Yes, that's what we are told, that's what the evidence now shows. Women are beginning to dominate the workplace at most professisonal levels. But that's not really a surprise, is it? This has been an inevitability in process for decades, hasn't it? From The Economist:
AT A time when the world is short of causes for celebration, here is a candidate: within the next few months women will cross the 50% threshold and become the majority of the American workforce. Women already make up the majority of university graduates in the OECD countries and the majority of professional workers in several rich countries, including the United States. Women run many of the world's great companies, from PepsiCo in America to Areva in France.
Women's economic empowerment is arguably the biggest social change of our times. Just a generation ago, women were largely confined to repetitive, menial jobs. They were routinely subjected to casual sexism and were expected to abandon their careers when they married and had children. Today they are running some of the organisations that once treated them as second-class citizens... Societies that try to resist this trend—most notably the Arab countries, but also Japan and some southern European countries—will pay a heavy price in the form of wasted talent and frustrated citizens.
--"We did it! The rich world's quiet revolution: women are gradually taking over the workplace," The Economist (12.30.09)
But there are and have been some well understood women's issues and challenges that are unique to their workplace experience. Much has improved, much has been accomplished, but those issues and challenges too often remain. The Economist:
Yet even the most positive changes can be incomplete or unsatisfactory. This particular advance comes with two stings. The first is that women are still under-represented at the top of companies. Only 2% of the bosses of America's largest companies and 5% of their peers in Britain are women. They are also paid significantly less than men on average. The second is that juggling work and child-rearing is difficult. Middle-class couples routinely complain that they have too little time for their children. But the biggest losers are poor children—particularly in places like America and Britain that have combined high levels of female participation in the labour force with a reluctance to spend public money on child care....
These two problems are closely related. Many women feel they have to choose between their children and their careers. Women who prosper in high-pressure companies during their 20s drop out in dramatic numbers in their 30s and then find it almost impossible to regain their earlier momentum. Less-skilled women are trapped in poorly paid jobs with hand-to-mouth child-care arrangements. Motherhood, not sexism, is the issue: inAmerica, childless women earn almost as much as men, but mothers earn significantly less. And those mothers' relative poverty also disadvantages their children.
Demand for female brains is helping to alleviate some of these problems....Several trends favour the more educated sex, including the "war for talent" and thegrowing flexibility of the workplace. Law firms, consultancies and banks are rethinking their "up or out" promotion systems because they are losing so many able women. More than 90% of companies in Germany and Sweden allow flexible working. And new technology is making it easier to redesign work in all sorts of family-friendly ways.
The professional ascendency of women has long been a fact of modern life, and cannot be minimized or dismissed. More, the education, talent and performance of women is causing the workplace--employers--to rethink past practices, to adjust, and better accomodate the family and child-rearing demands on women. This trend will likely only continue to the benefit of all concerned. But will more attention now be paid to the resulting professional and social implications for men: research, consulting and training? Or as the article implies, has the professional ascendancy of women been gradual enough, and accepted by men well enough, that the implications for men have been less an issue than some might have expected?
If so, then the last steps in the evolution of women's profession roles--the notable expansion of their presence at the highest levels of professional leadership--will likely proceed without fanfare or notable disruption in the concurrent evolution of gender roles and expectations. So far, so good.
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=15174489
No comments:
Post a Comment