The Evolution of Women in the Workplace

This post started out as a Tweet to @SusanEsparza, and then evolved into a comment on her post and subsequently the following perspective.

The Evolution of Workforce Composition

From an evolutionary perspective, I don’t think it’s fair to compare today’s proportions of women to men in the workplace without also considering that ratio at some point in the past. Only a few decades ago the percentage of women in the workforce was much smaller than it is today and C-Level positions were even more disproportionate in years past.

Equality takes time, regardless of prejudice. For example: If, instead of “Men” we had 100 “Red” workers and instead of “Women” we had 15 “Blue” workers, equalization of the workforce numbers would take a long time even though there are relatively equal numbers of Reds and Blues in the country. If we have to wait until Reds retired before we brought on new workers, and then exactly half of the positions went to Blues, we’re looking at more than a few generations before we see relative equality.

Compensatory Evolution

I don’t really buy the whole “women are paid less” argument either. I agree that they are paid less (can’t deny the facts), I just think it has more to do with this evolution of Blues catching up to the Reds than anything else. Thirty years ago there were still many more men than women entering the workforce each year and a lot of those men are just entering the peak of their most profitable working years. For that reason alone, we should expect significant differences in the between the average compensations of men and women. We’re still in an evolutionary shift of compensation equality (in favor of women) and there are certainly other factors holding down female compensation, but we’re making good evolutionary progress here.

Social Evolution

The one part of this that gets all the focus/blame as for why women aren’t equal in the workplace is social evolution. This is the category that includes bias, stereotyping, persecution, racism, sexism, etc. It is this social evolution of the workplace that causes all the problems, but, like all the others, it requires time to evolve.

In the same way that peak salary workers entered the workforce thirty years ago, so did a generation of less socially evolved men and women. And before that, a generation even less socially evolved. The good news is, with each generation since we have become more socially evolved. Social equality is getting closer, but it, like any evolution, takes time. Let’s just make sure our current and future generations keep heading in the more equal direction.