We Love Powerful Women on TV, But What's the Deal For Real Women In America?
At one point during this election season, an image circulated the Internet that was a color-coded map of the United States. It showed how many states would be "red" if women were not allowed to vote in the 2016 election; the image indicated that the clear winner in that case would be Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The nineteenth amendment outcry, sadly, was only a small part of what has made this presidential campaign a sobering one in our nation—one where we were forced to really think about where women stand today in the USA.
If you were to look at the big and small screen today, you would think that women run the world. From Claire Underwood to Elizabeth McCord to Olivia Pope, there is no shortage of women in political and business leadership positions. Yet a 2015 Pew Research Center poll focused on women and leadership in politics and business concluded that while the public sees women as actually being stronger than men on some traits such as compassion and organization—and equally competent in other areas, such as innovation and intellect—women are still expected to do more than men to show that they have the chops to do a job well.
“Similar shares say the electorate and corporate America are just not ready to put more women in top leadership positions. As a result, the public is divided about whether, even in the face of the major advances women have made in the workplace, the imbalance in corporate America will change in the foreseeable future,” the Pew research poll says.
Many Americans may be more prone to see women leaders on television or in the movies than reporting to one in real life, it would seem.
"Films that featured strong female characters in 2015 included Inside Out, The Hunger Games, Pitch Perfect 2, and The Divergent Series: Insurgent,” Lauzen says, who noted that there are far fewer meaty parts for female characters over the age of 40 in either film or television. Productions that include at least one female writer or director are much more likely to include a female protagonist (in a ratio of 50 to 13 percent). It would seem that an essential component to getting more women in lead roles is to have more women decision-makers in the process. But how do we get there?
In the early 1970s Virginia Schein, now a professor emerita of management and psychology at Gettysburg College, did groundbreaking research in the field of management studies, in which she found that the template for assessing the characteristics of managers was: “think manager, think male.” At that same time, a study on gender roles and leadership education suggests women held about five percent of management roles; in 2009, the number had increased to roughly 40 percent.
What does this mean for our country&apos;s presidential future?
It certainly can be a challenge for females to be viewed as leaders by their peers when in many fields they&apos;re outnumbered by men in a workplace. An engineer and management consultant, Loraine Huchler works in a male-dominated culture. While the number of women graduating with technical degrees hasn’t changed much in the past two decades, Huchler says she has seen a rise in women gaining traction in the worlds of engineering and of business.
In Nashville, Downton Abbey, Veep, Scandal, and more, we watch confident female characters navigate sexist and trying situations on their terms with gumption and poise. We just have to make sure we&apos;re practicing the same in our own lives.
Schein, who has hopes that eventually female presence in leadership roles will equal their proportion of the U.S. population, also has some advice for women starting out on the path to leadership: be aware of stereotypes and how they can affect you, but don’t overreact and become overly self-protective.