Women at Work, 1970-2020

Exactly 50 years ago today, August 26, 1970, four of us on the support staff of McKinsey & Company, management consultants, gave a presentation entitled Women at Work. We wanted to share what we had learned about past and present roles of women in the business world. Today is the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment extending women the right to vote, that day was the 50th anniversary. I still have my copy of that presentation as a primary source for today’s history lesson.

McKinsey was a wonderful place to work. Besides going to government offices to obtain documents for those in the Washington office, the librarian and I served the needs of consultants in McKinsey’s 16 offices around the world–they now have 127! Before Google later made me rather obsolete, I became an ardent information sleuth and supplier. Our office was at 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC–a block from where women in 1916 had protested for suffrage.

Our team consisted of two editors, a librarian, and 26-year-old me, the lone researcher. We had worked together since 1968 on several engagements for government agencies and universities. We billed our presentation as a “Fact Session,” a term McKinsey used for well-researched background information. We invited the entire office–six partners (all men), two dozen consultants (only one was a woman), and two dozen secretaries (all women)–to attend a half-hour session at 8:30 that morning. Except for a few who were out of town, they all came.

Our purpose was to stimulate thinking on issues involved in achieving equal opportunity for women in the work force. We reported that in January 1970, 42 percent of American women were working or looking for work. In 2020, that figure is 60%. Only 7 percent of physicians were women in 1970; today that number is 50%. Only 4 percent of lawyers were women in 1970; today 60% of all lawyers are women, though only 15% are equity partners. Women were less than one percent of all engineers in 1970; today women are 13% of engineers and 26% of computer scientists.

As hard-working support staff, we drew attention to the gender pay gap in professional and technical employment. In 1970 professional men averaged $10,151 per year; women only $6,691, a difference of 34%. Thus women made only $0.66 for every dollar that men were paid for comparable jobs. The basic reason we found for this gap was the widespread belief that “significant physical and psychological differences between men and women make their roles in life different.” Such attitudes affected women’s opportunities three ways:

1.  Educational practices tend to lower women’s aspirations and channel them into traditional occupations

• In high school, boys took shop, girls took cooking. Girls were not admitted to the elite Stuyvesant High School in New York City until forced to do so by legal action
• Women had to meet higher admission standards at some colleges, such as the University of North Carolina
• Fewer than 10% of law  and medical students were women at that time, even though the U.S. Office of Education claimed that women tended to do better on admission tests than men

2.  Hiring Practices that discriminate

• State restrictions:  Utah forbid women to carry anything weighing more than 15 pounds, less than the weight of a 6-month old baby
• Employers are often reluctant to invest training time in women because they believe that single women will marry and leave jobs, married women will leave to have children, and mothers take off too much time to care for children
• Employers hire women at lower salaries than men receive for same job

3.  Advancement Practices: why women rarely rise to executive positions

• Women may not stay in workforce long enough or may interrupt careers to have children
• Men are reluctant to work under women supervisors
• Greater mobility and predominance of men’s careers mean women have to shift jobs more often
• Women with families may be unwilling to accept more demanding responsibilities

We concluded that basic, long-term changes were necessary for women to achieve full equality.

• Expanded, high-quality day care facilities
• Better balance between family and career on the part of both men and women

We ignited conversations that continued for months. John Garrity, the managing director of McKinsey’s Washington office was in New York the day of our fact session, but he read a copy and left me the following note:  “Very interesting and very well done. The only unanswered question for me is wouldn’t it be the children who would pay in the long run?”

50 Years of Progress:

Though the Equal Rights Amendment still has not been ratified, Labor Department guidelines for government contractors, judicial challenges, and more women serving in the Armed Services gradually brought positive change. PayScale reports the good news that professional women with the same qualifications now make $0.98 for every dollar men make in the same jobs, an improvement of $0.32 from 1970.

PayScale’s annual report goes on to say that “the gender pay gap is wider for women of color, women in executive level roles, women in certain occupations and industries, and in some US states.” Further, they note that “Recently, pay equity has been thrust under a glaring media spotlight. The #MeToo movement of 2018 cascaded into analysis of gender inequality in the workplace in 2019, encompassing not only pay inequity but also barriers to advancement and representation of women in leadership.”

How our fact session affected my life

Within ten months of giving this presentation, I gave birth to my first child, Lilli, and left McKinsey. By the early months of 1972 my friend Judith Morris and I had worked out a cooperative child care arrangement that allowed me to accept a part-time job when McKinsey asked me to come back for an engagement with the U.S. Department of Commerce (more statistics, this time comparing the U.S. to Japan). After that engagement ended, I worked nine months for the Bureau of Competitive Assessment in the Commerce Department, then left to have David. My supervisor at Commerce offered me a full-time job, but I simply could not find acceptable child care for two children (Judith had only Courtney). So I followed my mother’s example and became a piano teacher. I could have made a lot more money starting Government service as a GS-12, but I know I could have never had so much fun.

So how have my children answered my managing director’s question, “wouldn’t it be the children who would pay in the long run?” Or have they achieved the goals we women set?

Fifty years later, I believe that most children have gained, not lost. My grandchildren have benefitted from several approaches to child care, all reasonable and loving. It thrills me to witness the balance my three children have achieved as parents and professionals. My son David and son-in-law Sean are fully involved in caring for their children, while succeeding in their careers. Lilli, an architect with Autodesk, has marshaled a whole village to care for Violet in Cambridge. Leslie, a mortgage banker in Miami, has, besides David, a faithful nanny and two loving grandmothers to care for Margot and Nina. Shelby, a lawyer, has worked remotely as a legal researcher and has also taken leaves as needed to raise Stephen and Thomas. After moving to Austin last year for Sean’s job, she has a new full-time job with the State of Texas Health and Human Services Department. It’s wonderful to see happy and thriving Women at Work 100 years after getting the vote.

My grandmother Martha, my mother Patti, and my other mother Lilburn, would be proud of us. For more about women’s history, see my posts on Women’s Suffrage and Women’s Equality. Now that I’ve twice celebrated getting the vote, I’ll focus on VOTING, November 3, 2020!