The ammunition for the next big battle between the sexes lies on Labor Secretary Lynn Martin`s desk. Dubbed the ”glass ceiling initiative,” the controversial study on gender discrimination in the executive suite has been deep-sixed since its March due date. With luck, say department insiders, recommendations finally may emerge ”sometime this summer.”
On the face of it, the survey of nine major companies contains little to justify this cloak-and-dagger secrecy.
The report concludes that women`s routes to the top are blocked by a
”glass ceiling” of subtle discrimination that limits their opportunities to participate in everything from overseas assignments to company-sponsored training programs.
Misconceptions about what women want also hamper their progress. At many of the companies studied, for example, men in positions of authority often assumed that women who had children wouldn`t be interested in high-profile transfers or changes of assignment because of the longer hours the jobs would require.
Such subtle discrimination is one reason the glass ceiling has remained a rigid barrier for women attempting to push beyond middle management. Today, 3 of every 100 top executive jobs, on average, at the largest U.S. companies are held by women, according to a study by the University of California at Los Angeles Graduate School of Management and corporate recruiter Korn/Ferry International, a number that has barely budged in a decade.
But beyond its actual findings, the significance of the Labor Department`s glass-ceiling report lies in the aura of indecision and ambivalence that surrounds it. Martin has told aides she won`t release the findings of the report until she can devise recommendations that will help women break through the glass ceiling-and in the Bush administration, selling any kind of antidiscrimination remedy won`t be easy. Others on the Bush team have wanted the report kept under wraps for fear that it could hurt their case against some provisions of the pending civil rights act.
Indeed, the White House strongly opposes legislation that would allow women to seek punitive damages in discrimination cases.
”There is some nervousness about how the glass-ceiling initiative will be interpreted and what kind of enforcement effort will be required,” says one Labor Department official. ”Certainly it helps us if we can distance it from the civil rights debate.”
Caught in the crossfire are many of the 56 million women in the work force. Nearly 30 years after Betty Friedan encourage women to join men in the world of paid employment, feminism has yet to square its goals with the burdens of equality-most notably, the long hours necessary to succeed in certain careers and the financial and emotional costs of day care.
As political and corporate leaders grapple for solutions, a new group of feminists is calling for nothing short of a complete overhaul of the women`s movement. These neofeminists argue that the glass ceiling itself represents one more futile attempt by women to seek equality under a system of rules, laws and policies created by men, for men. Instead, they advocate remodeling the work place along less hierarchical, more ”female” lines.
These critics insist they are not calling for a halt in the fight for equal opportunity, but merely for a rethinking of the game plan. And they carry some powerful ammunition: For most women-not simply those who have failed to break through the glass ceiling-true equality remains elusive. More than 60 percent of women in the work force are in low-paying clerical and sales jobs. The pay gap between men and women is still yawning. Overall, women now earn 72 cents for every $1 a man takes home, compared with 64 cents 10 years ago.
Some women are simply ditching the race to the executive suite because the closer they move to the top, the less certain they become that it is the worthiest of goals.
”After two decades of clinging to the male model, there has been an exploding of the notion that career achievement and material rewards are the yardsticks of life,” observes economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author of ”A Lesser Life-The Myth of Women`s Liberation in America” (Warner Books, $10.95).
Some women are leaving the work force altogether. The percentage of women in the work force ages 20 to 44 dropped between June and December of last year, from 74.5 percent to 74 percent, the largest decrease since the early
`60s. This percentage, which remained unchanged in the first quarter of 1991, is significant, economists say, because it appears to be coupled with a change in attitudes and behavior. Fertility rates have shot up 10.5 percent since 1985: Last year`s 4.2 million births constituted the highest rate since the baby boom year of 1963.
Perhaps the sharpest break between these new advocates and their predecessors is a view that true equality can be achieved only if the differences between men and women are valued equally. For some, that means re- emphasizing women`s traditional care-giving role in the home; for others, it implies putting a greater focus on integrating ”feminine” qualities like nurturing and sharing into the workplace. Nowhere is the clash more evident than in the legal field, where feminist lawyers are calling for a rethinking of laws from a ”women`s perspective.”
These new feminist leaders point to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in United Automobile Workers vs. Johnson Controls as a classic example of how the narrow quest for individual rights has led the women`s movement astray. In that case, the justices ruled that excluding women of childbearing age from jobs that could damage their fetuses constituted a civil rights violation.
But the apparent ”victory” left some feminists squirming. ”Now women, as well as men, have the right to work in a dangerous workplace,” observes Ruth Rosen, a professor of history at the University of California at Davis, who is writing a book on contemporary American feminism. ”What kind of victory is that?”
While high-court decisions grab headlines, the most significant battles are taking place behind closed office doors and on factory floors.
Corporations are finding that they must go beyond piecemeal programs like flextime and day care and rethink their assumptions about what constitutes a supportive work environment. Even companies that win awards for enlightened work and family policies have made little progress in bringing women into the upper ranks. In Working Mother magazine`s most recent list of the top 75 companies for women, fewer than 10 percent of officers or vice presidents in 48 of the firms were female.
Management consultant Marilyn Loden thinks she knows why. Loden, author of ”Workforce America!” (Business One, $22.95) a new book on managing in a diverse workplace, argues that women would prosper if they were encouraged to use what numerous studies have shown to be their generally stronger intuitive and people skills instead of adopting the ”male” command-and-control style. When she began promoting that idea several years ago, it drew nothing but barbs from women and men who thought ”focusing on differences would reinforce stereotypes and prevent women from getting ahead.”
Today, as the pool of skilled white male workers shrinks and demographic shifts create an ethnically diverse work force, more companies are starting to listen to Loden and similarly minded critics. Du Pont, NYNEX, PepsiCo and Lotus Development Corp. are among the firms that have instituted programs aimed at helping employees understand and value differences between men and women.
Though the programs are still young, some executives say they are pleased with the changes they have wrought. Steve Bottcher, vice president of operations for Pepsi-Cola, went through a 3-day diversity-training course and said afterward: ”A year ago, I might have automatically hired somebody who thought like me. Now I am much more likely to hire someone with a different point of view.”
At software maker Lotus, all staffers are required to attend a diversity- training course in which they discuss, among other things, why men often ignore women who speak during meetings and how showing emotions, even crying in the office, can indicate a deep commitment to the job.
By reinventing success according to a ”feminine” standard, women also are leading the way to more flexible work environments at a time when many men are also looking for such alternatives. In a new survey by Du Pont, for instance, 56 percent of male employees said they were interested in flexible work schedules that would allow them more family time; just 37 percent said the same thing five years earlier. Forty percent said they would consider switching to another employer that offered more job flexibility, up from 25 percent in 1988.
In reality, however, most men still fear the career repercussions of taking advantage of such programs. According to a recent study by Robert Half International, a recruiting firm specializing in accounting, banking and information systems, just 1 percent of eligible executive men take paternity leaves, even though an estimated 30 percent of companies now offer it.
”The more companies start valuing qualities like nurturing and care-giving, the more acceptable it will be for men to adopt those roles,” says Bradley Googins, director of the Center on Work and Family at Boston University. ”This next phase of the women`s movement is as much about helping men deal with their needs beyond work as it is about helping women.”
It is also about helping the millions of women who were left out the first time around-namely, those who viewed their jobs as a means of survival, not a ticket to liberation. In her new book, ”Feminism Without Illusions,”
historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese criticizes the white, middle-class women who spearheaded the feminist movement for establishing ”their own autobiographies as the benchmark” for experience rather than the lives of single mothers like 48-year-old Sonia Miller of Atlanta. To Miller, a staff clerk at a major corporation who has supported her five children, the feminist movement seems largely irrelevant.
”I know it has helped give women choices, but it`s hard for me to relate to being a feminist,” she says. ”The emphasis always seemed to be on these women in careers. I was just trying to feed my kids.”
Some of the feminist pioneers concede that for the women`s movement to make a difference to the Sonia Millers of the world, the strict focus of traditional feminists on equal opportunity inevitably must give way to a larger look at family and community values.
”In the first stage of modern feminism there was a defensiveness, which was probably necessary, against defining women only in terms of their child-care and family roles,” Friedan acknowledges. ”It`s time now to change the rhetoric and admit that many women want nothing more than to stay home with their children.” The leaders of the political and corporate worlds are finding out how difficult it is to ignore that message.
