Breaking through the glass ceiling

When I was working as a journalist, I never really felt discriminated against as a woman except for one occurrence. I was working as a sports journalist in the mid-to-late 1980s and there were a lot of incidents with women in locker rooms, sexual harassment and male athletes having general hesitation when talking to female reporters."\nAmy Reynolds, an assistant professor in the School of Journalism since fall of 2000, has encountered many career environments over the past fifteen years. Before IU, she taught at two other universities and worked in broadcasting and newspaper reporting and editing. \nReynolds believes her experience in sports journalism may have been because of the time. \n"I don't know how much the issues I dealt with have changed, but I know there are many more competent female sports reporters on television today."\nMark Brostoff, associate director of the Kelley School of Business' undergraduate career services, typically does not see specific trends as far as gender preferences among businesses visiting IU. \n"We like to focus our attention on what our students' needs are," he said. "When businesses place inquiries with us, they have no preference gender wise and most are usually pretty equal in terms of number of students."\nJonathan Perlman, a loan officer for Advantage Investors Mortgage, Chicago. interviewed several impending graduates during the spring of 2003.\n"My company set up interviews directly through the Kelley School of Business and we gave no specific credentials," he said. "In our business you need to be professionally presentable and carry good communication skills. These are all things I examine during the interview process." \nOut of 1,200 seniors in the business school, 36 percent make up the female population with 64 percent being male; however, this does not damage the females' opportunities. Brostoff feels that although it is not always said outwardly, many businesses want to incorporate female employees.\n"In some fields, such as apparel merchandising and fashion, I see a larger focus on the female population," Brostoff said. "I do feel the reasoning is simply because there tends to be more females interested in these areas and it is not specifically because of gender."\nAccording to the Dingell-Maloney report, a survey conducted in 2002 by the U.S. General Accounting Office, only five out of 10 targeted industries had women holding a share of management jobs proportionate to their share of the industry. Thus, even if women are not being overlooked when hired, they are often unaccredited when it comes to promotions or wages. \nReynolds does not feel like she has ever been discriminated against because of her gender while working in academia. \n"IU holds a large amount of women in high positions," she said. "The associate dean of the journalism school and the (Bloomington) chancellor are both women."\nThe wage gap between men and women widened between 1995 and 2000 in seven out of 10 industries, according to the Dingell-Maloney report. The study found that essentially, the majority of women managers were worse off in 2000 than in 1995. \n"I do think a wage gap undeniably exists, perhaps it is even the most apparent difference between men and women in the workplace," Brostoff said. He also felt that there are specific areas in which women are more successful than men when it comes to payment.\n"Informatics, computer science and engineering receive outstanding offers from businesses; even higher than starting salaries for men," he said.\nReynolds agreed that women seem to hold more assistant positions than men and she would not be surprised if a man would make more than a woman with the same experience in an entry level position. \nAs far as students interested in following a career path at IU, "Most of the students that I encounter are looking for employment elsewhere but there are certainly plenty of job opportunities for alums if they so desire," she said.