05-06-1995 - Episode 281 - Women of Achievement and Herstory

   Part II of a U.N. Report that predicts that it will take nearly 1000
years for women to gain the same economic and political clout as men
if current trends continue, an outlook which complete disclaims
current "post-feminist" writings financed by the radical right that
women say have all the rights they need.  

      The number of women in managerial posts, however, generally
improved between 1985 and 1991, it reported.
      Of the 41 countries surveyed, only Greece and Paraguay
witnessed declines in the proportion of female managers.
      Based on these trends, the report forecast it would take 5
centuries for women to gain the same access as men to management
positions, and a further 475 years to get equal representation in the
"higher echelons of political and economic power."
      Women held more than 40 % of middle and lower management
jobs in Australia, the US and Canada.
      In Japan, women held only 8.3 % of the lower managerial jobs,
while South Korean women held only 4 % of bottom management posts. 
Bangladesh ranked last, with 1.4 %, the report said.
      But few women make it to the very top, it pointed out.
      Although 40 % of American manager are women, only 11 % are
"high-level" managers or directors and 3 % are at the "top-level" of
companies in the private sector.
      The scarcity of top-level women managers backs the "glass
ceiling" theory that asserts many women are stuck in middle-level
management by companies which do not allow them to advance
further.   
      The report said women are well represented in the lower
administrative and management jobs in Latin American and Caribbean,
but badly in Africa.
      It said the end of Communism in eastern Europe had led to a
decline in the number of women in parliament, trade unions and
employers' organizations in the region.

05-06 Anniversaries ...............................................

     B. 05-06-1829, Phoebe Ann Coffin, first woman ordained in New
England as a minister.

     B. 05-06-1831, Mary E. Clemmer Aimes, wrote influential column
in the Washington, DC, weekly, the _Independent_, and was a women's
rights advocate who believed in economic gain rather than suffrage. 
"Women can live nobly without voting, but they cannot live without
bread."

     B. 05-06-1939, Margaret Drabble, British novelist (The Millstone)
and editor (The 5th Edition of the Oxford Companion to English
Literature). 

     Event: 05-06-1952, the Methodist General Con
ference at its annual conference refuses to accept women as
ministerial members.

     B. 05-06-1966, Janet Jackson, pop singer.

Quotes du jour ...............................................

     "Do you know, it is not praise that does me good, but when
men speak ill of me, then, with a noble assurance I say to myself, as
I smile at them, `let us be revenged by proving them to be liars.'"
     -- Catherine II, Empress of All the Russias

			 ........................

We thank Hari N. Chengalath and Madonna Narvaez for their donations
toward defraying of the April online expenses for the posting of
Women of Achievement and Herstory and Catt's Claws. 

(C) 1995 Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR
71902, irenestuber@delphi.com. Distribute verbatim copies freely with
copyright notice for non-profit use. Don't let anyone tell you there
weren't notable and effective women throughout history.  They were
always there, but historians failed to note them in our histories so
that each generation of women has had to reinvent themselves.