‘Glass Ceiling’ Still Too Hard to Crack, U.S. Panel Finds : Careers: Few women and minorities are even in line for top jobs, report to say. Biased notions, fear of change cited.
The informal “glass ceiling” blocking women and minorities from the president’s chair in American corporations won’t be shattered any time soon because few of them hold the sales, marketing and production jobs that eventually lead to the top of the business world, a bipartisan federal commission will report today.
“Serious barriers to advancement remain--such as persistent stereotyping, erroneous beliefs that ‘no qualified women or minorities are out there,’ and plain old fear of change,” according to the first major report by the Glass Ceiling Commission, a panel of legislators and business officials selected by President George Bush in 1991.
The report found that among the top 1,000 U.S. industrial firms and the 500 biggest firms of all types, ranked by Fortune Magazine, 97% of the senior managers are white and an estimated 95% to 97% are male.
Although the “glass ceiling” was a phrase coined to describe the problems of women in reaching the executive suite, the figurative barricade blocks minority men too, the report says.
“At the highest levels of business, there is indeed a barrier only rarely penetrated by women or persons of color,” the commission said. The 20-member group carefully avoided making any policy suggestions, which could be viewed as taking sides in the growing national debate over affirmative action. Their report was limited to presenting information. Recommendations for action, if any, won’t be issued until later in the year.
But the figures and analysis will be closely studied by all participants in the debate as they seek ammunition. The commission talks about women and minorities frustrated by the lack of promotions. And it describes white males filled with anxiety about losing jobs or promotions.
The political debate intensified Wednesday as supporters of affirmative action, including members of Congress and California state legislators, met with President Clinton at the White House to urge him to resist political pressure to retreat on the issue.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said minorities and women will no longer stand with Clinton or his party if affirmative action is abandoned.
“No party is so important that we will belong to it if it undermines us on this issue. No President is so important that we will belong to him if he undermines us on this issue,” she said.
“The President is trying in a sensible way to have a national conversation on this issue which results in good, common-sense policy,” White House spokesman Mike McCurry said.
On the Republican side, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said the Administration’s affirmative action policies are “fatally flawed.” Dole, who is becoming increasingly critical of the Administration on the issue, said the Justice Department in some of its decisions has been supporting reverse discrimination.
During the Bush Administration, Dole played a key role in persuading the President to establish the Glass Ceiling Commission. Other key findings of the report:
* Most women and minorities work in the government or the “third sector”: schools and health and social welfare agencies. However, Asians are more likely to work in the private sector.
* Latinos, with a college completion rate below the general population, are less likely to have the “advanced degrees that are now considered a prerequisite for climbing the corporate ladder.” Latinos who become managers and administrators are more likely to work in government and the nonprofit sector. In the business world, they are “relatively invisible in corporate decision-making positions.”
* African American men with professional degrees earn 79% of the salaries of their white male counterparts. African American professional women earn 60% of what white professional males make.
* Asians and Pacific Islanders, although almost twice as educated as the general population--38% have bachelor’s degrees or more, compared with 20% of all Americans--are much less likely to become managers or executives.
“I didn’t realize how bad the situation was,” said commission member Maria Contreras-Sweet, vice president of public affairs at the 7-Up Royal Crown Bottling Co. in Vernon, Calif.
“As I talked to some of my business colleagues, they said they were getting a sense women and minorities are in the pipeline and it’s only a matter of time,” she said. “I don’t think this is accurate. Based on the numbers I’m seeing, there is not a critical mass yet. We have to be actively engaged in programs aggressively reaching minorities and women,” she said.
Contreras-Sweet, who was concerned because the commission had no white male members other than its chairman, Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, organized a series of meetings with white male corporate leaders, including sessions in Los Angeles with top executives from such firms as Southern California Edison, Atlantic Richfield Co., Bank of America and IBM.
The commission’s activity “could never be positioned as affirmative action,” she said.
Instead, she said, the commission moved toward recognizing the issue of diversity in executive ranks “as an economic imperative” for business profitability. “That was the tap dance I did at every meeting so the report looked and sounded like a business plan.”
The meetings and focus groups with the white male executives, she said, demonstrated the common pattern of picking familiar types to fill top posts. “If you have a job need, you call someone you know. If I have a job, I call a woman. But we all have to say, ‘How can I find somebody who enhances the group I have and reflects the marketplace? I will do that because I am a smart businessman,’ ” she said.
She expressed concern that many firms, while tracking the numbers and career development of female and African American workers, did not make similar efforts for Latinos and Asians. The commission report said it takes 25 or 30 years of work in a corporation, in a variety of jobs, to become a contender for the top executive positions.
“The critical career path for senior management positions requires taking on responsibilities most directly related to the corporate bottom line,” the report said.
“But the relatively few women and minorities found at the highest levels tend to be in staff positions, such as human resources or research or administration, rather than line positions, such as marketing or sales or production. Similarly, most companies require broad and varied experience in core areas of the business to advance--experience of the sort that, even now, too few women or minority men are in a position to develop.”
Another commission member, Judith L. Lichtman, president of the Women’s Legal Defense Fund, said the commission report shows that “the world of discrimination hasn’t ended.”
The report’s figures “reveal that while women and men of color have come very far, how far we have to go,” she said. “To link this report and the debate over affirmative action is inescapable.”
The report was based on five public hearings, including a session in Los Angeles; a survey of chief executive officers; special research studies; focus groups, and analysis of census data.
