January 26, 2002

POLITICIANS REDISCOVER DREADED `GLASS CEILING'

Political spin is a wonderful thing to behold. Just compare the sober data compiled by the famously independent General Accounting Office on the status of women in management with the breathless diatribe released this week by two grandstanding members of Congress under the title ``A New Look Through the Glass Ceiling: Where are the Women?''

Two Congressional Democrats, Reps. John Dingell of Michigan and Carolyn Maloney of New York, asked the GAO last summer for information on female managers in 10 broad categories of employment. They wanted to know how well women are represented in management positions, the size of salary differentials, and personal characteristics of male and female managers.

The GAO reported that female managers typically had less education, were younger, were more likely to work part-time and were less likely to be married than male managers in the same industries.

In five of the 10 industries, women were statistically as likely to be in management as men; in one, professional medical services, they were more likely to be managers and in four, less likely.

To me that speaks of enormous progress for women, and over a very short span of time for such momentous social change.

It was true that full-time female managers earned less than full-time male managers -- which you might expect just knowing that they are younger and have less education -- but the GAO pointed out very specifically that the census survey they used ``lacks data on years of experience or degree of managerial responsibility, two factors important for determining salary levels.''

Very important indeed, I would say. Keep that limitation in mind as we move to the next chapter.

You didn't see much about this report when it was released in October, because there was no political hay to be made from it. But Maloney and Dingell put their staffs to work on that problem.

The result, launched with a flurry of conference calls and (exclusively for female reporters) luncheons, finds a dark cloud in every silver lining.

``I don't find one line of good news in the report,'' Maloney told the Associated Press. ``Yet I think people believe women are doing better.''

The press campaign produced a flock of scare headlines and tendentious leads. ``Most female managers earned less compared with men in 2000 than they did five years earlier, according to a congressional study of 10 industries,'' said the AP. ``Just when it seemed people were forgetting about the glass ceiling, it turns out it's much lower than many had believed,'' said a Washington Post story -- not an opinion column -- that also attributed the study to the GAO. The New York Times reported the GAO study said ``the gap between man and women grew as much as 21 cents for every dollar earned.'' Somebody even used the dreaded word ``backlash.''

I couldn't find the new report on the GAO Web site, so I called them. ``That's not ours,'' the operator said. ``There's been some miscommunication.'' Eventually, I found the report on Maloney's Web site.

Maloney and Dingell's staff report is, shall we say, selectively footnoted. It certainly gives the impression that it's mostly derived from the GAO's information, and maybe if I'd been handed it over an elegant lunch I'd have thought so too. But in fact all the scare stuff comes from somewhere else. The factoid that women make up only 12 percent of all corporate officers (hardly relevant to most workers, male or female) is cited from a Web site catalystwomen.org. The salary information in particular appears to be from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as interpreted in a book titled Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling, by Linda Wirth.

So Maloney and Dingell's report says, ``The GAO analysis found that female managers in finance are 50 percent less likely to have a college degree than male managers in the same industry.'' So it did. The report continues, in the same paragraph, ``They also make only $.76 for every male manager dollar.'' That may be true, but somebody else said it; and actually, according to the chart reproduced in the report, $.76 is the 1995 figure; in 2000, it was $.68. But never mind; don't we expect that people with a college degree get jobs that pay more than jobs that don't require one?

And if young women have been flooding into low-level management jobs in recent years, which is what these statistics suggest, they are not losing ground just because they are earning less than higher-ranking managers with more experience.

Maloney and Dingell describe the glass ceiling as ``a virtually impenetrable barrier between women and the executive suite.'' That's nonsense. And trying to pretend the GAO said it is quite simply dishonest.

LETTERS

Date: Saturday, February 16, 2002

Section: Commentary / Editorial

Page: 2W

Memo: Rocky Mountain News Opinion

Column's claims aside, wage gap is widening

We write to respond to the criticisms set forth by Linda Seebach in her Jan. 26 Rocky Mountain News column, ``Politicians rediscover dreaded `glass ceiling'.''

Just by way of background, we commissioned the General Accounting Office (GAO) to look into the status of female managers across 10 industries after reading several industry-specific reports which indicated women were not doing as well as we had hoped. The GAO confirmed our suspicions with their report, ``Women in Management.''

Seebach took the time to look look at our report, ``A New Look Through the Glass Ceiling,'' which was based on that GAO data. It appears she did not, however, read it. If she had, she would have seen that on Page 6 we explain that one of the limitations of the data is that it does not include ``years of experience'' and there are no official statistics to measure individuals' progress over time. We think Seebach would agree that getting those numbers would be both a necessary and useful ``next step'' as we try to better understand the status of women in the workplace.

With regard to salary comparisons, Seebach compares apples to oranges, yet another indication that she did not take the time to read the report. On Page 8 or our report, and Page 18 of the GAO report, it is clarified that the GAO controlled for education, age, marital status and race. In other words, none of these factors had any impact on the wage gap for full-time managers. The bottom line is that in seven of the 10 industries, the wage gap between male and female full-time managers widened.

In the end, we used the best data available rather than not looking at all. Where's the spin in that?

Reps. John D. Dingell, D-Mich.

and Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y.

Washington, D.C.

*

Columnist's note: My column highlighted the fact that the GAO data did not reflect years of experience, so the eminent congresspersons' evidence that I didn't read the report is in fact evidence that they did not read the column. Well, actually I never thought the eminent congresspersons themselves had read the column; but the staff who wrote their letter apparently didn't read it either.

They may not have read their own report with any understanding either, as the data we both cited invalidates nearly everything else they said.

More seriously, the eminent congresspersons' ghostwriters claim "the GAO controlled for education, age, marital status and race."

No, it didn't. It identified disparities in those variables, as both their report and my column say. But "control for" is a term of art, and it means to provide a statistical calculation of what the disparate outcomes would be if those disparities did not exist. This neither the GAO study nor the report signed by the eminent congresspersons did.