June 29, 2010 — Yesterday I read an intriguing article in the Atlantic Monthly titled "The End of Men." Later I caught a glimpse of Elena Kagan making her opening remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee. What a contrast within contrasts? I had a case of existential vertigo. I had the sensation I was looking at a William Blake etching. To all who succumb to the occasional sin of looking down our nose smugly at other cultures whose norms and institutions may at times appear super-righteous or simply peculiar we need to simply look in the mirror.
The image of this woman, arguably the smartest person in the room, paying homage to a gang of men, well 17 of the 19 anyway, struck me as an anachronism. We cannot know when, but surely someday soon the Senate will catch up with the rest of life as we now know it and women will occupy their natural number of seats in the room, or perhaps a few more? As it was, I could not have been surprised yesterday even to see Robin Hood leap from the balcony to save Elena. But then again, she needed no saving, and I am playing right into the script am I not?
For the moment it would seem, and the AM article confirms this in stark relief, that Engineering, CEOs, Augusta and of course the U.S. Senate are the few remaining male-only bastions yet to integrate the gentler gender. They are a little like the last icebergs we'll be seeing soon enough, relics of the polar ice cap. It's a horse-race but my money says the last icebergs will be first.
A few years ago I was amused by some pictures of WorldatWork in its earliest days. This was the 50s so you can use your own imagination to visualize a bunch of middle-aged white guys, short sleeved white shirts and skinny black ties. Got it? But things had changed little by my first decade in the business, this would be the early 80s. My first C&B local area network meeting was much the same, except that the white shirts and black ties had been replaced by multi-colored, short sleeved shirts, sans ties. Of course, my first few staff meetings with my first few companies, attended or observed, were pretty much the same as well — the white guys had aged a bit and switched to long sleeved shirts and the ties were back too. And then things began to change …
Today I can say that every organization I have been a part of in the last 15 years has been led in significant part by women. Virtually every leadership team I've known has been comprised of, if not a majority of women, then with a substantial female contingent. WorldatWork classrooms, conferences, governance and community are all equal opportunity forums well-represented by women. Women have truly arrived in the Total Rewards field and it has been this way for at least the last 20 years.
In my own family, my Mother was the first in her family to attain a BA then an MA, and went on to lead a successful career as an insurance executive. My sister has her Masters and a successful career. My daughter is in grad school as I write this. So I am not surprised in the least; only it's hard to comprehend that it wasn't always so.
It's also a bit of a mystery as to how this has all happened quietly in what is really a short period of time — 30 years or so from the early 80s up to today. Even more mysterious is how the workforce ever worked without the full integration of women?
To be sure, the wage gap between men and women is persistent. My bet is that we'll discover this owes more to ambiguous statistical interpretations than the emerging reality. After all, since compensation management and authority is no longer the exclusive province of men, any wage gap that exists is only an artifact of a day long gone. And if the "End of Men" article is to be believed, men too may be artifacts before too long as well.
E James Brennan, III Senior Associate Member Since: 4/19/1979 Comments: 406
Excellent articles, both your blog and the Atlantic Monthly piece, all completely true... for the U.S., at least. This is one of the major reasons (according to author/editorialist Ralph Peters) that certain cultures fixed into ancient pre-industrial mindsets are frightened and threatened by our example.
The sex ratio of 1.05 has been skewed by human interventions in enough cultures to produce a global sex ration of 1.07 male to female, so any American preference for the distaff sex has not spread widely.
If there is no remaining wage gap today, a repeat of the 1981 survey done by one of our distinguished members back then should be conducted and similarly publicly disclosed to prove that the 14.3% female pay differential for precisely identical factors has disappeared. But I know where I'd place my bet. Speculation about "ambiguous statistical interpretations" will remain only that (speculation) until new facts are collected and revealed. Let data rule!
June 29, 2010 — Yesterday I read an intriguing article in the Atlantic Monthly titled 
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