History of Women In The Workplace – [Infographic]

The debate on the existence of a significant gender wage gap continues to rage on. Both claimers and and deniers continue to come up with thought-provoking arguments. But this post isn’t about that.

Women have historically gotten the short end of the stick, and it’s fascinating how far and how slowly American labor force has come in achieving compensation parity.

It’s interesting how many employers of all genders are still unaware of events and important legislation concerning women in the workplace. Creditscore’s infographic below does a good job of outlining landmark episodes concerning gender fairness in the workplace.

Source

Other things you should know:

• Girls Just Want to Have Sums, the nineteenth episode of The Simpsons‘ seventeenth season has this interesting exchange:

Edna Krabappel: “Are you saying that men and women are identical?”

Skinner: “Oh, no, of course not! Women are unique in every way.”

Lindsey Naegle: “Now he’s saying men and women aren’t equal!”

Skinner: “No, no, no! It’s the differences of which there are none that makes the sameness exceptional. Just tell me what to say!” (starts to breathe heavily and pass out)

• The idea that women do not negotiate as much as men, resulting in a compensation gap is starting to gain ground. Studies that support this idea were cited in Reddit Interim CEO Ellen Pao’s decision to ban salary negotiations.

• Women in the US earn 49% of the master’s degrees.

• Women however, started only 36.8% of new American. businesses last year (2014).

• Only 19% of the members of the US Congress are women, which means the participation of women in American parliamentary politics lags behind countries such as Mexico (37%), Iraq (25%), and Afghanistan (28%).

• In 1984, almost 40% of programmers were female. Today, that figure hovers between 15 – 20%. Read more about this phenomenon here.

• Publicly talking about gender issues should be done carefully, and tactfully. It’s impossible to please everyone though, so many enterprises choose to simply not address it.

What are your thoughts? Comment below!