Gender Equality At Work: Are We Making Progress?

by Jackie LaMar · Oct 31, 2016

Progress, and statistics, are funny things. While every inch of progress is important, sometimes the numbers don’t give a clear picture of where you are. Especially if the statistics are in percentages.

If you start out with ten and add five, you can correctly say you’ve gained 50%. And that sounds pretty respectable. But if the field against which you are comparing has a population of one hundred, your new total of fifteen is still small. It’s just 15% of the total.

So when you look at gender equality at work, it’s important to look at the actual numbers instead of percentage gains. After all, gender equality should mean 50/50. At least in my world.

If you were to guess, before peeking, at how gender equality on the corporate boards has improved in the top ten companies on the Forbes 500 list, would you guess that women make up 40% of the total? You’d be wrong. How about 30%? Wrong again. Surely women make up 25? Not even that number has been reached on some of them. And, surprisingly, Apple is one of them, with only three out of sixteen, or about 19%.

Below is an infograhic created by Ashley Fleming for Ecardshack.com that lays out the details.

While, as the vintage commercial said, we’ve come a long way, baby, we obviously have a long ways to go. Maybe it’s time we all set our sights a little bit higher.