Catalyst Blog

Diverse women are double outsiders. Women of African, Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern and Native American descent make up about 36% of the U.S. female population, but as today’s Take 5 highlights, many are excluded from high-paying leadership positions in corporate America:

1) In 2008, African-American women earned 61 cents and Latinas earned 52 cents for every dollar a white non-Hispanic man earned.

2) Among full-time wage and salary workers in 2009, Latinas’ median weekly earnings were $509—the lowest of all racial, ethnic, and gender groups—while Asian women earned $779. White men, on average, earned $845 per week.

3) In 2010, there were only nine diverse women general counsels in the Fortune 500.

4) Today, 70.1% of F500 companies have no diverse women serving on their boards.

5) The number of diverse women in F500 leadership remains stagnant: In 2010, they held 3.0% of board seats in the Fortune 500, down from 3.1% in 2009.

Catalyst recently found that for diverse women, stereotyping, exclusion from influential networks, and difficulty gaining access to high-visibility assignments can impact access to trusting relationships with managers. Mentor and sponsor relationships—coupled with targeted diversity training and mechanisms to hold managers accountable for meeting diversity goals—can increase awareness and dismantle the challenges many diverse women face.

In this edition, myths about working mothers are busted, the importance of engaging women on climate change is explored, and Australia’s “blokey,” or chauvinistic, culture is analyzed. Author Susan Douglas takes on “a new, subtle form of sexism,” and we look at disturbing information about the wealth gap for black and Hispanic women in America.

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 Gap, What Gap?

Startling new data on the wealth gap for single black and hispanic women only garnered one national television news mention, one NPR news story, two opinion pieces and one newspaper report. What did everyone miss? The fact that “single black women have a median wealth of $100 and Hispanic women $120—dramatically lower than white men ($43,800), white women ($41,500) or black men ($7,900),” according to the report.

READ: “Wealth Gap Yawns—and So Do Media,” by Julie Hollar, Extra!, June 2010

 Women in a Warming World

“Women need to be protected, engaged, and empowered for climate solutions to truly succeed,” writes  Kari Manlove of the Center for American Progress. Involving women at high-level climate negotiations is one place to start.

READ: “Women’s Role in a Warming World,” by Kari Manlove, Center for American Progress, 5/26/10

 Inequity Down Under

Last year, the Australia Securities Exchange (ASX) announced a proposal to expand corporate governance principles to include a mandatory gender diversity policy. In a country where a “blokey” culture rules, what effect will this have upon Australian corporate culture?

READ: “Not So Wizard in Oz,” by Cleo, The Gender Blog, 5/26/10

 Myth Busting

The Washington Post tackles  myths about working mothers. Did you know, for example, that working women (and men, for that matter) today spend more time with their children than ever before? Or that the more education a woman receives the less likely she is to “op-out” of her career? Consider these myths busted.

READ: “Five myths about working mothers,” by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, The Washington Post, 5/30/10

 An Insidious Bias

What is “enlightened sexism?” According to author Susan Douglas, this new, subtle form of sexism “insists that full equality for women has been achieved … so it’s OK to resurrect retrograde, sexist images of women in the media, all with a wink and a laugh.” I agree with Douglas— how else to explain the sexist imagery and language that still pervades our media?

READ: “The New Sexism,” by Laura Fitzpatrick, Time, 3/16/10

Monica Palacios, the famous comic and writer, has navigated various labels over the course of her career. On stage, Palacios riffs:  “When I was born, I was of Mexican-American persuasion. Then I became Chicana. Then I was Latina. Then I was Hispanic. Then I was a Third World member (my mom loved that). Then I was a woman of color. Now I’m just an Amway dealer. And my life is happening.”

Her comments are in jest but the underlying meaning rings true: unique identities are blurred when society puts a label on an entire group. But a person’s gender, race and sexual orientation are part of his or her identity—part of what makes a person valuable to an employer.

“For whatever reason, people assume I am black, but I am also Latina,” a bi-racial friend told me recently.  “When a Latina group was forming at my company, no one even asked me if I wanted to join it!”

Recognizing the fact that broad labels can unintentionally exclude some individuals, Catalyst recently renamed one of our main research areas. The areas formerly called Women of Color in the U.S. and Visible Minorities in Canada are now called Diverse Women & Inclusion. Deeper layers of identity among women—especially in global contexts—can involve class, sexual orientation, caste, disability, nationality, and immigrant status. The new term Diverse Women & Inclusion was intended to cover all of these particular factors in a more sensitive and inclusive way.

And that’s what it’s all about.

Careless labels can engender blatant stereotyping. More than a decade ago, Catalyst released a groundbreaking report on the way managers perceive women from diverse backgrounds. Latinas reported being stereotyped as lazy or too focused on family, citing managers who consistently underestimated their talents and capabilities because they spoke English with an accent.  Black women reported facing stereotypes about being too direct. They described having to worry about whether the braids in their hair contributed to a perception that they were too radical or too bold. Asian women reported being stereotyped as passive “China dolls.”

In more recent Catalyst research, LGBT women discussed various dimensions of discrimination in Canada. “As a lesbian woman, I have sometimes had to fend off occasional stereotypes of lesbian women as all butch and muscular and ungainly—I’m none of these,” said one employee. Roughly a quarter of the LGBT women reported that their manager was not comfortable interacting with them.

These attitudes may explain why diverse women are so poorly represented at the top in Fortune 500 companies. In 2005, the most recent year for which data is available diverse women held 1.7% of corporate officer positions and only 1.0% of top earner positions. I’ve talked a lot about the glass ceiling, but for diverse women the ceiling is concrete. To fix this, workplaces need to embrace, develop and leverage their diverse workforce.

Catalyst is committed to representing the full spectrum of women worldwide. To do so, we’ve updated our own labels. The question is: are you working to change yours?