"Are we there yet?"
A new report released Friday on the progression of women into power positions seeks to answer just that.
The resounding answer: Not yet.
According to the study, released by the White House Project, 89% of Americans are comfortable with women leaders across industries, but women currently account for only 18% of the nation's top leaders and are still only making 78.7 cents to every dollar earned by a man.
On the upside, the study showed that Americans are ready for women to lead. Public support for women in power has skyrocketed in the past decade. In 2002, 77% of Americans reported being comfortable with women holding leadership positions, a sentiment that grew 12% by 2007 to 89% of the nation.
Despite the national acceptance of women leaders, very few have attained power positions. Women make up just 3% of the chief executives leading the 500 largest public companies, and globally, the U.S. ranks 71st out of 189 countries in terms of women's representation in politics--trailing behind the U.K., Japan and France and Afghanistan, Cuba and Pakistan.
The report also points out an important contradiction: Women are earning the majority of college degrees and make up more than half of middle managers, yet very few are reaching senior management level.
Surprisingly, the field in which women are now advancing the fastest is the military, which is also the sector that currently has the fewest women leaders. In 1994, only 5% of the top five officer ranks were women. By 2009, the figure had grown significantly to 11%. Total numbers hardly compare to fields like academia, however, where 23% of college presidents are women.
However, women's progress has slowed or stalled in many other fields.
In film and television, women comprise just 16% of all directors, producers, writers and cinematographers, a percentage that has decreased in the last decade. And although the majority of journalism majors are women, the male-to-female byline ratio at the top political and intellectual magazines has remained stagnate since 1977 at 7:1. Meanwhile, women make up only 18% of law partners, and women of color account for less than 2%. And despite women comprising half of Olympic athletes, just 15% of members of the International Olympic Committee are women and none are officers.
Given that this stalled progress is not due to a lack of women's ability or desire to pursue leadership roles, the White House Project outlines a possible plan for moving forward.
Setting clear targets and timelines for the number of women needed in top positions is critical. The role model is Norway, which in 2002 mandated that public companies have boards that are at least 40% women by 2005. In those three years, female board members jumped from 11% to 40%, and now Norway has a budget surplus of 11% and is debt free.
Other recommendations include focusing more on powerful women role models in the media, regularly tracking the numbers of women leaders and the wage gap, and increasing flexibility in workplace structures to promote career satisfaction and job retention.
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