Newspapers / Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) / Jan. 17, 2002, edition 1 / Page 72
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DIV?RSITy ISSUES DURING A!attfrrry Hi. My name is Martha DuBois. rm 14 years old, and I live with my two older brothers, my stepfather and my mother. My mom is 51 years old. She has worked for the same publish ing company for. 25 years. She started out as a research assistant. After four years she moved up to an editor s job helping writers. She's grxxl at what she does, and she s great working with other , people I should know?she's my 1 mom! m I"he boss in Her department just retired, and my mom has applied for his job. But she's worried that she may Dot get it because she's a woman. Imagine?Jxring told that you re n(X right for something because; you rd^a woman instead of a man! At my v hobl the head of the student council is a girl, and DO one thinks anything alxjut it But in my mom's com ^any most of the top people are men. And some of the editors she has worked with moved up to bigger jobs years ago. My mom says that society over the years has traditionally favored putting men in c ertain positions like manager. There is a stereotype that women don't ?do some jobs well. This makes no sense to me, but mom says "sexism" still exists in the worl? world, even with people trying to change it. In many companies, she said, men are paid more than women for the same work. And my mom pointed out that women are rarely promoted to the top jobs of the biggest companies. A story in the newspaper said less than a dozen women have been named the chief exec utives in America's 500 largest corpora ttoos. One thing that is changing | is that many jobs are opening up to women that used to be Meet Martha. Her Mom is trying to advance at work closed. I looked at newspapers, maga zines television, and found examples that my mom said didn't used to be true. For instance, women are no longer portrayed as just housewives on TV shows, but as wom^n with families and jobs from doc tor to flight attendant. Ads for Saturn cars feature women not only buying but selle ing cars, too. Now if only Mom's boss thinks that way when he fills the job she wants. Right now we can only wait. Ask M ArTHA'5 M ?TH KB I don't understand about "glass ceilings" and "cement ceilings" that I hear about in the wort place. Can you explain them? Today, women are an accepted part of the American wort force. But in many fields there is history that women can only go so far up the career ladder. In the Wall Street's industry of finance and stocks, women have bumped into what is called "the glass ceiling." This means they reach a level in their careers where they can see the top jobs, but they can't get past the barrier as men Can. It has not just happened in finance, butfn other service industries as well. In construction and engineering, the ceiling has often been called the "cement ceiling." They both mean essentially the same thing. Dlv ersTTY T-03iTs ? In December 1993, the University of Penn sylvania became the first Ivy league college to name a woman president when Judith Rodin accepted the position. Only 12 percent of the presidents at 3,200 colleges are women? even though women account for half of the population and 52 percent of all college under graduates.pnly 9 percent of college presidents are minorities?even though 18 percent per cent of undergraduates are minorities. ? In 1994, a benchmark in women's progress in American business was achieved. For the first time, more than half of the nation's largest cor porations had at least one woman on their board of directors.
Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
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Jan. 17, 2002, edition 1
72
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