Numbers Lie

A recent statistic was posted on NPR that stated “a record of 40 percent of all households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary income for the family”. This number was then compared to the 11 percent of moms in 1960 who were the so called bread winners of the family. This post was noting the great progress we have made towards achieving gender equality considering that 40 to 11 percent is definitely a dramatic shift in numbers, however, have we REALLY progressed?

From further research, I found that, currently, women hold only 91 out of the 535 seats in Congress! This means 444 seats of Congress are held by men, this is just startling. And within the growing business world women are only 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. However, the most noteworthy statistic of all is that only 18 PERCENT of leadership positions are held by women, the other 80 percent of American leaders are dominated by the male population (Center forAmerican Women and Politics). These numbers make a pretty clear argument that women are still not being viewed as equals, and history has not progressed as much as the numbers suggest.

Interestingly enough though, the lack of women leaders is not due to women being seen as incompetent but rather because they are not seen as both “nice and competent” according to a gender bending experiment conducted by Heidi Roizen, a successful entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. As part of the experiment, a professor at Columbia University took a case study Heidi had written and copied it word-for-word, altering only one detail, he changed Heidi’s name to Howard. The professor’s students read each case study and found Heidi and Howard to be equally competent. However, people tended to like Howard more than Heidi. Sheryl Sandburg, author of the novel Lean
In, explains this is because when a “…woman is competent, she does not seem nice enough. If a woman seems really nice, she’s considered more nice than competent”. As such, the dilemma is not that women are incapable of such a task, it is because people fail to accept that a woman can be both nice AND competent, two traits that are deemed necessary for an authoritative position!

Do you think Americans will ever be able to view women as both “nice and competent”? Are women judged, or looked down upon, for being more competent than nice, and if so why?