2017 Status Report: Vermont Women and Leadership

2017 Status Report: Vermont Women and Leadership

Apr 4, 2017 | Corporate, Economic Security, Leadership, State Initiatives, Talent Management, Vermont, Wage Gap, Work, Workplace Diversity

This is the fourth in a series of reports published by Change The Story on topics related to women’s economic status. This report focuses specifically on women’s leadership in political, civic, and professional spheres, and the way in which leadership is related to economic security. We focused on leadership roles that can be identified and counted, including elected or appointed public servants at the state and municipal levels, leaders of critical community institutions, and leaders of organizations in the private and non-profit sectors. That said, it is important that we acknowledge the myriad other ways in which Vermont women and men serve as leaders, many of them unrecognized by traditional measures but nonetheless critically important. Most of the data in this report is either new or not regularly collected or published. All of it is specific to Vermont and is vitally important – not just in terms of what it reflects about women, but because of its implications for the state as a whole.

Download the full report.

Download the companion slide deck.

Among our findings:

  • By some measures Vermont is a national pacesetter in its share of women in public leadership.
    • Women are 39.4% of those serving in Vermont’s General Assembly, 60% of the state’s Supreme Court Justices, 43% of Executive Cabinet members and 50% of its public university and college presidents.
  • However, Vermont’s progress in achieving gender parity in leadership arenas has been uneven, slow-going or in some cases nonexistent.
    • Just one of Vermont’s six statewide officials is a woman, trailing the national average by 7 percentage points. Indeed, of the 296 individuals ever elected to statewide office, only 11 have been women.
    • Vermont and Mississippi are the only two states that have never sent a woman to Congress.
    • While women’s participation in Vermont’s General Assembly is the second highest in the country, the pace of change has essentially leveled off since 1993; in 24 years, women’s share of legislative seats has increased by just four percentage points.
  • When only 8% of Vermont’s highest grossing companies and 3 of its 15 hospitals are led by women, we can be certain that we are not making full use of all our state’s talent.
HBR: The Men Who Mentor Women

HBR: The Men Who Mentor Women

Dec 15, 2016 | Corporate, Leadership, Role of Men

Source: Harvard Business Review, Dec. 7, 2016

By Anna Marie Valerio and Katina Sawyer

“While women make up 51.5% of all managers, much fewer women rise to the C-suite. A survey of 25,000 Harvard Business School graduates found that although male and female graduates had similar levels of ambition, men were significantly more likely to have positions in senior management, direct reports, and profit-and-loss responsibility.

We know having a sponsor who supports your career can help level the playing field for women. So who are the men in your organization known as informal champions of women, for the way that their behaviors advance female leaders? And what do they have in common?

From previous research, we already know that these “male champions” genuinely believe in fairness, gender equity, and the development of talent in their organizations, and that they are easily identified by female leaders for the critical role they play advancing women’s careers.

But we wanted to know more about what these men do differently. How do they stand up to pressure from peers or the expectations of outmoded organizational cultures? How do they use their power to create diverse, inclusive organizations?

We asked senior male and female leaders in Fortune 500 companies and non-profit organizations to tell us about the behaviors of these “male champions.” We conducted 75 semi-structured confidential interviews with leaders in the C-suite or one to three levels below C-suite in both Fortune 500 companies and non-profit organizations. After subjecting these interviews to a rigorous qualitative analysis, we saw several themes emerge.

Generally, we saw that “male champions” have learned that gender inclusiveness means involving both men and women in advancing women’s leadership. Although many organizations have attempted to fight gender bias by focusing on women – offering training programs or networking groups specifically for them — the leaders we interviewed realized that any solutions that involve only 50% of the human population are likely to have limited success.”

[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”https://hbr.org/2016/12/the-men-who-mentor-women” title=”Read the full article.” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Read the full article.[/x_button]

 

Knowledge at Wharton: Why Corporate Gender Equality Could Take 100 Years

Knowledge at Wharton: Why Corporate Gender Equality Could Take 100 Years

Nov 21, 2016 | Corporate, Leadership, Political

Source: Knowledge at Wharton

“It will take more than a century to reach gender parity in the C-suite, and a quarter-century to achieve equality even at the senior VP level, according to a report by McKinsey & Company. “We’re moving at a glacial pace,” said McKinsey associate Rachel Valentino. “We need to be doing more to address this issue faster.” Among the 50 new CEOs hired by Fortune 500 companies over the past year, not one is female.These and other surprising statistics can be found in the report “Women in the Workplace 2015,” which Valentino presented at this year’s Wharton Women’s Summit. The report concluded that “corporate America is not on a path to gender equality” and revealed that “women are still underrepresented at every level in the corporate pipeline.”

The study is part of a long-term partnership between McKinsey and LeanIn.Org, the nonprofit founded by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in 2013. The research analyzed 118 companies and nearly 30,000 employees.

Valentino asserted that advancing women up the corporate ladder, besides being the ethical thing to do, would boost the U.S. economy by $2.1 trillion. Forty percent of the economic gain would come from increased workforce participation, 30% from increased full-time employment, and 30% from a changing sector mix. Gender parity in business would represent 10% more U.S. GDP growth through 2025 than business as usual.”

[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/corporate-gender-equality-take-100-years/” title=”Read the full article.” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Read the full article.[/x_button]

 

2016 Status Report: Women’s Business Ownership and the Vermont Economy

2016 Status Report: Women’s Business Ownership and the Vermont Economy

Oct 17, 2016 | Corporate, Economic Security, Entrepreneurs, Occupational Segregation, State Initiatives, Talent Management, Vermont, Wage Gap, Work, Workplace Diversity

This is the third in a series of briefs published by Change The Story on topics related to women’s economic status. This report focuses specifically on business ownership by women and its potential to bolster and invigorate Vermont’s economy. Like the majority of national and regional reports on businesses, this report relies heavily on data from the 2012 U.S. Census Survey of Business Owners. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are specific to Vermont. To date, we have had to rely on national reports to define the health of Vermont’s women-owned businesses. But their conclusions paint conflicting pictures: one analysis of 2014 data ranked Vermont first among states for entrepreneurs, while another ranked Vermont 50th. The difference between these rankings begs the question: What is the real story for Vermont women and business ownership?

Download the full report.

Download the companion slide deck.

Among the findings:

  • Women-owned businesses are vital to Vermont’s economy.
    • Women own 23,417 businesses in Vermont, which employ 36,326 people, and generate annual revenues of approximately $2.2 billion.

  • Although growing at a faster rate than businesses owned by men, women-owned firms in Vermont are fewer in number, smaller in size, and lower in annual revenues.
    • Between 2007-2011, the number of female-owned businesses grew 15%; during the same period male-owned businesses grew by only 6%.
    • Women-owned businesses generate 9% of gross revenues and employ 12% of workers in privately-held Vermont firms.
    • Women business owners are significantly underrepresented in 9 of the 10 highest grossing sectors. This limits financial opportunities for individual women and their potential contributions to Vermont’s economy.

  • Women-owned businesses have the potential to play a much bigger role in Vermont’s economic development.
    • If the percent of women-owned businesses that are employers matched that of male-owned businesses, and those firms had the same average receipts, it would add $3.8 billion to Vermont’s economy.
    • If Vermont women chose business ownership at the same rate as men, it would result in more than 10,500 new businesses.
    • If just 1 in 4 of the existing 20,786 women-owned businesses without employees hired just one worker, it would result in an additional 5,200 new jobs.

  • Maximizing the potential of women-owned businesses – and indeed all of VT businesses – requires new and better data.
    • While existing business-related data sources can provide reliable top-line statistics, they are less useful in revealing nuanced information about the motivations, challenges or opportunities experienced by Vermont business owners. Focusing on the finer points of what makes a business successful is critical to Vermont’s economic future.
Aside From Culture, What Determines Whether a Job is ‘Male’ or ‘Female’?

Aside From Culture, What Determines Whether a Job is ‘Male’ or ‘Female’?

May 20, 2016 | Corporate, Work, Workplace Diversity

 

“The most commonly cited statistic in the debate over equal pay—that American women on average make about 80 cents for every dollar American men make—has come to signify a lot more than just a financial disparity between genders. These days, it also connotes inequity in the workplace, the motherhood penalty,gender-based discrimination, a more limited path to top-paying and leadershippositions. It encapsulates all the difficulties of being a working woman.

In fact, the issue is even more complicated than it lets on. A common rebuttal to the 80-cents figure is that, when controlling for the career choices that men and women each tend to make, the pay disparity shrinks. In other words, men and women are being paid differently for doing different work.

This concept—economists call it “gender-based occupational segregation”—is something that researchers identified as a contributing factor to pay disparities as early as the 1960s. Economists have estimated that adjusting for these occupational differences brings the gap down to about 9 percent, and recent data on white-collar professionals puts the adjusted gap at even lower than that.

 This interpretation of occupational segregation, though, is somewhat controversial, since it puts the onus on women to “choose” the jobs that pay more. Efforts to alter this dynamic have been made, for instance, in STEM fields, where a lack of female representation has resulted in initiatives to get young women interested in science and coding as well as to create pathways for them to attain those high-paying jobs.”

[x_button shape=”square” size=”regular” float=”none” href=”http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/gender-segregation/483488/” title=”Aside From Culture, What Determines Whether a Job is ‘Male’ or ‘Female’?” target=”blank” info=”none” info_place=”top” info_trigger=”hover”]Read the full article[/x_button]

 

2016 Status Report: Where VT Women Work…and Why It Matters

2016 Status Report: Where VT Women Work…and Why It Matters

Apr 11, 2016 | Corporate, Economic Security, Occupational Segregation, State Initiatives, Talent Management, Vermont, Wage Gap, Work, Workplace Diversity

This is the second in a series of briefs published by Change The Story on topics related to women’s economic status.  This report focuses specifically on occupational segregation, its impact on women’s wages, and the way in which it compromises Vermont’s ability to make the most of home-grown talent. Much of the data in this report is new or not regularly collected or published. All of it is specific to Vermont and all is critical – not just in terms of what it reflects about women, but in its implications for the entire Vermont economy.

Download the full report.

Download the companion slide deck.

Among our findings:

  • Women who work full-time struggle to make ends meet.
    • Of the 15 occupations in which women’s median annual salaries top $35,000, nearly half are in male-dominated fields.
  • Occupational segregation, the uneven distribution of labor across and within sectors by gender, is the norm – not the exception – in Vermont.
    • In 15 of 25 major occupational categories tracked by the U.S. Census, either men or women are 70% or more of all workers.
  • Forty years after Title IX, women’s work continues to be women’s work.
    •  The gender balance in most traditionally female occupations has remained nearly constant from 1970-2013. Nearly half of women working full-time in Vermont continue to be employed in the same occupations in which they worked forty years ago.
  • The next generation of female electricians, coders, and engineers isn’t in the pipeline. 
    • Young women are a small fraction of students who completed computer science, engineering, trades and technical programs at state career and technical high schools: 9% of those in information technology; 6% in manufacturing; 6% in transportation; and 5% in architecture and construction.
    • While the gender breakdown is essentially equal among high school students taking Advanced Placement (AP) tests in calculus, chemistry, and biology, young women are a minority of students earning college degrees in physics, chemistry, computer science, economics, and engineering.
  • Occupational segregation is costly – not just for women, but for employers and the Vermont economy.
    • Nearly 60% of high-wage, high-demand entry-level occupations are those in which women are a significant minority of workers. Occupational segregation limits the pool of potential workers for jobs employers need to fill.