Women Managers Seen as Pivotal in ‘90s
With demographic studies pointing to a shrinking pool of workers in the 1990s, corporate America’s attitude toward women as managers needs to change for it to meet the global challenges ahead, several speakers at a women’s employment conference said Friday.
“As population growth levels off, (American companies) will have less workers,” said Robert H. Murphy, senior vice president of organization and human resources at Rockwell International Corp.
Corporations will have to look at the growing pool of women in the work force to meet the global challenges of the 1990s, he added.
“Companies are coming to recognize that the long-term strategic advantage in surviving a tough global market is our people,” he said.
At the end of this century, the service sector will create 16 million new jobs, and “we have only 14 million people to do them,” he said. “We must see changes as an opportunity instead of as an impediment. The biggest and only impediment in the next decade is attitude.”
About 60% of U.S. women work outside the home today, with the number expected to rise in the years ahead, said Esther M. Berger, a financial consultant with PaineWebber Inc. in Los Angeles.
As a result, U.S. companies will need to tailor jobs to the demands of family life, she added.
By the year 2000, women are expected to make up 47% of the U.S. work force, and six out of seven working-age women will be employed, said Roger Selbert, editor and publisher of FutureScan newsletter.
Recognizing this trend, Rockwell and other companies have been hiring more women, Murphy said. “Women made up 25% of our recruits in 1989,” he added.
Murphy made his remarks during the 17th annual Women’s Employment Options Conference in Anaheim, sponsored by the Career Planning Center, a nonprofit women’s organization in Los Angeles. The two-day conference, which marked the end of National Women’s History Month in March, will conclude today.
Barbara Davis, employment attorney at the Los Angeles law firm of Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker, agreed: “The most pressing issue for men and women in 1990s is balancing the demands in the workplace and a desire to be successful against quality time to the family.”
U.S. companies now recognize that family responsibilities are not merely a “women’s issue” any more, Davis said. Growing numbers of women in the work force will mean companies will have to pay more attention to job-safety issues, such as use of computer terminals by pregnant women.
“If corporate America wants to keep its top people, they will have to provide a good balance of work and home life to their employees,” she added.
