Cracking The Ceiling

By Sheila Wellington

How about one more nomination to the pantheon of business giants: the American workingwoman--Femella commercia Americana--the one who is pushing against the glass ceiling despite its seeming indestructibility.

Women have not been captains of industry until recently (and there are precious few in that position now). But that should be no surprise to anyone. For the first 20 years of the century, women couldn't even vote. Every time I think of that, it startles me. Even as Edith Wharton wrote many of her novels, as Helen Keller graduated from Radcliffe with honors, even as women--tens of thousands of them--typed the documents and ran the offices and manufactured the arms that led to victory in World War I, we still could not vote.

Long before this century and well into it, women without means labored hard--inside the home, without vacuum cleaners or even electricity, and for pitifully low wages outside the home. In 1900, most of the 21% of white women who were employed found themselves confined mainly to textile and garment factories; almost all the 41% of black women who had jobs were agricultural laborers or servants.

Today many women are still underpaid and stuck in low-level jobs, but times are changing. My nominee for business titan is the woman who is determined to make it to the top, who is giving 110% to compete with the boys. She may still get passed over when a promotion is available. When she brings up an idea at a meeting, it may still even now be ignored until a male colleague restates it. If she's feminine, she may be seen as weak. If she's tough, she may be seen as bitchy or grasping.

These male perceptions of the women they work with were first identified in 1977 by Rosabeth Moss Kanter in her pioneering work Men and Women of the Corporation. Her descriptions often still hold; they are confirmed by the women themselves. We have the stories, the surveys and the numbers. If our woman has neared the top in the FORTUNE 500, our research tells us she is probably a staff officer. If she is a top earner, she is one of 63 women, vs. 2,257 men.

Until recently, women were all but excluded from the upper reaches of corporate America. Women superlative enough to make their mark expended their energies mostly in social causes or education. Those who somehow managed to build businesses or transform companies were mainly the wives, the widows, the daughters or the partners of hugely successful men.

Happily, small business is an aspect of the economy in which women do wield power. In the U.S. nearly as many people work for women-owned businesses as are employed by FORTUNE 500 companies worldwide. Small businesses are often founded by women who have left corporations because they felt that the glass ceiling was impeding their progress.

In fact, the entrance of women into the business world is having an astoundingly significant effect on the way we all live. The simple fact that there are so many of us now--49% of the professional, managerial and administrative work force--is stunning. Our much increased presence in the offices of Big Business--yes, even a few of the corner offices--has made the world we knew unrecognizable. Clearly, with 86% of all FORTUNE 500 companies having at least one woman board member (right now it is only one, but this too shall pass), the impact of women's changing focus and fortune is being felt at the very top of the corporate hierarchy.

With all the barriers the workingwoman faces, with all the hurdles that have been in her way, we at Catalyst are betting on her, and so should the nation. The men who head America's greatest companies have a stake in the success of this talented, skilled, hard-driving, confident workingwoman. These men know competence comes in all shapes and sizes, and they don't want to lose out on half the nation's talent pool. They won't have the smartest employees, managers or executives. She'll go to the competition or to small business and, as has happened in the past, those small businesses will grow into big competitors. So, despite all the obstacles she faces, we're convinced the future looks good for our nominee, the American woman in business. Our prediction is that the next time TIME does this kind of roundup, it will find builders and titans aplenty--in both genders.

Sheila Wellington is president of Catalyst, a nonprofit research and advisory organization that works with business to advance women