Women's Role in Society

“Gender Inequality and Women in the Workplace” Harvard Summer School. Web.
Unknown date. http://www.summer.harvard.edu/blog-news-events/gender-inequality-
women-workplace
Women have made great strides in the workplace, but inequality persists. On
average in 2010, women only made 77 cents to every dollar a man earned.
There’s still a gender gap that needs to be rectified.
Mary Brinton, the Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, has taught Men, Women,
and Work at Harvard Summer School.
She answered questions about how the United States compares to other countries on gender inequality and
where women can go from here.
The book Lean In has renewed conversation about gender in
the workplace. Is this helping or hindering women?
Rather than telling women to be more confident and ambitious, I think that it is more important to talk about
how workplaces need to adapt to the “whole person,” both women and men. This way everyone can strike a
better balance between working and spending time with family, friends, and their community.
Women have caught up with men in terms of education. In fact, in the United States and a number of other
countries, women now actually surpass men in educational achievement.
So there is not a problem with female achievement. The problem enters in when young adults try to balance
work and family, and women end up carrying nearly all of the caregiving responsibilities.
Where does the United States stand in terms of gender
equality?
The gender wage gap in the United States is lower than in many other countries. But what is troubling is that
the gap has barely narrowed since the mid-1990s.
Also, the contribution of men to housework and childcare has grown significantly over the past 25 years, but is
still far below women’s contribution.
So many working women continue to have two jobs—one in the workplace and one at home. Childcare is very
expensive in the United States. And we are way behind most European countries and many Asian countries in
terms of offering affordable, high-quality care.
What do you think is the root of gender inequality?
Gender stereotypes are hard to break, and like it or not, we are all prone to engaging in stereotyping at one time
or another. This is demonstrated in the work of Mahzarin Banajihere at Harvard.

As a society, we need to continue to encourage people to go beyond stereotypes and recognize the
contributions that each individual, male or female, can make to the workplace and to relationships.
What do you think is the biggest obstacle for women in the
workplace today?
The necessity in many prestigious jobs is to put in very long work hours and then leave the more mundane
aspects of daily life—like cooking, grocery shopping, and picking up the kids—to other people.
This generally means that women put many more hours into these household activities than men. This greatly
disadvantages women in the workplace. It is unrealistic to expect gender equality if workplaces demand that
women be available all the time.
As one female economist wrote some years ago, “Who’s minding the kids”?
Baig, Mehroz. “Women in the Workforce: What Changes Have We Made?” Huff Post Business. Web. 19.
Dec. 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mehroz-baig/women-in-the-workforce-wh_b_4462455.html
You'd think things have changed since 1970, but you would be surprised at how much
remains the same, according to data from the Census Bureau. The Bureau compiled an
infographic (included below text) examining data on women in the workforce, and though
some of the numbers show that women have made significant gains, others point to the
work we still have to do.
In terms of sheer numbers, women's presence in the labor force has increased dramatically,
from 30.3 million in 1970 to 72.7 million during 2006-2010. Convert that to percentages
and we find that women made up 37.97 percent of the labor force in 1970 compared to 47.21
percent between 2006 and 2010. Women have also made significant gains in certain
occupations: 1970 Census data showed very little participation from women as accountants,
police officers, lawyers and judges, physicians and surgeons, and pharmacists. However, the
2006-2010 data shows women making gains, including a strong presence -- 60 percent -- as
accountants.
However, there are aspects of the workforce where growth has slowed. The Bureau reports
that the largest gain in women's participation in the workforce happened between 1970 and
1980 and has since slowed down, averaging an increase of only 0.4 percentage points
between 2000 and 2006-2010. That's compared to a growth rate of 4.3 percentage points at
its peak in the 1970s.
Women also continue to be overwhelmingly employed in certain occupations that have been
traditionally oriented toward women. Women make up 96.3 percent of dental assistants, for

example; 95.9 percent of secretaries; and 91.2 percent of registered nurses. It is within the
occupational standings where we see the least change in our workforce over the past 40
years. The leading occupations for women in 1970 were secretaries, bookkeepers, and
elementary school teachers. In 2006-2010, the leading occupations were secretaries and
administrative assistants, cashiers, and elementary and middle school teachers. Some of
this is numbers-driven: there are many more jobs available for elementary and middle
school teaching positions than there are for surgeons, for example. Yet there are careers
with similar numbers of job openings in other occupations that may not be for women
traditionally. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be any movement among
occupations based on gender for both men and women. Men are holding on to the same
types of jobs they had back in 1970: the leading occupations then were miscellaneous
managers, truck drivers, and production supervisors. Today, they are truck drivers,
miscellaneous managers, and freight, stock, and material movers.
A big part of this is our own culture, which hasn't changed very dramatically, according
to Norma Carr-Ruffino, an expert on women in management who has taught at San
Francisco State University's College of Business. She has also authored multiple books on
women and diversity in the workplace. "The culture is important and it affects corporate
culture," she said. She noted that the change in terms of women's participation in the
workplace began in the 1970s when a single-income household could no longer support a
comfortable, middle-class lifestyle. "It's not so much that opportunities opened up for
women but economic need" that drove women to work, she said. But just because women
were now in the workforce did not mean that all avenues were open to them. It is here that
Carr-Ruffino credits affirmative action for helping to push the boundaries of what was
culturally acceptable. She noted that affirmative action forced people to "experience women
and minorities in roles that they thought they could never be good at." And that forced
experience began to change a cultural mindset.
Butler, Susan Bulkeley. “Gender Equality = Men + Women Working Together” Huff Post
Women. Web. 10. Jun. 2014 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-bulkeley-butler/gender-
equality-men-women_b_5924828.html

Throughout my career and my life advocating for women's equality in the workplace, I've
come to realize something: Gender equality for women cannot happen without men.
It was great to hear, then, about the new United Nations program HeForShe --
appropriately characterized as "a solidarity movement for gender quality."
Actress, women's rights activist and U.N. Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson
introduced the HeForShe program to the world at a special event in New York last week.
"We want to try and galvanize as many men and boys as possible to be advocates for gender
equality," Watson said. "And we don't just want to talk about it, but make sure it is
tangible." Read the entire speech here.
As Watson declared at the U.N., she is a feminist. She is proud to stand up and say that,
despite the fact that the word "feminist" can be "uncomfortable."
I, too, understand the uncomfortableness that comes with the word.
But I have decided I am a feminist.
In 1965, when I hired as the first woman professional at Arthur Andersen & Co., I didn't
think of myself as a feminist. Early on, I had a job, and soon realized that I needed to
concentrate on "my career." How was I going to be admitted to the Partnership?
Fortunately, I had male friends to focus me in the right direction for promotion and to help
begin to bring about equality. I got my first job at Arthur Andersen thanks to the foresight of
a male professor at Purdue and others who realized that getting the job done right didn't
depend on gender. Fourteen years later, when I was named the first female partner of
Andersen Consulting -- now known as Accenture -- it was also because of the forward-
thinking actions of many male partners.
We've come a long way, but women's success still depends on men -- whether we like it or
not. The fact of the matter is that, with men holding 95 percent of the CEO positions and
about 85 percent of all executive positions Fortune 500 companies, women simply cannot
advance without the support of the men who are currently in charge. Unless the men at the
top of our organizations strategically decide that equality at the top is the right thing to do, it
won't happen.
For real change, and in order to get more women in charge, today's CEO's (mostly men)
must have a strategy to achieve equality for men and women. This is more than having a
concerted effort to recruit women professionals. They must "create the pipeline" for women,
to ensure there are ample women candidates for all leadership positions when they become
available. And they must make sure there are sponsorship and mentoring programs for
women to show them the way.

The U.N. isn't the first governmental body to recognize the importance of men in the gender
equality equation. Australia's appointed Sex Discrimination Commissioner in 2010
established that country's Male Champions of Change collaboration to have the male leaders
make significant and sustainable change in the number of women in leadership roles in
Australian companies, government and society.
The 30% Coalition, a group I belong to, organized a Champions of Change program.These
executives seek to promote gender diversity in the corporate boardroom. They are public
advocates to encourage other leaders to support their mission... to enlist more men in top
corporate positions to recruit and develop more women to fill board seats.
With the HeForShe program, the United Nations recognizes that gender equality is a human
right, and that having women in leadership roles makes society better in a myriad of ways.
Smart businesses realize also that gender equality makes companies better in a myriad of
ways too.
According to Catalyst's groundbreaking 2011 study, "The Bottom Line: Corporate
Performance and Women's Representation on Boards," companies with three or more
women board directors on average outperformed companies with zero women board
directors -- by 84 percent when measured by return on sales and 60 percent when measured
by return on invested capital.
Improving gender equality in the workplace means improving corporate decision-making.
Having women in the board room and in the executive suite means having better insight
into half of the world's population; having insight into the minds of consumers who make
most household buying decisions and having insight into the people who control more than
half of all personal wealth and stock ownership in America.
But as Emma Watson points out, when it comes to gender equality in the workplace, we
don't just want "to talk about it, but make sure it is tangible."
To do that, we must hold male leaders accountable. We must not just let them "check the
box" on diversity. There needs to be accountability. As shareholders, board members,
investors and consumers, we need to make sure we hold them accountable to make
companies more diverse, and in turn, stronger and better.
Corporate executives -- men and women -- should be measured by equality goals, as well as
financial goals. Their performance -- and their pay -- should be impacted accordingly.

Roesch, Jen. “Turning Back the Clock? Women, Work and Family Today” International Socialist
Review Issue 38. Web. Nov – Dec. 2004
http://www.isreview.org/issues/38/women_family.shtml
Turning Back the Clock?
Women, Work and Family Today
By JEN ROESCH
Opt-out revolution?
While the Christian Right has long championed the return of the traditional family,
today the media is busy trying to sell the idea of a "post-feminist" revolution in
women’s attitudes toward work and family. The pundits of post-feminism argue that
women have achieved equality and are now suffering from an excess of liberation. They
would like us to believe that the daughters of the Gloria Steinem generation are
abandoning the workplace to dedicate themselves to the more fulfilling realm of home
and family.
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of articles, news stories, and books
heralding this supposed phenomenon. An article that ran in the New York Times
Magazine in October 2003 is typical. Titled "The Opt-Out Revolution," the story ran on
the front cover of the magazine with the provocative statement: "Why don’t women run
the world? Maybe it’s because they don’t want to."6
In the article, Lisa Belkin, the Times’ life-work correspondent, examines a small group
of Yale and Princeton graduates who have chosen to leave behind the corporate world
to stay home with their children. From this small and unrepresentative sampling, she
concludes that there is a significant trend of women choosing to become stay-at-home
mothers. She paints this not as a return to traditional values but as the new wave in
feminism: "This is not the failure of a revolution, but the start of a new one."7
Yet many of the sentiments expressed in the article are a throwback to the 1950s. For
example, a large proportion of her story is devoted to the idea that women are
biologically conditioned to play a nurturing and child-rearing role. She claims that much
of the conversation among women today is "not about how the workplace is unfair to
women, but about how the relationship between work and life is different for women
than for men." She quotes one mother saying, "I think some of us are swinging to a
place where we enjoy, and can admit we enjoy, the stereotypical role of
female/mother/caregiver. I think we were born with those feelings."8
In addition, this group of privileged women shuns any connection to an actual
movement for women’s equality. In the words of one woman: "I don’t want to take on
the mantle of all womanhood and fight a fight for some sister who isn’t really my sister
because I don’t even know her."9
Just a few months after the Belkin story, Time magazine ran a similar article on its
cover called "The Case for Staying Home." Reading through the article, one discovers a
story of long work hours necessary to make ends meet, inflexible workplace policies,
and enormous societal pressure on mothers. However, the conclusion the editors chose

to run on the front page was: "Caught between the pressures of the workplace and the
demands of being a mom, more women are sticking with the kids."10 In the climate of
post-feminist family values, a story that might have been an opportunity to expose the
difficult demands of the workplace becomes another argument for women returning
home.
Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels, the authors of the book The Mommy Myth,
refer to "the new momism." They describe how the media has created an unattainable
ideal of the mother who can "do it all"—while removing the social supports (welfare,
child care funding, preschool education, etc.) that working mothers so desperately
need. This has left women to conclude that, if they are unable to successfully manage
the multiple demands of paid work, housework, and child care, it is their own personal
failure. Women who work are fed heavy doses of guilt as news stories about bad day
care, latchkey kids, and the dangers of "detached parenting" fill the airwaves.
The authors show how the ideas of women’s liberation have been turned on their head
by this campaign:
The mythology of the new momism now insinuates that, when all is said and
done, the enlightened mother chooses to stay home with the kids. Back in the
1950s, mothers stayed home because they had no choice, so the thinking goes.
Today, having been to the office, having tried a career, women supposedly have
seen the inside of the male working world and found it to be the inferior choice
to staying home, especially when their kids’ future is at stake. It’s not that
mothers can’t hack it (1950s thinking). It’s that progressive mothers refuse to
hack it. Inexperienced women thought they knew what they wanted, but they
got experience and learned they were wrong. Now mothers have seen the error
of their ways, and supposedly seen that the June Cleaver model, if taken as a
choice, as opposed to a requirement, is the truly modern, fulfilling, forward-
thinking version of motherhood.11
The intent of all of this is to convince us that the institutional barriers that women faced
in the past have been broken down (or at least mitigated) and replaced by a set of
individual choices that they may pursue. As one woman put it, "Women today, if we
think about feminism at all, we see it as a battle fought for ‘the choice.’ For us, the
freedom to choose work if we want to work is the feminist strain in our lives." The value
of this notion to employers and politicians cannot be underestimated. It allows them to
reframe the question of women’s equality as one of personal achievement, rather than
institutional change.
The main problem with the theory of women’s recent return to the home is that it’s
simply not true. There is no sign of a mass exodus of women from the paid workforce.
In fact women, including mothers, are doing the opposite; they are working longer and
harder than ever before. In 2003, 78 percent of women with school-aged children, 59
percent of women with children under the age of five and 54 percent of women with
infants worked for pay.12
Clearly, women are not heading home—and for a very simple reason. Far from the idea
that women working outside the home for pay is a matter of individual preference,
most women work because they must. In an era of increasing job insecurity and
economic precariousness, 30 percent of working women make all or almost all of their
family’s income, and 60 percent earn half or more of their family’s income.13 Women’s
wages are not pocket change or disposable earnings that could be done without if only
families would eat at home as some of the back-to-home crusaders argue. Women’s
wages have become increasingly crucial to families’ ability to stay afloat.
In fact, the common problem with both the right-wing family values advocates and the

pundits of the post-feminist revolution is that neither speaks to the actual reality of the
majority of real women and children’s lives. The family values crusaders may long for a
return to the traditional family, but that family, to the extent that it ever existed, no
longer does. Only 9 percent of people today live in the traditional nuclear family of two
married parents with a wage-earning father and full-time mother.14The trend is toward
a greater diversity of families. Today, families may be headed by a gay couple, a single
mother, an unmarried couple, or a combination of biological and stepparents. Despite
the media-induced anxiety about unwed mothers, divorce, and gay marriage, 90
percent of people, when polled, say society should value "all types of families."15
Nazarian, Vera. “Quotes About Gender Equality” Good Reads
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/gender-equality
“A woman is human.
She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man.
Likewise, she is never less.
Equality is a given.
A woman is human.”
― Vera Nazarian, The PerpetualCalendar of Inspiration

Women's Role in Society

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