Women, Work and Power

The great and continuing recession is fundamentally altering the very nature of our workforce. With compensation and job security falling, with pension benefits teetering and healthcare insurance zooming upwards, not working in a paying job is no longer a choice for most adults. Except for the rarified rich, those who aren’t working are either disabled, retired or involuntarily excluded from the workforce until their fortunes reverse. The generalized reaction to such unemployment appears to differ depending on gender.

“Many economists initially thought that the shrinking labor force — which drove down November’s unemployment rate — was caused primarily by discouraged older workers giving up on the job market. Instead, many of the workers on the sidelines are young people upgrading their skills, which could portend something like the postwar economic boom, when millions of World War II veterans went to college through the G.I. Bill instead of immediately entering, and overwhelming, the job market.

“Now, as was the case then, one sex is the primary beneficiary. Though young women in their late teens and early 20’s view today’s economic lull as an opportunity to upgrade their skills, their male counterparts are more likely to take whatever job they can find. The longer-term consequences, economists say, are that the next generation of women may have a significant advantage over their male counterparts, whose career options are already becoming constrained…. Both men and women are going back to school, but the growth in enrollment is significantly larger for women (who dominated college campuses even before the financial crisis). In the last two years, the number of women ages 18 to 24 in school rose by 130,000, compared with a gain of 53,000 for young men.” New York Times, December 28^th.

Male-dominated manufacturing jobs are diminishing in the face of cheap international competition, and as age takes strength and agility down a notch, the erosion of pensions in this sector, often from insolvency, makes these macho jobs less viable. Women still flock to the support jobs in healthcare, where growth continues, but the stigma of being a male nurse, for example, still keeps this sector largely female.

There are some interesting trends, however, where you might not expect them. For example, the harsh job climate, long grueling hours and the legendarily hard glass ceilings in law partnerships seems to have caused many women to rethink a legal career. “[W]hat's surprising is that women's enrollment at law schools overall has been on a steady decline since 2002, when women constituted about 49.05 percent of law students. The ABA's newest statistics show that women made up about 47 percent of all first-year law students for 2009 to 2010, and 45.9 percent of all law school graduates. The all-time high was in 1993, when women's enrollment bumped just above 50 percent.” Thecareerist.com, May 16^th.

The trending in other work choices suggesting that women will dominate in many fields that require or benefit from post-undergraduate degrees. Unlike people seeking senior medical degrees where roughly half the doctoral candidates are women, however, in the MBA world, a ticket to careers in finance or business, the trends still support men: “For the first time ever, more American women have master’s degrees or higher than men. Among adults ages 25 and older, 10.6 million U.S. women have master’s degrees or higher, compared to 10.5 million men, according to new figures from the Census Bureau…But when it comes to MBAs, it’s still the same old story. Men enrolled in full-time MBA programs greatly outnumber women—often three to one. At the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, for example, only 27.7% of the full-time MBAs are women. At UNC’s law, medicine and education schools, however, more than half the students are female. A similar pattern holds true across all the top 25 universities.” QuantsandPoets.com, May 7^th.

It can’t help that women still fail to advance as quickly as men in most corporations, either. [A study by McKinsey, a major consulting firm] “noted that ‘corporate America has a ‘leaky’ talent pipeline.’ At each transition up the management ranks, more women are left behind. According to Sylvia Hewlett, founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy, women represent 53% of new hires. Catalyst estimates that at the very first step in career advancement—when individual contributors are promoted to managers—the number drops to 37%. Climbing higher, only 26% of vice presidents and senior executives are female and only 14% of the executive committee, on average, are women. ‘At this point women are doubly handicapped because, as our research of the largest U.S. corporations shows, 62% are in staff jobs that rarely lead to a CEO role,’ McKinsey said. ‘In contrast, 65% of men on executive committees hold line jobs.) This helps explain why the number of women CEOs in Fortune 500 companies appears stuck at 2-3%.’” QuantsandPoets.com.

Pressure from maintaining a family, still predominately considered a female priority, has pushed women away from work where the choice comes down to family or career. But it is equally clear that women are moving to work choices where they can move to the top of their professions without giving up those family values. When women control their entire work environment, however, the business growth has been amazing: “The number of women starting companies has doubled since 2008, according to a survey conducted by Women 2.0, an organization to promote female entrepreneurship.” Huffington Post, December 29^th. And since money and power tend to follow skill-sets and education, women can be expected to rise in both earning and political power in the coming decades. As Census statistics tell us, with half our population living at the “low income” or lower category representing a significant contraction of our middle class, there are a lot of vacancies in that “middle” territory, and women are the most likely candidates to move in.

Want some more proof? Try this indirect statistic on for size: “According to consumer research firm GfK MRI and an ESPN report, 31% of men nationwide were the primary household grocery shoppers in 2011, up from 14% in 1985… Some estimates are higher. A nationwide survey of 1,000 fathers conducted by Yahoo and market research firm DB5 released early this year said 51% were the primary grocery shoppers in their household. Of that group, 60% said they were the primary decision makers regarding consumer package goods, which includes packaged food.” Los Angeles Times, December 29^th. Yup, things are definitely changing!

I’m Peter Dekom, and this change in economic power may ultimately result in a change in the attitudes and priorities that elect our political leadership.