When considering the advancement of women or the lack thereof in the workplace, there are many factors to consider. There are several factors in play that foster the advancement of women in the workplace. Women’s participation in the workforce has increased by nearly twenty percent since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 (Eagly & Carli, 2007). Women have not only consistently had higher average high school GPAs than their male counterparts, they have been earning over half of the bachelors’ degrees in the US since the mid-1980s (Russell Sage Foundation, 2013). Women have been increasingly filling management roles for the past fifty years but are still nowhere near on parity with men, especially when it comes to senior management.
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While we have watched a steady decline in the incomes of men with only a high school diploma over the past forty years, we have also reached a point where young women just entering the workforce are out-earning their male counterparts in several major American cities (Luscombe, 2010). Unfortunately, this currently only applies to unmarried, childless women under thirty in certain metropolitan areas, but it’s a start. The primary condition feeding this wage growth is the growth of the knowledge-based economy and the decline in the manufacturing base in America. The higher educational attainment by women makes them qualified to hold positions in these sectors at a greater rate than men in the same age group. Women continue to earn bachelors’ degrees at a greater rate than men, where for every 100 men enrolled in post-secondary education there are 139 women. Women are also increasingly earning masters’ degrees and PhDs, and this phenomenon is not limited to the US, Japan stands alone as the only highly industrialized nation where men outnumber women in colleges (Eagly, 2007). This trend should continue and expand not only in the US, but worldwide as knowledge-based industries continue to grow while manufacturing sectors
While we have watched a steady decline in the incomes of men with only a high school diploma over the past forty years, we have also reached a point where young women just entering the workforce are out-earning their male counterparts in several major American cities (Luscombe, 2010). Unfortunately, this currently only applies to unmarried, childless women under thirty in certain metropolitan areas, but it’s a start. The primary condition feeding this wage growth is the growth of the knowledge-based economy and the decline in the manufacturing base in America. The higher educational attainment by women makes them qualified to hold positions in these sectors at a greater rate than men in the same age group. Women continue to earn bachelors’ degrees at a greater rate than men, where for every 100 men enrolled in post-secondary education there are 139 women. Women are also increasingly earning masters’ degrees and PhDs, and this phenomenon is not limited to the US, Japan stands alone as the only highly industrialized nation where men outnumber women in colleges (Eagly, 2007). This trend should continue and expand not only in the US, but worldwide as knowledge-based industries continue to grow while manufacturing sectors