Women in the Workplace 2017

More companies are committing to gender equality. But progress will remain slow unless we confront blind spots
on diversity—particularly regarding women of color, and employee perceptions of the status quo.

Women remain underrepresented at every level in corporate America, despite earning more college
degrees than men for 30 years and counting. There is a pressing need to do more, and most
organizations realize this: company commitment to gender diversity is at an all-time high for the third
year in a row.

Despite this commitment, progress continues to be too slow—and may even be stalling. One of the
most powerful reasons for the lack of progress is a simple one: we have blind spots when it comes to
diversity, and we can’t solve problems that we don’t see or understand clearly.

How bad is the problem? Here are some sobering findings:

 Women today are paid 83 cents for every dollar a man earns, according
to Gallup. This has “…barely budged in over a decade.”
 According to an article from Catalyst and findings from the National
Women’s Law Center, “The average full-time working woman will lose
more than $460,000 over a 40 year period in wages due only to the wage
gap. To catch up she will need to work 12 additional years.”
 According to a study by Org and McKinsey, “Women are less likely to
receive the first critical promotion to manager—so far fewer end up on
the path to leadership—and they are less likely to be hired into more
senior positions… Corporate America promotes men at 30 percent higher
rates than women during early career stages…”
 Women are not seeing the advances they want in the workplace and are
dropping out. Gallup reports that in 2000, the percentage of women in
the U.S. labor force was 59.9%, but had dwindled to 56.7% by 2015.
 Women are more educated than men, according to the National Center
for Educational Statistics. For the class of 2013-2014, women earned
more than half of bachelor’s degrees (57.1%), master’s degrees (59.9%),
and doctorate degrees (51.8%).
 “Men held 80.1% of S&P 500 board seats, while women only held 19.9%.”
This information was part of a 2015 census by Catalyst.