Our view
By:
Shandra Jordan – Editor in Chief
Colleen Buhrer – Managing Editor
Joshua Pilkington – Sports Editor
Change takes time. Anybody can tell you that. But when you’re
sitting in a cubicle for 10 years while the guy who joined the
company last month gets that corner office with a window, it can
feel like it takes a long time.
The glass ceiling has been around basically since women entered
the work force and began to suggest that they – gasp – could be
successful managers, presidents and leaders just like men. It’s an
unspoken concept so ingrained into our society that, despite the
condemnation nearly everyone has for it (most people would be
loathe to suggest that women can’t perform leadership tasks as well
as men), it’s a concept that’s not going anywhere quickly.
It is so ingrained into our society and into companies that,
like universities, take time to change. Even the most enlightened
company will take time to bring gender balance to the workforce.
We’re making progress, but we’re not there yet, as today’s story
suggests.
Some other numbers to contemplate:
In the United Nations, women only make up 35.6 percent of staff
in the category of staff appointed to positions of one year or more
(www.un.org).
Women earn about 20 percent less than men, even accounting for
hours worked and marital status, according to a General Accounting
Office report released in November.
The Board of Directors of Hewlett Packard lists six of its 14
members as women, including its chairman and CEO, according to the
HP Web site. That’s just less than 43 percent.
So the fact remains that while companies and universities are
aware of the problem and working to find a solution, it’s not here
yet. We guess we just have to be patient.
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