While women are over half of the adult population and nearly half of the workforce in this country, they remain disproportionately clustered in traditionally "female" jobs with lower pay and fewer benefits. Moreover, research on the status of girls in education found that the glass ceiling began in kindergarten. Beginning in grade school, girls are systematically tracked away from the better-paying jobs in science and technology and thrown into "pink collar" occupations.
Lynn H. Martin, who helped call attention to the glass ceiling problem as Secretary of Labor in the Bush administration, puts it with bluntness: "If you have talented people you've started in a management track and you lose them just as they are reaching a point where their value will increase the company's value, that's bottom line dumb. And good businesses don't do bottom line dumb things. Global competition, world leadership demands the best." Unfortunately, employers feel the same but argue that "good business sense" means appealing to their constituents. To them, this means that if a client of their company has prejudices, then he is granted an employee respectful of those prejudices. This usually means a white male gains the desired consultant position.
Today, women make up 23 % of lawyers but only 11 % of partners in law firms. Women are 48 % of all journalists, but hold only 6 % of the top jobs in journalism. Women are 72 % of elementary school teachers but only 29 % of school principals. And while the numbers of women earning advanced degrees has increased dramatically in the past 20 years, women comprise only 40 % of all college and university faculty in the United States. Of these, only 46 % of all women faculty are tenured, compared with more than 70 % of all men faculty. Women are only 14 % of full professors and 12 % of college presidents. White men, however, hold 95 % of senior management positions and are only 43 percent of the Fortune 2000 workforce.
Media Influences
In light of this, mainstream news media seem to be shortchanging the public-especially women-in their coverage of affirmative action. Consideration of affirmative action's impact and meaning for women of all colors is largely missing from news stories, and women are severely underrepresented on opinion pages.
What's worse is that with a few exceptions, major media are reporting the debate on affirmative action without reference to the continued existence of racist and sexist practices. Severed from the context of the discrimination to which it is a response, affirmative action is presented as a confusing, "hot-button" issue, about which few facts can be known.
Reporters might be surprised to learn that the majority of articles on affirmative action neglect women. For women business owners, affirmative action programs include laws that encourage government agencies and contractors to do business with qualified women-owned companies, as well as programs providing financial, management, and technical assistance to women business owners. However the affirmative action programs used are only selecting the most qualified candidates for these positions. A survey conducted by Americans for a Fair Chance found that only seven of 314 stories (2 %) mainly focused on affirmative action's impact on women. In fact, only 19 % of mainstream news articles on affirmative action addressed affirmative action's impact on women at all.
Most stories do in fact mention women in their definition of the term, usually with a phrase like "race and gender preferences" or "programs benefiting women and minorities." However the study shows that having mentioned women, media accounts proceed to erase them from the subsequent discussion. The Washington Post (1/3/98) declares that "petitions against race, gender preferences" make Washington state "the next battleground in the war over racial preferences," for example; or The Los Angeles Times (5/31/98) counter-poses "affirmative action" in education with a "color-blind system." Both mention race and not gender.
Another illustration of women's invisibility was provided by coverage of 1998 enrollment at the University of California, after the elimination of affirmative action in admissions. Almost every press report said that the University of California had "eliminated preferences based on race, gender and ethnicity", The majority then went on to note the numbers of various racial and ethnic minorities that had applied. Exactly one journalist (The New York Times' Ethan Bronner, 4/1/98) bothered to find out, and report, that "while the California referendum also barred the consideration of sex, admissions officials said they had never taken sex into account anyway because of the large number of women applying to college."
Societal Change
Affirmative action programs have made a difference in the advancement of women. In education, affirmative action programs for women include grants and graduate fellowship programs aimed at helping women move into fields where their participation has been previously discouraged, such as engineering, math, and the physical sciences. They also include outreach and education programs to ensure the participation of women in apprenticeship training in skilled trades.
Many critics often cite that women have not truly benefited from affirmative action but social change, however this is not the most popular view. Rather it is accepted by many that affirmative action has made huge strides for women and played an important role in the initiation and enforcement of social change. "Affirmative action has enabled wives and daughters and mothers and girlfriends to compete in the workplace", says Ralph G. Neas, executive director of the leadership Conference on Civil Rights, "and that has helped entire families, including the white males in those families."
Critics of affirmative action say women's gains have come from factors other than affirmative action. "The combination of anti-discrimination laws and the growing number of women seeking opportunities in the work force has produced very impressive gains," says Clint Bolick, vice president of the conservative Institute for Justice. "Preference policies have very little to do with increased opportunities for women." However there is evidence which contradicts this statement. A government study showed that women made greater gains in employment at companies doing business with the federal government, and therefore subject to federal affirmative action requirements, than at other companies: female employment rose 15.2 % at federal contractors, and only 2.2 % elsewhere. The same study showed that federal contractors employed women at higher levels and in better-paying jobs than other firms.
Women's rights activists have also been taking to the streets, demonstrating in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles with placards proclaiming "No Retreat on Affirmative Action." These protests are particularly relevant in California, where opponents of a proposed statewide ballot initiative Proposition 209, which outlaws racial or gender preferences in public education, employment, and contracting are counting on winning a majority of support from white women.
A poll on where people stood on Proposition 209 showed no real gender gap when using the term "preferences" but did show a gender gap when people were asked about affirmative action programs rather than preferences. Most white women supported affirmative action programs for minorities (54 %) or for women (66 %), while white men rejected affirmative action programs for minorities (35 % favored them vs. 47 % opposed) and only narrowly favored affirmative action programs for women (45 % to 41 %). This shows that the use of language plays a crucial role in effecting people's understanding of affirmative action.
Conclusions
Affirmative action has played a major role in the advancement of women of all races. It has been a strong force in combating gender discrimination in the workforce and has helped the United States in curing long-standing patterns of discrimination. "The elimination of affirmative action, either by the Congress or through a ballot measure, will be catastrophic for American women," said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. "The proposed attacks on affirmative action jeopardize the gains that women and minorities have made in employment and education over the past 25 years."