Otis Warren, of Boston. Some even fought along with soldiers, in addition to nursing, cooking, washing, and raising money for them. But, DuBois documented, they went unrecognized as being part of the polity.

Abigail Adams in 1776 famously admonished her husband, in her letters, to "remember the ladies," in the "new code of laws" governing the United States.

She pointed out to John Adams and other members of the Continental Congress as they prepared to declare independence from Great Britain that the harsh English laws governing marriage could make husbands "tyrants" over their economically dependent wives. Yet those laws stood.

A Progressive turn, and California

Women have increased their representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as the Senate, in recent years. Today's House of Representatives has 126 women, which amounts to 23.6 percent of seats. In the Senate, there are 25 women, accounting for a quarter of the seats. The 116th Congress was the first to include Native American and Muslim women.
Courtesy, Special Collections, UC Davis Library

By 1912, Progressives formed a third political party, taking some of those in the Republican party and women supporters with them. But many black women remained loyal to the party of Lincoln. As with most third parties in history, much of its growth split the votes, both literally, with the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson in 1912, and figuratively, through party loyalties to women's suffrage and other issues.

"In California, by contrast, a 1911 referendum stimulated by the rise of Progressivism narrowly succeeded in enfranchising the state's one million women," wrote DuBois. A network of women activists formed clubs, unions and suffrage societies and organized what would now be seen as a typical campaign using pictures, telephones and modern graphic design to promote "votes for women" rather than the old-fashioned "suffrage." They printed leaflets in Spanish for Latino voters and supported labor reforms.

By 1915, 10 states, all west of the Mississippi, had revised their constitutions to enfranchise women. It was clear, wrote DuBois, that the only way to get all women the vote was through an amendment to the federal Constitution.

By 1921, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote only applied to the states, so Puerto Rican women and Filipinas would organize separately, which didn't succeed fully until more than a decade later.

The continuing gender gap in voting

On the whole, women lean significantly more Democratic than men, often by 10 percentage points, said Romero. In California, that gap is even wider. Among women, notably, married women lean slightly more Republican than single women.

In surveys, women consistently cite the economy, health care and education as crucial issues that determine how they vote - rating them more highly than men do. As a group, women often find themselves more affected by economic declines. They vote issues that affect their economic vulnerability and are more likely to prefer an active government that produces a stronger social safety net - a key difference in viewpoint separating Republican and Democratic party platforms, Romero said.

"Race is a key contributor to the huge gender gap in our diverse state," Romero said.

"Female voters of color, led by California's significant Latina population, are driving the gender difference in voting. And both California's already large proportions of single women and women of color are on the rise." - Mindy Romero

Women and the black vote

A black woman votes in a recent election. Black women have played an integral role as active voters in the United States.
Credit: UC Davis/Getty Images

Despite the large gap that remains for women of color in politics, black women also had an important part of grassroots politics even before they had the right to vote, and it is this strong tradition dating back to Reconstruction that helped pave the way to propel Barack Obama into the presidency. These are the findings of UC Davis historian Lisa Materson, author of the 2009 book For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, 1877-1932.

Materson, associate professor of history, illustrates in her book that as African American women migrated beyond the reach of southern white supremacists, they became active voters, canvassers, suffragists, campaigners and lobbyists. They mobilized, gaining a voice in national party politics and electing representatives who would push for the enforcement of the Reconstruction Amendments in the South. When black men got the right to vote in 1870, black women, though disfranchised, helped them to remain informed and vote for causes important to their communities.

Obama's national victories, she wrote in a blog as he entered his second term as president, emerged out of the specific historical context of Chicago politics and black women's political activism.

"That the nation's first African American president holds deep political ties to Chicago is no coincidence because Chicago has long been a key historical site of black political power in the U.S." - Lisa Materson

The gender difference in voter turnout continues today, and is greater for blacks than the general population or whites, noted Romero, of USC. African American women have had much higher turnout than their male counterparts in every election during the past two decades. In 2016, Romero said, African American women voter turnout was 9 percent higher than for African American men. This marked the largest difference in black voter turnout since 1996.

Historically, achieving the vote came in stages

The first women vote in a general election in California.
Courtesy California State Library

"Women in Illinois acquired voting rights in three stages: suffrage for school officials in 1891, expanded suffrage for many municipal and federal offices in 1913, and the full franchise in 1920," wrote Materson in the introduction to her book. It was similar in other states, with women getting pieces of voting rights a little at a time before the enactment of the 19th Amendment.

Between 1915 and 1928, black voters in Chicago helped to put more black men into office than any other American city, including a black Congressman, Oscar DePriest, said Materson. His 1928 victory made him the first black American to serve in Congress since 1901. Black men continued to win in Chicago, and Obama was no exception. He lost one election, but won a seat in the U.S. Senate that made him the nation's fifth black senator, giving him national recognition and eventually, the presidency.

Women candidates and the 'double bind'

Scholars are looking at how women candidates are viewed differently than men, particularly in media coverage. Erin C. Cassese, associate professor of political science at University of Delaware, is among many researchers looking at the "double bind" - or the need for candidates to embody a particular mix of both masculine and feminine traits in order to appear palatable to American voters. "The double bind was a challenge for Hillary Clinton's candidacies in 2008 and 2016, and we will evaluate how it manifests in 2020," she said in an analysis published by Rutgers.

At this writing, Elizabeth Warren was a frontrunner among Democratic challengers to President Trump. Christine Jahnke, a nationally recognized speech coach and author based in Washington, D.C., and founder of Positive Communications, said Warren has a style that differs from her male counterparts in the election.

"Warren is continuously redefining what leadership looks and sounds like. It's exciting how she energized huge crowds with policy solutions, not bombastic rhetoric," Jahnke wrote in the Rutgers analysis.

"Warren calls out corruption while speaking empathetically for those who've lost the most. And voters are listening."

Amber Boydstun, associate professor of political science at UC Davis and a specialist on elections and media said it remains to be seen if Warren will continue to energize the electorate. "We'll need to wait and see whether voters' enthusiasm for Warren is enough to break through the double-bind barrier."

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Is there (still) a gender gap in politics?

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More women have run in the 2020 presidential election than ever before. But is the gap in representation closing?

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COVID-19 disproportionately affecting women in the workforce

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COVID-19 disproportionately affecting women in the workforce

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(Getty Images)

The COVID-19 recession resulted in a steep but transitory contraction in employment, with greater job losses among women than men. The recovery began in April 2020 and is not complete. As of the third quarter of 2021, the labor force ages 25 and older remains nearly 2 million below its level in the same quarter of 2019.

The pandemic is associated with an increase in some gender disparities in the labor market. Among adults 25 and older who have no education beyond high school, more women have left the labor force than men. Other disparities have stayed the same or even narrowed: The gender pay gap has remained steady, for example, and the difference in the average hours worked by men and women has slightly diminished.

The COVID-19 recession differed from prior recent recessions in that it disproportionately eliminated jobs employing women. Media accounts often referred to it as a " shecession." As the economy and labor market have been recovering for more than 21 months, Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to investigate if there are lingering impacts on the labor market opportunities of women.

Labor force estimates and average hours worked are derived from the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS), sponsored jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CPS is the nation's premier labor force survey and is the basis for the monthly national unemployment rate released on the first Friday of each month. The CPS is based on a sample survey of about 70,000 households. The estimates are not seasonally adjusted.

For a quarter of the sample each month, the CPS also records data on usual hourly earnings for workers paid by the hour and usual weekly earnings and hours worked for other workers.

The CPS microdata files analyzed were provided by the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) at the University of Minnesota.

The COVID-19 outbreak has affected data collection efforts by the U.S. government in its surveys, especially limiting in-person data collection. This resulted in about an 8 percentage point dec rease in the response rate for the CPS in September 2021. It is possible that some measures of labor market activity and its demographic composition are affected by these changes in data collection.

Overall, the number of women ages 25 and older in the labor force has fallen 1.3% since the third quarter of 2019, similar to the 1.1% decline of men in the labor force.

But this modest overall change obscures divergent outcomes for labor force members with different levels of education. Women who have no education beyond high school exited the labor force in greater numbers than similarly educated men. However, the pandemic has not interrupted the long-running gains of women among the college-educated labor force.

From the third quarter of 2019 to the same quarter of 2021, the number of women in the labor force who are not high school graduates decreased 12.8%, dwarfing the 4.9% contraction among comparably educated men. The pandemic also disproportionately affected women with a high school diploma. The ranks of women in the high-school-educated labor force have declined 6.0% since the third quarter of 2019. The labor force of similarly educated men has fallen only 1.8%.

Among the labor force with at least some amount of education beyond high school, women have fared at least as well as men. The number of men and women in the labor force who have some college experience but not a bachelor's degree has contracted for both groups, with no strong disparities between the two. Both men and women with at least a bachelor's degree saw positive gains in the labor force (2.7% and 3.9%, respectively) from 2019 to 2021.

What accounts for the larger labor force withdrawals among less-educated women than men during the pandemic? It is complex but there seems to be a consensus that it partly reflects how women are overrepresented in certain health care, food preparation and personal service occupations that were sharply curtailed at the start of the pandemic. Although women overall are more likely than men to be able to work remotely, they are disproportionately employed in occupations that require them to work on-site and in close proximity to others.

It is less clear whether women's parental roles and limited child care and schooling options have played a large role in forcing them to exit the labor market. The number of mothers and fathers in the labor force has declined in similar fashion over the past two years.

Turning to the number of hours employees work per week, on average, there have been small changes associated with the pandemic and they have occurred among men. In the third quarter of 2021, women ages 25 and older worked 37.5 hours on average in paid employment, unchanged from how much they worked two years earlier. Men ages 25 and older worked 41.6 hours on average in the third quarter of 2021. That is 0.7 fewer hours than they worked pre-pandemic (42.2). So, the disparity in hours of paid employment between women and men workers has somewhat narrowed.

The pandemic is also not associated with a widening of the gender pay gap. Among full- and part-time workers ages 25 and older, women earned 86% of what men earned based on median hourly earnings in the third quarter of 2021. Two years ago, the estimated gender pay gap was 85%.

The overall pay gap partly reflects that employed women have higher levels of education than employed men. In 2021, 48% of women workers ages 25 and older had completed at least a bachelor's degree compared with 40% of men. Workers with at least a bachelor's degree tend to earn more and thus women's earnings are boosted by their greater educational attainment. The gender pay gap is greater when you look at groups of women and men with equal levels of education. The gap depends on the education level, but in 2021 women ages 25 and older earned closer to 80 cents on the dollar compared with equally educated men.

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Some gender disparities widened in the U.S. workforce during the pandemic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The COVID-19 recession resulted in a steep but transitory contraction in employment, with greater job losses among women than men. The recovery began in April 2020 and is not complete. As of the third quarter of 2021, the labor force ages 25 and older remains nearly 2 million below its level in the same quarter of 2019.