Chapter Ten

The Underachieving Gifted –

Self-Doubts & Double Standards – 

    “All gifted women must find ways of coping with the ‘handicap’ of being female.”                                                                                                Dr. Barbara Kerr, Smart Girls Two[1]

             Some of the best news of the past year is that the widely reported gender gaps of the early nineties seem to be narrowing or disappearing altogether. Girls are taking as many high-school science courses as boys, and test scores have evened out in most subject areas. What hasn’t changed though is the gap in achievement among our most gifted and talented young men and women. It’s a gap that is as old as our measurements, and despite decades of educational change, it persists. Gifted males outachieve, outperform, and out-earn their female counterparts today just as they have done since this data was first gathered and reported seventy years ago.

It is not that males are smarter. There is no biological evidence that suggests that men have an intellectual advantage over women. And no one has hypothesized, let alone demonstrated, the existence of an intelligence gene that somehow finds its way onto the male chromosome more frequently than onto the female.  On the contrary, gifted women outperform men in school, getting better grades at every educational level. They always have, at least since the first studies of giftedness were undertaken by Lewis Terman at Stanford during the twenties. It’s what happens when bright and talented girls matriculate into the workforce that should still alarm us.

             Terman’s classic study of gifted girls and boys from the 1920s through the 1950s documented that gifted women were equal to or even superior to their male counterparts in school achievement from first grade through college. But follow-up studies fifteen and thirty years later found that less than half of the women had even entered the workforce, and of those, most worked in clerical positions. The males in the study produced more research, published more books, made more money. None of this would have surprised anyone given the sharply limited public roles women were allowed during the first half of the century.

The Achievement Gap

                                         You would expect a different picture today. It’s been decades since sex discrimination was prohibited in the workplace and in the schools. During that time, women have made tremendous progress in education, putting them on par with men in many respects. The large gaps in the education levels between women and men that were evident in the early 1970s have essentially disappeared. More women attend college now than men, and have done so for the past ten years. This is welcome progress. But gifted women continue to downsize their career dreams as they move through college and continue to achieve in the workplace at lower rates than their male counterparts. The results of a current ten-year study of high-school valedictorians now in its eighth year also suggest that the girls in the study, unlike the boys, lose confidence in their abilities, and shrink their career expectations as they progress through college.[2] Even though the women in the study had outperformed the men throughout high school and college, receiving better grades, they performed at lower levels than males in the study when they entered the professional world. 

In Smart Girls Two: A New Psychology of Girls, Women and Giftedness, Dr. Barbara Kerr, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on giftedness, described the results of a ten-year follow-up study of a group of girls who had graduated from a special school for gifted and talented children.[3] Although the females had attained higher grades and more honors than the males, by late adolescence the young women had lower career aspirations.[4] A similar study of mathematically precocious youth found that the educational aspirations of the girls declined significantly during their college years, as did the number of females in the study who majored in the sciences.[5] 

Given the great increase in the numbers of women who are receiving higher degrees, you would expect to see similar progress in the working world itself, especially in the professions. At the entry levels you do: as many women as men now enter law, medicine, academia and the corporate world. But when you look more closely at the actual numbers of women in the professions, at their  advancement rates, and at the executive level positions they occupy, you can see a pattern of underrepresentation which is indefensibly disproportionate to their numbers and talent. 

A glance at the gender makeup of the current United States Congress, where men still outnumber women ten-to-one, speaks eloquently of the snail-like progress gifted women are making in the political ranks. And a careful look at the statistics in “Professional Women at the Millennium” on pages 150 and 151 reveals how men also predominate in corporate management positions, in state and federal judgeships, and in academic positions. Even in a traditionally “woman’s field” like education, males occupy most of the executive level positions. Though comprising only twenty-five percent of the teaching population, males account for seventy-five percent of the school principals, and ninety-five percent of the district  superintendents. Working women still earn only seventy-four cents to every dollar a male earns, and a male with a college degree receives $15,000 more yearly salary, on the average, than a similarly qualified woman.  After almost two decades studying the lives and careers of high-achieving professional women, Dr. Sally M. Reis of the  University of Connecticut concluded,

 “Few questions can be raised about whether or not the underachievement of bright women exists; the fact remains that in almost all professional fields and occupations, men overwhelmingly surpass women in both the professional accomplishments they achieve and the financial benefits they reap”.[6]

The Testing Gap 

The “achievement gap” between gifted males and females actually starts to appear even before they leave secondary school. By the latter years of high school, testing gaps arise among the highest achievers which do not exist between boys and girls in the general population. While high-school boys and girls across the entire population test about the same in most subject areas (boys test higher in science, girls in writing), this overall parity breaks down when you look at just the high-achieving population. On the critical “high stakes” tests like the SAT that determine scholarships, high-achieving males outscore girls in every academic area. One result of this is that although more girls than boys take the SAT, more males are declared eligible for scholarships based on their scores.[7]

 Even when you compare students who receive the same grades, girls' math scores on the SAT are typically 30 to 40 points lower. In 1996, girls lagged 34 points behind boys on average, on a 200-to-800 point scale.[8] Even in verbal intelligence, boys outscore girls on the SAT verbal test and have done so since 1972.[9] The largest gender gaps appear among the brightest students. Even girls with A+ averages in high-school score an average of 80 points lower on the SAT than high-school boys with A+ averages. Boys outscore girls on eleven of the fourteen SAT II College Board Achievement tests, on the Graduate Record Examination used to determine eligibility to graduate school (130-point average difference) the MCAT for medical school, the LSATs for law school, and the GMATs for business school.[10] 

In a nationwide math test of fifteen-year-olds there were 1.3 boys for every girl in the top ten percent, 1.5 boys for every girl in the top five per cent, and seven boys for every girl in the top one per cent. One reason cited for the poorer performance of the top girls is something called “learned helplessness,” the state in which faillure is perceived as insurmountable. And research has found that the smarter girls are, the more likely they are to fall into this trap. “The female math whizzes,” New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell concludes in a recent article on the subject, 

“the ones who should be competing in the top one and two per cent with their male counterparts, are the ones most often paralyzed by a lack of confidence in their own aptitude. They think they belong only in the intellectual middle."[11] 

Why Gifted Girls Underachieve 

Why do gifted women continue to achieve substantially less in their professional careers than the same men that they so readily outperformed during their schooling? Why the continued discrepancies between the obvious talent of women, and their underrepresentation in the mid and upper reaches of the professions? No simple answer emerges from the research, but it points towards two clusters of factors – internal attitudes and external barriers – which may be at the root of the problem:

 1. Internal Barriers. Researchers point to internal attitudes and “psychic” pressures which inhibit the full expression of talent and ability in many talented women in our culture; conflicts about their role in society, self-doubt, “psychic binds” that constrain the full development of many professional women. 

2. External barriers. Despite legislation that prohibits gender discrimination, glass ceilings, “old-boy” networks, a male-centered corporate culture, and various other forms of institutional bias still persist in the workplace.

 §

1. Barriers in the Mind 

Let’s look at these clusters in detail now, beginning with the often profoundly disabling internal conflicts and psychic barriers that constrain many of our most gifted young women from realizing their full potential. Because of their early perceptiveness, high-achieving girls may begin to experience Carol Gilligan’s “wall” of embedded cultural bias at an age when they are even less equipped mentally and emotionally to cope. It’s not surprising then to find that while the numbers of boys and girls identified as gifted are roughly equal until around the age of twelve, the number of girls identified as gifted begins to fall off as they enter adolescence and become ambivalent about their gifts.[12] A gifted girl has to contend with her very giftedness becoming problematic: it is not “feminine” to be too bright, she hears through the cultural “white noise,” nor should she assert her opinions too forcibly or loudly. 

Feeling increasingly valued more for their appearance than their abilities, bright girls may abandon their academic and professional aspirations altogether as they learn to adapt to more traditional and acceptable “feminine” roles. They may come to mistrust their talents, and even to see them as burdens that can threaten their popularity.

 Fear of Success 

For some girls, their talents become sources of confusion and pain rather than gates to achievement. Laboring under what researchers call the “fear of success,” high-achieving girls feel that they may be rejected by their girlfriends or seem undesirable to boys if they appear too competent or successful. Some studies show that these fears can lead to an erosion in self-confidence that can have lasting consequences on their career choices.[13] 

            Their fears are not unfounded. Studies have found that while gifted boys have been found to be the most popular students in grades four through eight, gifted girls are sometimes the least popular.”[15] Another study found that the self-esteem of high-achieving girls actually rose as their achievement dropped, due to the cultural messages they received that construes intelligence in girls, especially in the areas of math and science, as unfeminine.

 Dumbing Down 

            As bright girls near adolescence, their earlier joy in achievement comes into conflict with their need for relationship and connection. Finding that their intelligence undermines their popularity or their appeal to boys, high-achieving girls may go to great lengths to blend in, denying or hiding their special gifts.[16] 

During a panel discussion I had with a group of about a hundred high-school girls, I asked how many of them had ever pretended they were not as smart as they really were.  A few hands went up, and then one girl spoke out: “Come on girls! Let’s get honest.” Almost half of the hands went up. Even when they enter the workforce, high-achieving women continue to face cultural attitudes that may inhibit their professional growth. A recent study found, for instance, that almost three-quarters of the women in it reported that they worked for men who felt threatened by their intelligence and competence. And more than half of them said they worked for women who felt threatened by them.[17]

 The Impostor Syndrome 

            Some bright girls may so internalize the culture’s ambivalence towards their intelligence as to actually come to doubt it. Studies show them often reluctant to take credit for their success, unlike gifted boys who have little compunction claiming success. “ I had a lot of help” is a common explanation that bright girls give for their accomplishments. Or, “I was in the right place at the right time.” And if pressed, “ I really didn’t do as well as it seems.”[19] Bright girls may come to believe these story lines and carry this self-deprecation into actual beliefs.  It’s not at all uncommon to find highly successful professional women who secretly feel that, despite their obvious achievement, they don’t belong where they are. “They were lucky, in the right place, had a lot of help . . .” They may even come to deny their giftedness altogether, yet happily credit it to their partners or children.[20]         

Nor is it uncommon to find bright girls attributing their success to luck rather than to their ability, something you’ll rarely find a gifted boy doing. When researchers ask a gifted boy why he got a high grade on a test in school, he is far more likely than a girl to reply that it was because he was smart. With failure, though,. boys will more frequently blame the test for being unfair, while girls more often blame themselves. Other internal factors found to contribute to the underachievement of gifted females are an unwillingness to plan for the future, the belief that someone else will take care of them, and unreal expectations about the future.[21] 

The Decline of Dreams 

            As we saw in Chapter One, if you ask a nine-year-old girl what her dreams are, a litany of possibilities may tumble forth: veterinarian, artist, astronaut, nuclear physicist. Ask the same girl a few years later, though, and you may hear a much diminished sense of possibilities. Girls of high-school age are far more likely than boys to say they are not smart enough for their dream careers.[22] As a result, while boys’ career expectations continue to rise through high-school and into college, girls’ expectations drop beginning in middle school, and continue to slide throughout  high-school and into their sophomore year of college.[23] One study of high-school girl valedictorians found that five years after their high-school graduations, most had substantially changed their career plans, and had lowered their assessments of their abilities.[24]

In a long-term study of the careers of gifted women, Kerr found four patterns that derailed or limited their careers: full-time homemaking, in which half of the women were engaged; traditional female occupations, another quarter; dual-career couples, only a few, and single professional career women, also just a few. Many of these women reported that they had compromised their dreams of achievement in order not to inconvenience others and reported that they had found “little support for their goals throughout adolescence and young adulthood.” In her  more recent twenty-year follow-up study of the same group of women, Kerr concluded that choices they made in late adolescence created clear limits on their adult attainments.[26]

     In another long-range study of high-school valedictorians, the women’s self-estimation of their own intelligence, unlike the men’s in the study, experienced a decline between their senior year in high school and their sophomore year in college. [27] And most of the young women had already shifted their career expectations towards less demanding careers. It has been found that a drop in self-confidence can influence the rest of a woman’s life if it causes changes in her college plans or her goals for graduate study.

 Psychological Adjustments 

            In Smart Girls Two, Kerr concludes that the primary obstacle to the full achievement of gifted women may simply be their “healthy” adjustment to the culture’s desire that gifted women lead “average” lives.[28] Astute in their assessment of the risks that accompany female achievement in a male-centered workplace, many high-achieving women may give in and scale back their dreams. “Hence it would appear,” she writes, “that this process of adjustment is more to blame for women’s failure to achieve their potential than the other internal factors combined, though clearly all these forces interact.”[29]

             Since high-achieving girls may continue to receive good grades throughout their schooling, some researchers feel that the active conflicts which undermine their adult achievement may remain undetected during their high-school years. Their ambivalence about their abilities, the erosion of their self-confidence, and the diminishment of their sense of possibilities may all be present and active even though their grades remain high. Dr. Sally M. Reis of the University of Connecticut is the principal investigator of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, and a leading expert on the careers and lives of gifted women. She observed that the actual underachievement of gifted females may not be reflected in grades or how well one “goes to school” but rather in what a person believes can be attained or accomplished in life.[30] She cautions that we need to watch our high-achieving girls for signs of these declines, even the girls receiving good grades, to try to identify and head off erosions in their self-confidence. 

Supporting High-Ability Daughters

             Parents can help their daughters to avoid developing some of the internal attitudes that act as brakes on their achievement. The strategies I talk about in earlier chapters to help girls develop voice, competence, and courage are especially useful in helping them develop confidence and inner strength, as well as skills.

 Growing Competence 

            In helping your high-ability daughter become competent, aim for a balance between the intellectual and the cerebral, the artistic and the intellectual, between the active and the passive, and between the skills of achievement and the skills of connection. See Chapter Six for suggestions for helping her build this balance, especially in the four main areas of competency which bear repeating here:

 1. The skills of connection – These include open communication, conflict resolution, living with differences, collaboration.

 2. Physical skills – These include basic ball skills, sports and athletics, performing arts like dance and ballet.

 3. Technical skills – These actually include a broad range of skills, including math and science skills, computer skills, domestic skills, such as cooking, basic carpentry, and housekeeping, and also arts and crafts.

 4. Mental skills – These are essential to achievement and include strategizing, problem-solving, risk-taking, and goal-setting.

     Don’t overlook physical skills. I talked at length about them in Chapter Six and you might return there to refresh your understanding. Often parents of gifted children overemphasize academics so that their daughters do not develop the physical skills so central to the self-esteem of young children. Two staples in my GATE program are clay modeling, which helps build confidence in using one’s hands; and P.E., especially basic ball skills, which my younger gifted students often lack.  I’m still surprised at how much it means to a youngster –  no matter how bright or talented –  when she is able to shoot a basket for the first time, or dribble a basketball down the court. (See page 79 for suggestions on developing basic ball skills.)

 The Skills of Connection: Creating a Usable Past

                 The suggestions I gave for “making connection” in Chapter Five are just as relevant with high-ability girls. One aspect of connection I did not discuss there is especially relevant: creating in your daughter a palpable sense of relationship with notable women in the past. All girls (not simply the gifted) need to know about the women who have gone before them. Their stories can provide both inspiration and models for today’s talented girls. The historian Gerda Lerner argues that having a sense of the contributions of women in the past is absolutely vital to women’s achievement today. She calls this creating “a usable past.”    

As a parent, you can take an active role in this creation with your daughter. Don’t be intimidated by your lack of knowledge of women’s history: we are all illiterates where it comes to the contributions of women.  Two decades ago, this might have been defensible, when so little literature on women’s contributions was available. But today, an abundance of wonderful books gives the stories of hundreds of women whose experiences, contributions, adventures and stories create a formidable picture of women’s capacities. 

You and your daughter (and son) need to know about these women. I describe some anthologies at the end of the chapter that make excellent starting points, books that give brief descriptions of many women from which you can get an overview of just how historically rich and significant women’s lives have been. Start by going through the ranks of notable women from every age that are listed in “250 Notable Women” beginning on page 172.  Select a few with your daughter to research more closely, then look them up in one or more of the collections of biographies listed in the back. Follow these up with more detailed readings from selected biographies. 

Here are a few more suggestions for filling in the gaps: 

            Discover a new world – Reading about the lives of amazing women you’ve never heard of, or learning intimate details in the lives of the more famous, can become something of an adventure. There are whole books given to women in particular fields: women in science, women inventors, women adventurers in the 19th century, women aviators, women athletes. You are in for surprise, adventure, and delight. Think of it as your own journey of discovery.

             Set goals – Decide that by the end of the month, you and your daughter will be able to recite from memory the names of (one? two?) dozen women whose lives were notable. Know 100 names (and their stories) by the end of six months. 

            Share your reading – Read a story each night with your daughter, or your whole family. Many stories are written at age-appropriate levels for young girls. A wonderful way to share learning! 

Taking Risks 

            As I discussed in Chapter Seven, I often tell the parents of my GATE students that I sometimes see my role as teaching their gifted children how to experience failure. High-achieving students tend to play it safe –girls more so than boys – where it comes to exploring new territory. This wins them good grades, but ultimately may penalize them in the workplace where intellectual and creative risk-taking are essential to success. Just as it is part of my job as a GATE teacher to press my students beyond their thresholds (often creating anxious moments), so parents of gifted daughters have to see this as part of their own parental job description. Chapter Seven offers numerous specifics on how to do this, but here are a few general suggestions that may help guide you in growing your own daughter’s capacity to take reasonable risks: 

° Keep her at her thresholds. Whatever the activity –  sports or reading, ballet, hiking, cooking a casserole – find ways to challenge her limits. Press her near her thresholds, then gently urge her beyond them. 

° Help her taste the thrill of going beyond her expectations. I’ll repeat what I said in Chapter Seven: my own criteria for success as a teacher of the gifted is when a child tells me, “I didn’t know I could do that.” Listen for those words from your daughter. Your delight will echo hers. 

° Always ask: Is she stretching herself? While making sure that she experiences success on a regular basis and becomes comfortably skilled in a number of areas, be sure that she challenges herself on occasion, physically, intellectually, artistically, technically.                      

Additional Support For Gifted Daughters

                                               In addition to keeping an eye on developing connection, competence and courage, here are a few pertinent suggestions for raising a high-ability daughter:[31]

 Preschoolers

° Choose child care cautiously. (Avoid day care centers that segregate girls and boys.)

° Be sure that your day care center has plenty of books.

° Take your preschool girl to your place of work and explain what you do there.

° Take advantage of programs that may help satisfy your gifted girl’s hunger for intellectual stimulation.

° Take time to answer her questions.

 The Preadolescent Daughter

° Find her “books, books, and more books.”

° Get her a computer and make sure she becomes handy with it. (See Chapter Six for recommended software.)

° Find her math puzzles and problems to work with.

° Expose her to the world. Take her camping, exploring, museum-hopping, traveling.

° Don’t over-schedule her time.

° Don’t push her into social relationships. (Books and play may be more interesting at this age than for other children.)

° Watch for signs of boredom at school.

° Provide her competent role models, even in the baby-sitters you choose.

° Help her feel special and unique. 

The Young Adolescent Daughter                            

Perhaps the most crucial time in her development as she begins to encounter the world “as it is.” See Carol’s Postscript following this chapter for suggestions for easing her through puberty and empowering her beyond it. And: 

° Don’t protest too strongly about her desire to be “normal. ” In fact, reassure her that she is.

° Don’t go along with her when she evaluates herself in terms of her physical appearance or relationships.

° Insist that she take math and science courses.

° Try to keep her involved in team sports or team physical activities.

° Give her a lot of receptive listening and a wide margin for high emotion. She may even abruptly distance herself from her giftedness. You will have to learn to tolerate this, without condoning it.

° Find her a mentor in an area of special interest or ability.

° Help her keep her aspirations high. 

High-school Daughters 

Keep close watch that she is not lowering her expectations about herself and her future. Try to keep her involved in team activities, preferably in a high school sport. You may recall from Chapter Six that there exists a strong correlation between girls’ participation in high-school team sport and their success in science.[32]

Also: 

° Consider all-female schooling. There is evidence that all-girl high-schools provide a more supportive learning environment for achieving girls.

° Help her find college and scholarship guides.

° See that she gets competent, nonsexist career guidance.

° Continue to find her mentors.

° Keep her from spreading herself too thin. 

If your teenaged gifted daughter seems to be consciously withdrawing from doing her best work because of fears of being rejected socially, counseling and support can help the situation. Studies show that guidance counseling for gifted girls should include exposure to various female role models, networking and mentorship programs, and career and college counseling. Guidance counselors, teachers, and parents should be aware that many gifted females have ambivalent emotions about their high abilities. “Accepting one’s potential may be the first step toward realizing the potential.” [TF1] [33]

 2. Barriers in the Workplace 

Internal conflicts and self-doubt are not the only source of the underachievement of gifted women. Despite the entry of large numbers of talented women into the workplace, it still disfavors their full achievement, having been shaped by decades when only males were allowed into it. “The working world remains a segregated place,” writes author and publisher Elizabeth Perle in When Work Stops Working: Women, Work, and Identity:

 “ . . . a place built for men with full-time wives at home to take care of the rest of life. It is built around men’s need to be defined and valued by what they do, not who they are.”[34]

Success, Achievement and, “Male” Values 

            As a result of this history, the values of the workplace – its definition of achievement, for instance, or its understanding of success – mirror a decidedly male set of values. Men routinely equate such qualities as daring, independence, curiosity, and self-confidence as “masculine” traits. It’s not surprising that many women might feel ambivalent, at best, about their status in the workplace. In such an environment, even words like achievement and success may become loaded words for women and rightly so, since they have been appropriated so thoroughly by male-centered values like competition and hierarchy. More traditional “feminine” values like emotional sensitivity or connection may carry little value in the workplace, and in fact, may even appear as suspect.  

Consequently, working women often feel they have to set aside their affinities for connection in order to succeed in business or the professions. Many find themselves conflicted over their femininity, wanting to be seen as “professional” by their colleagues, yet feeling pressed to set aside valuable parts of themselves in order to reach that acceptance. Ms. Perle describes this conflict and sense of less when she writes about “how misshapen the fabric of our lives can become when we go to work in a man’s world if we do that work as women working on male terms.” She quotes Marie Wilson, president of the Ms. Foundation: 

“What [today’s] girls are asking of us is ‘What parts of ourselves have we cut off?’ And they are urging us to bring those parts back. It’s all about bringing ourselves back . . .bringing our whole selves into this world.”[35] 

            This is a dilemma not largely shared by men, nor does it weigh upon their progress towards success. Yet your gifted daughter may well have already sensed this dilemma, as she watches her professional mother or a working aunt struggling with these very conflicts. Emily Hancock suggests that “second thoughts” can also compromise the resolution of gifted girls when they observe that there often exists a “crimp in the womanly life”  of the professional women she knows. “A girls’ ambition is tempered with uncertainty,” she writes, “as she realizes that for a female achievement has its costs.”[36] If she is nearing puberty or is already an adolescent, your daughter may have already made her own subtle, but fundamental “psychological adjustments” in her attitude towards feminine achievement  that will shape, and possibly limit, her ultimate achievement. 

The New Double Standard 

            Another factor that inhibits the achievement of gifted women is what amounts to  a double standard under which working and professional women are held responsible for traditional domestic responsibilities far more than are men. Studies repeatedly show that working women with families still do the lion’s share of the domestic caretaking. Having a married partner only seems to make matters more difficult, since a husband apparently adds to the total housework of the woman, instead of reducing it. One study of an Eastern corporation showed that working fathers there spent an average of twenty hours a week less in domestic duties than did the working mothers.[37] 

            Working women also find that the professional world, whether in government, the corporate workplace, academia, or private practice, functions largely as though domestic realities simply didn’t exist. Seventy-eighty-hour workweeks, for instance, characterize the practice of law, or a successful career in real estate.  Tenure rules in university departments can require such massive amounts of required committee meetings, teaching duties and research production that they become prohibitions against a family life.[38] And simply getting through a medical residency, routinely serving 24-hour shifts, places unrealistic demands on mothers. These are not pressures most professional males experience, certainly not to the degree of their female counterparts.          

The Perception Gap 

There’s a growing perception gap where the increased numbers and visibility of women mask continued patterns of discrimination that keep talented women underrepresented, underpaid, and underachieving. The closer we approach the seats of real power and wealth in the professional world, the more transparent the “perception gap” becomes. Looking again at “Professional Women at the Millennium” on pages 150 and 151, these patterns become easily evident: 

° The Corporate World  – The federal bipartisan Glass Ceiling Commission found that  white males still held 95 percent of the highest executive-level positions in Fortune-1000 companies, and of those companies, only three had women CEOs as of 1994. Fewer than 3 percent of all top-management positions are held by women,  and women command only 2 percent of the top corporate salaries in the country. 

° The Political World – 1992 was hailed as the “year of the woman” in national politics. But the general picture of women’s place in the national political landscape is still indefensibly disproportionate to their numbers and talent. Women’s absence from U.S. presidential politics in the 1990’s remains at best a curiosity, given the recent examples of capable heads of state like Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain, Indira Gandhi of India, or Violetta Chamorro of Nicaragua. (See “Women Presidents & Prime Ministers” on page 148 for a list of all modern female presidents and prime ministers.)

 ° The Professions – Law, medicine, and academia are often cited as examples of women’s virtual parity with men in the professional world. But, “follow the money” or “count the suits” within the corridors of professional power and influence and a sobering picture emerges: 

° Law – While male and female lawyers enter the profession in equal numbers and at equal levels of pay, men average 18 percent more income than their female counterparts after three years of practice. Female corporate lawyers earn less than their male counterparts at every level, with salary gaps that range as high as 35 percent. And promotion rates for women within law firms are 5 percent, compared to 17 percent for men. 

°Medicine – While women account for forty percent of new doctors, women physicians are overwhelmingly represented in the lower-paying specialties, with males accounting for almost nine out of ten surgical residents, one of the highest paying specialties. In medical schools, the top ranks remain overwhelmingly male, while promotion rates for women are lower than for men.

°  Academia – Even though women receive more Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees now, men hold full professorships at eight times the rate of women. Even at the entry level positions, twice as many males are being hired. Studies also find that college women are still called on by their professors less often in class than men, and are invited to become teaching assistants and to participate in research less.[40] 

According to Ms. Perle, institutions in the workplace are beginning to recognize and respond to the need for change. More and more professional women (and men), for instance, are expressing discontent with the dehumanizing effects of 80-hour workweeks that leave them little time or energy for their families. Some are dropping out altogether to seek work that is more congenial to a family-centered lifestyle. Institutions recognize that if they are going to continue to attract and keep the best talent, they will have to respond to this discontent, offering more flexible work schedules, for instance, or not enforcing arbitrary transfers. 

A shift has also taken place among the younger generation which has rejected the notions of earlier generations of finding identity through work. To them, according to Perle, “work is simply what they do.” She argues that the current generation of young women professionals have already made adjustments that will better prepare them for the world of work. “They have a different definition of success than we have,” she writes, one which includes more time for family or non-work pursuits. “They don’t want to go to work in a world with an uneven power relationship where the corporation holds the cards. They don’t want to miss their kids the way their parents missed them.” 

New Meanings, New Successes

Certainly much has improved for professional women during the past two decades, and I wouldn’t want to discourage young and talented women from seeking professional careers. But they shouldn’t be misled by the growing media drumbeat that gender equity has been achieved and all that’s left to do is simply, “Go For It.” This simply isn’t the case, and the misconception, left unchallenged, risks some real dangers: that young women will enter the professional world unprepared for the persistent forms of bias which still inhabit it, and, even worse, that efforts to truly level the professional landscape for women may weaken before real parity has been achieved. Gloria Steinem has rightly labeled the false perception of women’s equality the single greatest obstacle to women’s full citizenship in our society. 

By attaching new meanings to what success is, by including personal satisfaction and relationships and individual pursuits within it, the next generation is redefining success in terms that are already more compatible with women’s more relational ways. And it is here, in establishing more personal norms for success, that we can look for ways to prepare their college-bound daughters for the realities of the working world. Carol recently asked Ms. Perle what her advice to parents of high-achieving daughters would be, given these realities. “The short version,” she said, 

“is that it is a question of defining what would make them feel good about themselves, what sorts of achievements would they measure their progress by towards self-determined goals. Young women need to protagonists know that society is not neutral – it has an agenda for them. So at least they will know what the lay of the land is.”[41] 

            Real equity in the workplace will arrive only when we instill in our young women the clarity to see the world they will enter as it is, and equip them with the confidence and persistence they will need – not simply to make their mark in the world, but to transform the workplace into a more humane and fufilling setting. Our institutions need the healing forces of “care and connection” that women especially can bring to them, along with their abilities, talents, and gifts. I’d like to help send an entire army – well, peace corps – of talented, confident and wholly realized young women (and men) into our institutions over the next decade with this vision before them. If we give them the skills and the confidence to succeed and to be themselves, perhaps they can reshape the workplace into an environment that functions more humanely and more productively for all of us, women and men alike.

Professional Women at the Millennium

Underrepresented, Underachieving, Underpaid

The Professions 

   ° In the mid-nineties, women comprised 17 percent of the architects, 8 percent of the engineers, 10 percent of the dentists, 83 percent of librarians.

   ° In a survey of 10 major newspapers, 27 percent of the front-page bylines were women’s, while 24 percent of the photos included women (usually in groups or with spouses or children.). 11 percent of those quoted in front page stories were women.[42]

   ° About 40 percent of new doctors are women, but the top ranks at medical schools remain overwhelmingly male, and promotion rates for women are lower.[43]

   ° Women comprise 23 percent of the nation’s lawyers and almost half of all law students. But women lawyers comprise only 12 percent of all federal and district court judges, 13 percent of all circuit Court of Appeals judges.[44]

   ° Studies show that promotion rates for women lawyers are only 5 percent compared to 17 percent for  men.[45]

   ° National surveys show that female corporate counsels of Fortune 500 companies earn less than their male counterparts at every level, with pay gaps as high as 35 percent.[46]

 Academia 

   ° Number of full professorships at major U.S. universities as of 1996.[47]

                                University             Males     Females                  University             Males     Females

                                Harvard                  577          74                            Princeton               357          47

                                Yale                        337          45                            Chicago                 375          53

                                Stanford                 464          50 vzm

                Cornell                   405          48

   ° Number of new faculty at major U.S. universities as of 1996.[1]

                                Harvard                  154          87                            Princeton               134          64

                                Yale                        117          59                            Chicago                 130          43

                                Stanford                 104          51                            Cornell                   92            46           

   ° Average salary of full professorships at major U.S. universities as of 1996 in $1000’s):

                Harvard                  105900    91500                      Princeton               99100      91500

                                Yale                        97900      88600                      Chicago                 95700      84600     

                                Stanford                 101200    91400                      Cornell                   81100      73500

    ° In 1994, women comprised 17.5 percent of ladder-rank faculty in the University of California system.[48]

   ° Women account for 23 percent of the CEOs of regionally accredited, degree-granting institutions. One of nine University of California campuses has a woman chancellor.[49]

   ° In engineering, tenure rules at many universities force a woman to choose between raising a family and establishing an academic career.[50]

 Business 

   ° White males constitute 43 percent of the United States workforce, but hold 95 percent of senior management positions.[51]

   ° 97 percent of senior managers at Fortune-1000 corporations are white males,[52] while women account for 2.4 percent of top management positions.

Professional Women at the Millennium (Cont.) 

   ° As of 1996, only three of the Fortune-100 corporations had female CEOs.[53] 

   ° 90 percent of Fortune-500 companies do not have a woman among their five most highly-compensated officers.[54]

   ° Women make up 79 percent of all cashiers and 99 percent of all secretaries.[55] 

Earnings 

   ° A woman who works full time receives about 74 cents for every dollar that a man makes. This amounts to an average shortfall of $420,000 over a lifetime of earnings.[56]

   °  A male with a college degree will make an average of $15,000 a year more than a similarly qualified woman.[57]

° Between this decade and the year Title IX was passed (1972), the difference favoring males over females in an annual teacher contract salary increased $901 to $3,711.[58]

   ° Of the 56.6 million women in the paid labor force, 80 percent are in the three lowest paying occupational categories.[59]

   ° An estimated 43 percent of women in the labor force earn wages below the poverty level as compared to 27 percent of men. Nearly 80 percent of women workers still earn less than $25,000.[60] 

Math Science & Technology 

   °  The number of Bachelor degrees awarded to women in computer science has declined from 54% in 1984 to 27.5% in 1996.

   ° 17 percent of Ph.D. degrees in math and science are awarded to women.[61]

   ° 13 percent of physicists, 11 percent of geologists and 9 percent of engineers are women.[62]

   ° As of 1995, men receive 70 percent of the natural science and engineering degrees and 84 percent of physics degrees.[63]

   ° Fewer than 15 percent of the doctorates in physics, math, engineering and computer sciences were awarded to women in 1996.[64]

 Education

   ° Women comprise 53 percent of college students, but only 10 percent of tenured college faculty.

   ° Women comprise more than 50 percent of law students, but only 27 percent of law school faculty, 15 percent of full professorships, and 7 percent of law school deans.

   ° 72 percent of all elementary and secondary teachers are women, while 72 percent of all principals and 95 percent of all superintendents are men.[65]

Government

   ° Women comprise 10 percent of the seats in Congress, and 9 percent in the Senate.[66]

   ° Women account for 20 percent of state legislators, and for  31 percent of top policy-making positions in state governments.[67]