When Cecile Lin crossed the ocean to earn her business degree in California in the 1960s, some business schools in the U.S. had just begun to admit women, and enrollment by women averaged less than ten percent nationally. In 1970, as the first woman to graduate with an MBA from the Pepperdine Graziadio School of Business and Management (founded in 1969), Lin worked as an accountant at Sears’ West Coast headquarters, then the nation’s largest company, and was later transferred to Sears’ East Coast headquarters in New York. Lin had been raised to believe she could do it all, and she did: she married, gave birth to four children, and raised them to be outstanding Americans: two PhDs, one MD, and one JD. While raising children, she continued to be active in the business world.
Since the time Lin earned her MBA almost fifty years ago, women have continued to progress in attainment of higher education: women in the U.S. have in great part caught up and even surpassed men. But education alone is not the goal; it is a means to an end – professional achievement. Women still earn only 79 cents to every dollar a man earns. The gap is closing, but very slowly – at a rate of about half a cent per year. Given that, most working women today will not live long enough to see the wage gap disappear. Even worse, a new study in Science Magazine shows that at a very young age, girls lose faith in their abilities, believing that “brilliance” is a male trait. The study’s authors note that, “These stereotypes discourage women’s pursuit of many prestigious careers.”
Our educational system has failed to stress to young women that education is a slingshot to career success and professional leadership. If we hope to make greater progress in gender parity, leadership curriculum must be integrated and reinforced in school, starting at the K-12 level.
The need has never been more pressing. A February 2017 report from McKinsey and LeanIn.org reports that, “More than 75 percent of CEOs include gender equality in their top ten business priorities, but gender outcomes across the largest companies are not changing. Our research indicates, for example, that corporate America promotes men at 30 percent higher rates than women during their early career stages and that entry-level women are significantly more likely than men to have spent five or more years in the same role.”
The Center for American Progress suggests that, “College graduates are likely to have higher earnings, higher employment and lower chances of defaulting on their student loans than workers without a degree. And women with a college degree earn more than women without one.” And education is even more important for women of color: a 2016 report by the American Association of University Women notes that, “Education improves earnings for women of all races and ethnicities, but earnings are affected by race and ethnicity as well as gender. White women are paid more than African-American and Hispanic women at all education levels.”
Alarmingly, the Center for American Progress also found that women earn less 10 years after enrolling in college than men do six years after enrolling. But that is less likely to be related to education, and more likely attributable to occupational differences, as well as the fact that women must strike a balance between professional and personal goals more often than their male counterparts. Career off-ramps and on-ramps related to raising a family are exacerbated by the time demands of a professional position, and most employers don’t offer schedule flexibility, even though it would help to close that gap.
Women must be taught, starting in kindergarten, that leadership is not a “male” trait but instead a means of controlling their own destinies. In the last few decades, the focus on self-esteem and not on perseverance – an attribute called out as necessary by the authors of the Science study – may have prevented women from pursuing leadership options with greater vigor. Administrators and educators must strive to create environments that show women they can achieve the same levels of leadership as men. And women who are already working should reach back down to the local schools and into their communities, serving as mentors and role models for young girls.
When women reach parity at the highest levels of business leadership, we may finally see the pay gap narrow more quickly, equitable career and salary progression over time and more flexible work environments. But none of those things can happen without seeing one’s self as a leader at a young age, and pursuing the education that facilitates it. Education policymakers on the federal, state and local levels must incorporate training early and often, so that more women can follow in the footsteps of pioneers like Cecile Lin, and the countless others who paved their way.
Dr. Bernice Ledbetter is Practitioner Faculty of Organizational Theory and Management at Pepperdine Graziadio School of Business and Management where she chairs the M.S. in Management and Leadership degree program. Her research and teaching interests focus on values-based leadership, peace leadership, and gender. Dr. Ledbetter founded the Pepperdine Center for Women in Leadership to empower and advance women in the workplace.