Corporate Women and The Great Divide
November 2014
Charity. Philanthropy. Altruism. Even now these are seen as mostly women-dominated areas, and although this association does perpetuate gender stereotypes, it’s easy to see why it came to be. That’s why it was such a shock when I found out that it wasn’t that simple. In fact, a 2013 study published in the American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings showed that women donate less to charity than men when given an option to not donate. However, a survey from the United States Bureau of Labour Statistics held in December 2013 indicated that that year, nearly 30% of women volunteered to do charity work, while only closer to 20% of men did.
Even so, you’d expect that women would dominate the non-profit organization field of work, and they do -- but only below the senior executive level. A vast majority of non-profit workers are women, but by merely looking at the people in executive positions, you wouldn’t be able to tell. In the 2010 Non-Profit Times list of Top 50 Leaders, 66% were men. Only 34% were women. However, this has improved over the years, with 2012’s list being 42% female; but it still doesn’t reflect the actuality of the non-profit world.
Why is this, then? How come, if the majority of volunteers and nonprofit workers are women, so few become executives? Where does this great divide come from? These questions have been debated for years. The situation in the nonprofit sector is actually faring better than the rest of the corporate world, where the female CEO/Executive count is closer to a meager 15%. Explanations of this range from women needing to be more assertive in business to there being gender discrimination and hostility towards women in the workplace.
While I agree that women need to be assertive in order to succeed, I don’t believe that it is proportional to the amount of work men need to do in order to achieve the same results. The fact is that we live in a world where business and leadership positions are male-dominated, and it is therefore easier for other men to be considered for those positions than women. Also, it has been argued that women are not given the same opportunities as men, with their (predominantly male) overseers not believing they can handle it.
What this does say, though, is that the women who are recognized in the nonprofit and executive world have worked hard and consistently for that recognition. They deserve their positions. We can learn a lot from them, and the fact that the young girls of today have these strong, independent women to look up to spells only good things for the future.