A new survey by InHerSight, a website which provides information based on user ratings of how employers treat women, finds men often overestimate the access women in their organization have to top positions.
Women in entry-level positions also seem to perceive a greater level of gender equality in the workplace than women who are further along in their careers.
While 42 percent of women say they are satisfied with the gender balance among workers when they began their careers, only 27 percent of women in management roles say there are enough other women in their position.
While the gender-based pay gap is decreasing between men and women in equivalent positions, the gulf between what men and women make in the U.S. remains significant, largely because men continue to dominate the upper-echelon of corporate leadership.
Less than 5 percent of Fortune 500 companies are led by female chief executives, and many other C-suite positions in corporate America are also overwhelmingly male.
A study this summer found that women only account for 24 percent of CEOs, chief financial officers, chief marketing officers, chief information officers and chief human resource officers. While women make up 55 percent of HR chiefs, they account for only 29 percent of CMOs, 19 percent of CIOs and 12 percent of CFOs.
As a result, a number of studies have found women make about 76 percent as much as men.
One of the common explanations for the gender pay gap is the fact that women remain far more likely than men to leave the workforce — permanently or temporarily — to raise children. Taking even a short break from a career might prevent a woman from progressing in the organization as quickly as a male counterpart.
As a result, workers advocates are increasingly calling for employers to offer parental leave to both mothers and fathers, rather than simply maternity leave after a pregnancy. If more men begin to take paternity leave, the hope is that employers will no longer necessarily see pregnancy as an issue that only affects female workers and will therefore be less likely to invoke (consciously or subconsciously) the potential of pregnancy to not hire or promote women.
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