The Pace of Progress is Truly Terrifying
It’s human nature to look on the bright side, but too much bright can be blinding.
We often cheer how much progress women have made, especially when considering that just 100 years ago, women did not have the right to vote (it still took 45 more years to guarantee all women’s right to vote with the Voting Rights Act of 1965).
At first glance, we see women have traveled by leaps and bounds to break barriers as leaders across numerous sectors of society. In 2007, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi became the highest-ranking female elected official in U.S. history when she became Speaker of the House. A woman of color is running as the Vice Presidential nominee for the Democratic Party in 2020- U.S. Senator Kamala Harris! These historic milestones give women hope for a more equal future.
But how far have women really come? It’s scary to think that we may pat ourselves on the back and imagine ourselves on an inevitable path to parity, when the opposite is closer to true.
Within our government, which should be the cornerstone of equal representation, women in the U.S. Congress comprise just 23.7 percent of all Legislators, with the Senate standing at 26 percent and the House of Representatives at 23 percent.
In California, we are lucky. While we have yet to break 35%, even in our deep blue state, women benefit from a cohort of organizations dedicated to closing the gender gap, with an eye toward rectifying racial imbalance as a core part of that charge. After two cycles of testing and refining Close the Gap California’s recruiting strategy, we were able to reverse the 20-year low in women members as of 2017, alongside our allies statewide. As a result, we have been able to climb to 32.5 percent female representatives in the California statehouse, and more women are running for office than ever before!
We are extremely proud of the progress we have made thus far, but research has shown that sustainable progress actually happens frighteningly slowly, especially when we rely on those in power to enact change. Even after so much time and work that has been dedicated to helping us break the glass ceiling, on average, American women still make up no more than 25 percent of the decision makers or leaders in any single sector.
Industries mirror each other in practice. If women who are leaders in making policy aren’t able to break beyond the 25 percent mark, then, absent public pressure, no organization or industry has any incentive to change how women are represented in positions of power.
Whenever significant shifts have occurred in our culture, they have most often come as a direct result of state and federal legislation. Many women won the right to vote when a majority of states ratified the 19th Amendment. Employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion and sex, was banned as a result of federal law. If we are to see more women leaders in our everyday lives, it will be because the people demand it and because our legislators pass bills requiring it.
Let’s take a closer look.
IN BUSINESS
In the corporate world, women lead more frequently than they did 20 years ago, but the glass ceiling remains largely intact today, with few female COOs, CFOs or CEOs. Rather, women are typically called on to lead in specific, historically more gendered areas such as human resources or marketing instead of being positioned to lead more uniformly across sectors. In 2019, women represented just 21 percent of officers in the C-Suite. Shockingly (or not), of the Fortune 500 companies, just 37 are led by women as of 2020- which brought us to an all-time high of 7.4 percent. An oft-touted factoid shows there were more male CEOs named John last year than female CEOs.
Women represented less than a quarter of boards of directors in the S&P 500 in 2018, with women of color making up less than 5 percent for Fortune 500 companies.
It’s no surprise then that California State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson (SD-19) introduced 2018 legislation mandating that all companies headquartered in the state must have at least one woman on their board of directors by January 1, 2020.
The law goes further to increase the mandatory representation for larger boards by requiring boards with five seats to have at least two women directors and those with six or more board seats to have at least three women directors by the end of 2021, or else face a penalty of a $100,000 fine for the first offense.
Senator Jackson’s legislation was the driving force behind the fact that not a single Fortune 500 company with an all-male board remained by the end of 2019. She describes her motivation for writing this landmark equity bill in the New York Times:
“In 2013, I introduced a resolution in the State Senate calling for companies in California to add more women to their corporate boards. We provided all sorts of evidence demonstrating that when you have women on a corporate board, the company does better — it’s more productive, it’s more profitable, it has better governance, it has better transparency. It just is better. And so we called upon companies voluntarily to add more women to their corporate boards. At the time, women held about 15.5 percent of all corporate board seats in California.
Five years later, I took a look to see how well we were doing, and we had moved the ticker up from 15.5 percent to 16 percent.
I realized at that point that we were going to have to require it. I wish it hadn’t been that way. I believe that companies should be able to do good and still do well. There’s no reason that companies can’t take that level of responsibility, both to the planet and also to society as a whole.”
IN ENTERTAINMENT
Surely Hollywood must be nearer to equality, right? With highly public critiques on social media like #OscarsSoWhite and calls to diversify, Hollywood has made significant strides to represent women and people of color on- and behind- the silver screen.
Yet, while the number of women working behind the scenes in the film and television industries reached an all-time high in 2019, that high was just 20 percent. Less than a quarter of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers who worked on the top 100 grossing films were women, an increase from 16 percent in 2018.
It’s important to note that progress isn’t consistent. Even when we see record-breaking numbers of women participating behind the scenes, taking a magnifying glass to those numbers shows a starker disparity.
IN LABOR
According to data from the Economic Policy Institute, women now make up nearly half of union members. Organized labor has seen large strides in women’s leadership. In fact, women hold leadership positions at some of the biggest unions:
- Randi Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
- Mary Kay Henry is president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
- Liz Shuler is secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
This is great news, and a growing number of the nation’s largest local unions are led by women of color, but the number of women presidents of the U.S.’s 60+ unions can be counted using just two hands. Women are far from sharing equal footing with men in leadership positions.
For reference, the AFL-CIO is the largest federation of unions in the U.S. and is made up of 56 national and international unions, which represents more than 12.5 million workers. So while women make up at least 50 percent of members, we make up just 20 percent of the AFL-CIO’s executive council.
And that is just nationally. As a cutting-edge state, California surely must be doing better.
Sadly, even in the California Labor Federation, women are just 11 of the 47 vice-presidents, clocking in at less than 25 percent.
IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT
If we consider how to build the bench of women leaders to ensure we have a fair chance at representation, the best place to begin is at the local level. Unfortunately, our local government bodies lag behind the State Legislature’s recent progress on that front.
For example, County Boards of Supervisors, often the most effective conduits for women who rise to serve in the State Legislature, currently consist of 296 Supervisors from California’s 58 counties. 27 percent are women.
Even scarier:
- 13 County Boards are all male: Amador, Fresno, Glenn, Imperial, Inyo, Kings, Lassen, Madera, San Benito, Santa Cruz, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties.
- 20 Boards currently have a 4-to-1, male to female majority.
A bright spot in the doom and gloom, though, are the seven Boards (or 12 percent) that are majority female: Contra Costa, El Dorado, Los Angeles, Marin, Modoc, San Bernardino and Sonoma.
With more than half of the County Boards in California so lopsided on gender representation, the growing number of women aspiring to higher office are at a huge disadvantage. It is beyond alarming that this critical level of government, which deals with issues facing those most in need (who are disproportionately women and children), women are nowhere near adequately represented. With the Board of Supervisors operating as a pipeline for women candidates into the State Legislature and beyond, this county-level imbalance perpetuates the gender imbalance at the state level, and on up the pipeline to the federal level.
Are we destined to achieve incremental progress at a glacially slow pace?
Does the fight for gender equality really take this long?
WHAT WE DO NEXT MATTERS
The more women help each other across sectors, the faster we can all rise.
Government is one of the few sectors making strides in women’s representation (and as we’ve shown, our work is far from over), and it has to do more to set the example for other areas of leadership throughout society.
If we aim to increase the percentage of women in government (and do the work that is required to move us beyond mere aspiration), we will also create a timely incentive for women in politics to move quicker and farther to help women advance in other areas.
This is why creating pipelines of women is important, and it’s why Close the Gap California and our partner organizations have made a concerted effort to intervene in this imbalance and catapult women beyond the 25 percent barrier by recruiting diverse, accomplished, and credible women to run for state office.
Sure, not every woman we ask to run ends up running, but many do! Imagine if we filled 50 percent of the legislative seats with women. In what other public realms could we see spikes in the percentage of women in leadership? Representation matters.
The fastest way to achieve equality is to flood the field with women — in government and everywhere else. Former Vice President Joe Biden revolutionized the Vice Presidential search in his 2020 campaign by focusing strictly on women candidates. In doing so, he raised the profiles of many talented women who may not otherwise have been seen. More organizations and industries seeking greater balance can follow his lead to ensure that women aren’t passed over for leadership positions.
And if you’re asking yourself, “What do women really do differently than men?,” this very partial list of our women Legislators’ accomplishments is for you:
What Have Women Accomplished Lately in the CA State Legislature?
- Diversity in public companies’ Board of Directors
- Wage equity
- Landmark paid family leave
- Free or low-cost meals for eligible low-income public school students
- Banned discrimination against natural hairstyles
- Protected social safety net for our state’s most vulnerable
- Ensured equal access to all reproductive health care
- $1 billion in funding for early childhood education
- Much, much more!
A generation of women have worked on childcare policies, including universal pre-school and affordable childcare, which would give women equal footing in the workforce. We need more women to help push issues like these — that disproportionately affect women — to the top of the agenda.
We can only achieve these priorities by recruiting — and electing — more women.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Bad fear can paralyze you, but good fear can focus you.
We need this fear to focus you. This Halloween, we hope we scared you just enough. Here are some steps you can take to divert fear into action:
- VOTE — not just for the race that will decide women’s issues on the national stage, but also for down-ballot races that affect you and your fellow local and state women residents. Vote women into office on November 3rd!
Beyond voting, there are a number of other ways to help enact change for women at the state and local levels.
- Help others in your community register to vote
- Join a political campaign as a volunteer
- Run for office or nominate a woman whom we should ask to run
- Donate to candidates and campaigns that reflect your values
The road ahead may seem challenging, but a bright spot of opportunity exists between 2022 and 2028 with California’s Motherlode. The Motherlode enables Close the Gap to recruit women in higher numbers than ever before, to fill a minimum of 96 legislative seats that will open due to term limits. This unique opportunity is the best chance we’ve ever had to achieve gender equality in the California Legislature! We can reach 50 percent women- or more!- by 2028, if we have the support to recruit in every open seat that’s winnable for a progressive woman.
Senator Jackson recently spoke at our “Forward Into Light” community event and inspired us with these powerful words of encouragement:
“Women lead differently. Women have greater emotional intelligence and are much more collaborative and, boy, don’t we need that in today’s world. When I look through the lens of leadership today, I look at how women are leading, and what it is we need to do to fix the major problems we have.
We have to be in the place where the decisions are being made. Because the future of the world, frankly, depends on more women making those key decisions.
So my message, my ask, my plea to you is — let’s elect more women, women who share our values. We need to channel the spirit of RBG wherever we go. Our voice needs to be heard and respected and listened to.”
Those in power, left to their own devices, will not move progress forward any faster. We need an intervention. Imagine how rapidly we could achieve equality and rectify racial imbalance if we had more women like Senator Jackson and others actively pushing equity legislation.
Don’t let fear paralyze you. Women can’t wait 250 years. Help us flood the field with diverse, accomplished women and achieve equality by 2028.
Let’s close the gap, California!
Close the Gap California is committed to building on progressive women’s historic momentum by recruiting them statewide and achieving equality in California by 2028. Join us!
About Close the Gap California
Close the Gap California (CTG) is a statewide campaign to close the gender gap in the California Legislature by 2028. By recruiting accomplished, progressive women in targeted districts and preparing them to launch competitive campaigns, CTG has been changing the face of the Legislature one cycle at a time since launch in 2013.
Twenty CTG Recruits (14 of them women of color) are serving in Sacramento today. CTG Recruits are committed to reproductive freedom, public education funding, and combating poverty.
