Women’s Representation in Male-Dominated Businesses

According to the National Women’s Business Council report in 2017, the number of women-owned firms in the US has increased by 114%. In the US, women start about 849 new businesses every single day. Obviously, women’s representation in male-dominated businesses has grown, and women can be found leading companies in high decision-making positions such as CEOs, chairpersons, and leaders of various industries around the world.

However, there is still a huge deficit of women’s representation in male-dominated businesses. While you can find a lot of female entrepreneurs in the field of fashion, you’d be hard pressed to find a woman who successfully founded a tech company. However, they do exist and are paving the way for their successors.

The Statistics of Women’s Representation in Male-Dominated Businesses

LinkedIn studied the data that spanned over the last 4 decades of how the gains in all sectors have changed relating to the gender gap. And though we still have a long way to go, the results are very promising.

Over the past ten years, the number of female leaders in the workforce increased by nearly 2% as an average over the 12 industries polled. That number isn’t very promising by itself, but the tide is turning faster and faster if you break down the data.

Every since 1978, the fields of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) have seen remarkable increases in terms of female participation. The specific roles that have seen the most gains have been: Test Development Engineer (243%), Automotive Salesperson (154%), Technical Sales Professional (133%), Architect (127%), and Physicist (116%).

The last field is particularly important for women since they’ve been historically undervalued and shut out of getting their fair share.

LinkedIn also discovered the industries that showed a major increase in female participation. These included: Public Safety (118%), Construction (77%), Consumer Goods (71%), Design (70%), and Agriculture (67%).

Finally, the industries with the highest rate of change for female leadership hires as well as their top skills included the following:

• Software and IT (27%): This included the skills of business development, leadership, management project management, and strategy
• Manufacturing (26%): This included the skills of customer service, management, Microsoft office, project management, and strategic planning
• Entertainment (24%): This included the skills of entertainment, film, social media, television, and video production
• Hardware & Networking (23%): This included the skills of business development, leadership, management, project management, and telecommunications
• Public Safety (21%): This included the skills of government, leadership, management, Microsoft Office, and Public speaking

What Do the Statistics of Women’s Representation Mean?

These numbers may seem underwhelming, but they tell a compelling story about women claiming their right to work in every field. Historically, most of these have been male-dominated fields – for the same reasons that the women’s rights movement arose. The unequal access to education and the enforcement of orthodox social norms has been and still continues to hold women down in different capacities all over the world.

However, since the women’s rights movements, these gaps have been shrinking all around the world, and the employment numbers for women have been going up. The 77 cents on the dollar statistic about the disparity between pay for men and women is only partly true.

Different studies cited show that the gap can be as small as 94 or 97 cents on the dollar. However, there are even better indicators that women are making progress and out-earning men. For example, in 17 cities on Earth out of the 529 surveyed by NerdWallet, women make more on average than men.

Now that may seem like a small number if you look at the sample size, however, most of the cities that are mentioned are major cities. They are Rochester, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; St. Paul, Minnesota; Iowa City, Iowa; Denton, Texas: Durham, North Carolina; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Bismarck, North Dakota; Skokie, Illinois; and Red Wood City, California.

Conclusion

Now what matters most in all this is that objectively measurable progress has been made. Hence, women have made great strides by increasing women’s representation in male-dominated businesses. 

While most headlines are framed in the negative, such as the “2018’s Fortune 500 companies have just 24 female CEOs”, this would’ve been unthinkable half a century ago. This is proof that while we’re not quite there yet, there is incredible progress being made on every front. Not only has the gender pay gap shrunk incredibly during the past 40 years, but women have risen to positions of power, opened their own businesses and established groundbreaking feats throughout their time as leaders.

Take Arianna Huffington who established the Huffington Post and has sat on various boards of huge companies including Uber; take Lynda Weinman who began Lynda.com, a website that provides courses on everything from cooking to web design; or take Alexa Von Tobel, who created LearnVest, a platform to help people manage their money.

These women are pathbreakers and have shown that women can be great at anything that a man can do.

Pickett Fence Virtual Services is a successful, minority-owned, woman-owned company that is making strides in the male-dominated construction industry. To learn more about how we can help you, get in touch today.