hey are “supposed” to be in, such as secretaries, nurses, and administrative support. Ninety-nine percent of secretaries are women, 93 percent of nurses are women, and 82 percent of administrative/clerical support workers are women. Women are also the majority of textile workers (91 percent) and housekeepers (82 percent). Women make up a majority of these positions, but the numbers of executive positions stay low. Women are also still paid less than men for the same work. Full-time employed women still earn considerably less than men. The average man with a high school education working full-time earns more than the average woman fulltime worker with a college degree. One reason women have a hard time getting to the top is the type of jobs they are encouraged to go into. They are concentrated in areas that are mostly staff and support jobs, which don’t have much opportunity to rise to the top. Women are often not included in the mainstream line jobs. Even when they get lucky enough to get a line job (which is the most common route to make it to a high executive position) they are often the line jobs which don’t mark them as leaders or as valuable members of the company. The highest ranking women in most industries are in non-operating areas such as personnel, public relations, or, occasionally, finance specialties that seldom lead to the most powerful top-management positions. Women Helping Women SucceedExecutive Women Battling For WomenAs mentioned before, women are much more likely to hire an equal number of males to females. Women business executives also overwhelmingly support feminist positions. Women executives are giving a lot of support to women in lower positions. They are trying to equal out the playing field. Sixty-three percent of the women executives in the Korn/Ferry survey believe that “barriers to women have not fallen at the senior management level,” and 70 percent belie...
