Gender Equality: The Best of Times or A Stalled Revolution?


I presented the statistics below in the opening of my talk today at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. There are mixed messages related to progress toward gender equality: On the one hand, women have overtaken men in education, are increasingly the primary breadwinners within households, and men are closing the gender gap in childcare; on the other hand, progress on the gender wage gap has slowed, occupations remain segregated by sex, and men continue to dominate positions of leadership.

The private sphere appears to be more progressive than the public sphere at this point. Household decisions about education and the sharing of breadwinning and childcare responsibilities are moving toward equality while employment norms for pay, segregation, and promotion push against it. As men and women increasingly interact as equals in the home, they may come to expect more equality at work; current work norms, structures, and leaders, however, are often stalwarts of the status quo.

In the remainder (and bulk) of my talk I presented my research on how gender identities are actively constructed and regulated at work through mistreatment, from gender and sexual harassment to general disrespect. To the extent that progress toward gender equality continues and family and work roles become degendered, mistreatment based on sex should decline; to the extent that sex-based mistreatment is eradicated, gender segregation, inequality, and stereotypes should also recede.

PROGRESS

Education:

In 2009-10, women earned:
* 57.4% of bachelor's degrees
* 62.6% of master's degrees
* 53.3% of doctorates
In addition, 84% of wives are as (61%) or more (23%) educated than their husbands.
40% of households with children under 18 have a female as the sole or primary breadwinner.
Childcare:

The gender gap in childcare has been steadily closing. Men now do 79% of the primary childcare that women do, and 70% of the secondary childcare that women do, for an overall ratio men's to women's childcare hours of 72%.


STALL


Earnings:

Progress on eliminating the gender wage gap has slowed. In the U.S., women continue to earn only 81.1% of what men earn (based on median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers):
Women earn less than men in the same occupations (occupations with >5% of the U.S. male and/or female labor force, median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers):
Segregation:

The labor force remains segregated by sex. Below is the distribution of approximately 80% of the male and female labor forces in occupations that represent at least 5% of those labor forces:
Leadership:

Women constitute nearly half of the U.S. workforce, but their proportion decreases up the organizational ladder. Men constitute an overwhelming 95.4 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.


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