The November issue of Milwaukee Magazine focuses on women. From profiles of local women who are doing great things to national trends on pay equity, the issue takes a snapshot of how women are doing.
One of the articles is called "Women's Work," which looks at how women are doing specifically at work. Lindsey Anderson, Milwaukee Magazine's senior editor for culture, wrote the article. The piece focuses on things like pay, the glass ceiling, flexible work schedules, and how women of color are doing compared to their white sisters.
Anderson says how women are doing when it comes to work in 2019 is a mixed bag, which is unfortunate given the state's history.
"About a century ago, Wisconsin was leading the charge for greater equality for women," she says. "We were the first state to ratify the 19th Amendment and we were the first state to pass a lot of legislation for women's rights in the workplace."
READ: Wisconsin Was First State To Ratify The 19th Amendment But Not All Women Got Voting Rights
Among other inequities in the 2019 workplace, Anderson says very few women in Wisconsin occupy the C-Suite or serve on corporate boards.
"It's interesting because a lot of studies have shown that the more women you have on an executive board, the better a company actually does. The company's bottom line improves when you have more diversity on the board," she says.
Anderson also says Wisconsin has now slipped to the middle of the 50 states when it comes to what white women earn compared to their male counterparts — about 80% of what a white man earns in a comparable job. The pay gap is worse for women of color: only 62% for black women and 56% for Latinas.
While the pay gap is slowly shrinking, it isn't projected to disappear until 2067 — when today's high school students will begin to retire. As Anderson says, we've come a long way but not far enough.
