Women still face workforce obstacles
By Harold Lee
Oct. 9, 2003 9:00 p.m.
The UCLA Women’s Leadership Institute is a testament that
many women have found success in professional fields.
The four-day conference starts Monday and will be put on by UCLA
Executive Education Programs. The program will addresses issues
female executives face in their careers, and offer workshops aimed
at giving attendees an edge in the workforce.
But despite years of fighting for gender equality, disparities
still exist between men and women when it comes to wages earned and
business school enrollment. The number of female business
executives is also declining.
In 2001, the national median weekly earnings for female
full-time annual income was 76.1 percent that of men, according to
the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In California, according to the bureau, women’s weekly
earnings are 82.5 percent that of men. Disparities are apparent in
various careers, with few favoring females.
Abigail Saguy, a UCLA sociology professor, said it is
“puzzling” because the percentage of women who earn
bachelor’s degrees has increased from 35 percent in the 1960s
to 57 percent today.
“Women now, tend to be more qualified than men, but
they’re still not doing as well in terms of earnings,”
she said.
There are two different types of gender segregation, horizontal
and vertical, that may be responsible for the differences, Saguy
said.
For horizontal segregation, women tend to be put into different
professional categories even if they are doing the same type of
work, Saguy said.
According to the vertical segregation model, women tend to be
grouped into lower positions in the job hierarchy, she said.
The “second shift,” a term given to family and
household responsibilities, is another factor influencing how much
women are paid in comparison to men.
“Women are doing more of the “˜second shift,’
which often means that they aren’t available for some of the
networking, conferencing and travelling that often result in
promotions,” Saguy said.
When it comes to pursuing a Master’s of Business
Administration, the number of male MBA students typically
outnumbers the number female students.
Oftentimes, pursuing an MBA conflicts with family planning, said
Linda Baldwin, director of MBA admissions for the Anderson
School.
During the 1990s, many MBA students averaged five to seven years
of work experience, which may have conflicted with family
planning.
Work experience is now less of a factor for enrollment, making
it easier to balance educational pursuits with life choices.
The fall 2003 class at the Anderson School for the Fully
Employed Master of Business Administration program was composed of
33 percent women, comparable to average percentage in the 1980s,
Baldwin said.
In recent years, the school has been accepting people with wide
ranges of experience levels, from less than one year to 10, she
said.
“One does not have to have the average amount of work
experience,” Baldwin said.
One reason that more women may be pursuing MBAs is that there
are more female role models, including the chief executive officer
of Hewlett-Packard, Carleton Fiorina, Baldwin said.
“More women are seeing that you can move up in the ranks
and see that the MBA is a good tool that allows you to do
so,” she said.
For the future, Baldwin anticipates increased enrollment of
women in business schools will continue.
Increases of women enrolled in the Anderson School does not
always mean more women are pursuing executive careers
nationwide.
The number of women pursuing executive careers is actually going
down, said professor Audrey Murrell, professor of business and
psychology for the University of Pittsburgh.
“Some people argue that there’s still this
perception that traditional management is not a desirable and
comfortable place for women,” Murrell said.
But others, like Anderson professor Patricia Hughes, said the
business world has changed over the past few decades, and now
offers more opportunities for women.
“Back when I got my certification in public accounting,
accounting firms weren’t even hiring women,” Hughes
said.
