Awareness Rises, but Women Still Lag in Pay

From the New York Times | By NICOLA CLARK | Published: March 8, 2010

PARIS - Companies in the United States, Spain, Canada and Finland lead
the world in employing the largest numbers of women from entry level to
senior management, according to a report published Monday by the World
Economic Forum. Yet the report also found that, despite increasing
awareness of gender disparities in the workplace, women at many of the
world's top companies continued to lag behind their male peers in many
areas, including pay and opportunities for professional advancement.

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Moreover, many of these companies have yet to implement policies to
address these gaps, despite pressure from many of their governments to
do so.

The forum, based in Switzerland, surveyed 600 heads of human resources
offices at the largest employers in 20 countries representing 16
different industries.

The poll assessed companies according to a range of criteria, including
rates of female representation, whether the companies measured or set
targets for gender balance in pay or promotion, and whether they offered
benefits, like paid family leave, to promote work-life balance for
their employees.

The findings, which were timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of
International Women's Day, follow the announcement Friday by the
European Union of an initiative aimed at significantly narrowing the
union's average 18 percent gender wage gap, which has changed little in
the past 15 years.

A study by the 27-member union last year estimated that closing the wage
gap could lead to a potential increase of 15 percent to 45 percent in
gross domestic product.

A 2009 report by the International Labor Organization found an average
20 percent difference in pay for men and women employed full time in the
Group of 20 largest developed and developing economies. Yet the World
Economic Forum's report found that 72 percent of the companies in its
survey had no systems to track salary differences by gender.

In addition, 60 percent of the companies said they had no affirmative
action policies to promote women within their hierarchies and did not
measure women's participation in their work forces.

Companies in India had the lowest percentage of female employees, 23
percent, just below Japan, with 24 percent, the forum's report found.

Turkey, Austria and Italy rounded out the bottom five, with women
representing just 26 percent, 29 percent and 30 percent of their staffs,
respectively.

As its focus was on companies, the forum's survey did not assess the
status of women working in the public sector or in education, areas
where female representation is traditionally high and where policies to
promote gender balance are often institutionalized by law.

Women remained in the minority of senior corporate managers,
representing just 5 percent of the chief executives of the 600 companies
surveyed. Finnish companies in the sample had the largest proportion of
female chief executives, with 13 percent, followed closely by Norway
and Turkey with 12 percent and Italy and Brazil with 11 percent.

The high percentage of female chief executives at Turkish companies,
despite having relatively low levels of female employment, was due to
the fact that many of the biggest companies were controlled by families
where women were at the helm, said Saadia Zahidi, co-author of the
report and head of the forum's Women Leaders and Gender Parity Program.
In Italy, which reported similarly large numbers of women at the top,
the companies surveyed were mainly large, multinational corporations.

In both countries, Ms. Zahidi said, "there is a real dearth of women
elsewhere in the corporate hierarchy."

The forum's findings also follow a global study of 4,500 business school
graduates published last month by Catalyst, a U.S.-based organization
that advocates for women in the workplace.

The Catalyst study found that, even in this high-potential group, women
consistently lagged behind men in advancement and compensation from
their very first professional job. The differences held even in
comparing men and women of equal levels of work experience and
professional aspiration and in discounting for whether or not they had
children.

Herminia Ibarra, a professor of leadership and organizational behavior
at Insead, an international business school, and a co-author of the
forum's report, said of the findings, "Study after study shows that, in
most countries and industries, women enter the workplace pipeline in
representative numbers. Then, something fails to happen."