Women’s Groups Re-Emerge in Workplace : Networking: Some are started by management, some by workers. Frustration is a catalyst.

J.C. Penney Co. Inc. management looked around 3 1/2 years ago and realized that women in senior positions were few, even though the company caters mostly to women.

So, responding to a management request, Gale Duff-Bloom, associate director of merchandising, assembled a Women’s Advisory Committee that included employees from all areas of the company.

Now Penney has four additional women in senior positions, and the retailer has implemented diversity training for store managers and executives.

The experience of women at Penney isn’t unusual. Frustrated with the slow pace of their careers, more women are getting together to talk about networking or even balancing job and family.

Companies as varied as Bankers Trust Co., Raychem Corp., Dow Chemical Co. and Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co. now offer women’s groups.

Felice Schwartz, author of “Breaking With Tradition: Women, Management and the New Facts of Life,” calls the groups a significant development for women.

But others downplay their significance, saying some women resist joining them out of fear their careers might be jeopardized. Most groups avoid the work-family issues they consider controversial, focusing on career development instead.

The research and consulting firm Catalyst says a third of the women’s groups it studied were started by management. The executives, it said, recognized that women weren’t advancing quickly enough and that family issues such as flexible work schedules and parental leave needed to be addressed.

Others were initiated by the women for similar reasons. But about 70% of those now serve in an advisory capacity to management, said Catalyst spokeswoman Bickley Townsend.

The idea of corporate women’s groups first emerged in the mid-1970s with the feminist movement. But many were discouraged by management as adversarial. Others died out in the early 1980s with the improvement in women’s positions, Townsend said.

A resurgence began in the late ‘80s as the country fell into recession, she said. Meanwhile, companies, facing lower profits, are looking beyond raises to keep workers happy, said Lynn Povich, editor of Working Woman magazine.

On the other side of the coin, demographics are changing. By the end of the century, about two-thirds of new workers are expected to be women, and about 75% will become pregnant during their working years, Labor Department research says.

Still, high-level women executives often don’t participate in the corporate groups, said Dana Friedman, co-president of the New York-based Families and Work Institute.

“They have the attitude, ‘If I did it, why can’t others?’ ” Friedman said. “Women at the top rarely advocate for women’s issues.”