Published April 04, 2001
Women are underrepresented in business, awarded less venture capital, and number only 30% in business schools. Top management positions filled by women have proven to mature healthier and wealthier companies.
A 1993–1999 University of Michigan Business School study of 1400 companies reported that women executives, in the first three years, grew their businesses better than men. Researches believe it’s the diversity of men and women among the management team that’s of pivotal importance.
Girls’ enrollment in core courses of higher education has exceeded that of the boys. But, girls’ interest in physics, chemistry, calculus and computer science seriously lags the boys’. While girls outnumber boys in math and science at the middle school, 18% fewer girls persevere to enroll in computer courses.
Forty-three percent fewer girls enroll in computer science college-preparatory courses, although those are typically the higher-paying opportunities in today’s information-age economy. Girls tend to lower their career expectations at high school which, to them, may be regarded as unfeminine or male intimidating.
“If you feel like you’re not as good as all the boys, then why take that risk?” said Jane Margolis, a researcher at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.
“The major thing is making it really interesting, When confidence drops, so does interest. It’s hard to hold onto an interest if you feel you’re not as good as your peers, The irony is that many of these women are just as good as men.”
Royal Farros of iPrint, a Silicon Valley company, says, “It means less that they are women, and more that they are competent. Where companies like ours are desperate for qualified workers, availability is most important.”
Men continue to dominate engineering and technology fields but not because women are genetically predisposed to dislike science. Women have demonstrated their strengths for other occupations superior to men such as foreign languages.
Gender inequality in education has narrowed nationally since the 1970’s legislation of the Educational Equality Act. From 1988 when women were entirely absent from top management, 43% of top executive teams now include one or more women in positions of authority. The influence of women at these levels has appreciably clarified the company’s market position, in part, by challenging the men to be open to divergent views.
A 1992 study by the National Science Foundation found that only 16% of all scientists were women, although women comprised 45% of the country’s overall work force and 51% of the American population. During the next two years, women scientists declined from 18% to 12%, a U.S. Department of Education and National Research Council statistic.
Professor Theresa Welbourne of the University of Michigan founded Eepulse, a company that measures employees reactions to their jobs. The aggregate data her company collects is anonymously supplied to management of their clients, the likes of Amazon.com, Citigroup, and Honeywell. In this way, aware companies can retain and nurture their most valuable asset, their people.
The Internet is helping women to overcome their reluctance to computers and capture their confidence in the arena dominated by men. First year college men and women report almost equal computer use. But the female freshmen, using the Internet less, are only half as likely to rate their computer skills highly.
Women facilitate a bridge of opinion and influence unlike the drone of men attentive to being congenial to other men of more powerful positions.
“Often a woman’s good ideas are ignored until they come out of a man’s mouth,” says Allan Fisher, former associate dean of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University.
“This is a phenomenon so well known among women in science, it’s become a running joke. It doesn’t matter whether the person speaking is the authority or not; it really often depends whether they’re male or female, If everybody thinks alike and has the same problem solving approaches, then things are missed.”
At IBM, Women in Technology mentor, recruit, and build a pipeline for women who desire a career in science and engineering. “Just seeing a woman who’s a role model, that’s a message in and of itself that this is a job that women do,” said Carol Kovac, director of IBM Life Sciences.
“Probably the biggest contributor to great breakthroughs in science is diversity, because we think differently about a problem. We can make something new, and I think that is at the heart of great science.”