Minority Female Managers Feel Stymied, Survey Shows
Most minority women in management are deeply dissatisfied with their chances for advancement, and nearly a quarter of them say they plan to leave their companies, a research group reported Monday.
Black, Latino and Asian American female managers say they are not moving up because they do not have ready access to role models, mentors and high-visibility projects, the Catalyst research group reported.
“The women we surveyed are highly educated and believe themselves qualified to advance in corporations,” said Sheila Wellington, president of Catalyst, which works to advance women in business.
But the 1,700 women nationwide who were surveyed--more than half of whom have graduate degrees--”find that they’re not moving up, so they tell us they are going to be moving out,” Wellington said.
The survey reported that nearly 22% of the respondents (including 25% of blacks, 10% of Asian Americans and 17% of Latinos) intend to leave their companies.
Corporations must pay attention, Catalyst warned. By failing to act on this issue, companies are risking an expensive loss of talent in a tight labor market, as well as the loss of market share of minority female consumers and business owners.
Last fall, the Catalyst group reported--in the first known tally on minority female managers--that although minority women make up 10% of the U.S. work force of 127 million, they hold only 5% of the total 7.5 million management jobs.
In contrast, all women hold 40% of management jobs, and white women hold 35% of management jobs.
In Catalyst’s latest report on minority women, 57% said they are satisfied with their jobs, but only 34% said they are happy with their opportunities for advancement.
The survey, conducted by mail from November through January, has a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.
The report found that by one measure, the women’s perceptions of slower advancement are apparently true. While minority women spend an average of 3.6 years in the same job grade, white women on average spend just 2.6 years in the same grade.
