By Maxine Shapiro, KERA 90.1 business commentator
Dallas, TX – Women in corporate America: According to a new report, we'll have to wait another twenty years before gender parity. Being realistic, I don't think it's ever going to happen. I'm Maxine Shapiro with KERA Marketplace Midday.
This is not an easy conclusion to come to. Women may never be equal to men in the workforce. We've been waging war on discrimination in our labor force for a very long time. And it's a battle I've personally been in for most of my life.
In the early 70's, I found myself as a runner on the Chicago Board of Trade floor. I always say I got mesmerized by the game, which is mostly true. But underneath - right there in my conscience - there was another challenge: to make it in a man's world. There were women on the floor, young runners like myself, even some clerks. But in the sea of men, there were less than a handful of women with yellow badges - the brokers.
I understood the game and wanted so badly to be taken seriously. I studied and worked, and even found some allies. After passing my commodity-trading exam, it was time for me to move up to the office and become a commodity rep (like a stockbroker). "Our women quote is filled in New York," the VP of E.F. Hutton told me. I found another company, and this VP has since become a good friend who regretted ever having to utter that.
It's a little clich to say we've come a long way, but when looking back, it's the truth. And my journey demonstrates my own desire for corporate equality. Yet, how can we actually expect the corporate boardrooms to be equal? We rightfully leave the workforce to have children and expect to return at the same pay of our male counterparts. And we were never making the same to begin with, anyway. And that should be the real fight. We're also just plain smaller in number. Right now, enrolled at the SMU Cox School of Business full-time graduate MBA program, there are 73% males and 27% females.
We deserve to be CEO's and managers and executives. I fear the quantity will never be equal. For KERA Marketplace Midday, I'm Maxine Shapiro.
Marketplace Midday Reports air on KERA 90.1 Monday - Friday at 1:04 p.m.
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