Women In Work: Progress But Clearly Not Perfection

Told at cocktail parties and around office water coolers in the 1970s, a brainteaser called “The Surgeon Riddle” rose to popularity in America. A father and his son are in a serious car accident, and the father dies at the scene. The boy is rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery, but the attending surgeon looks at him and says, "I cannot operate on this boy, he is my son."

The riddle became popular during the second-wave feminist movement to point out deeply ingrained gender bias. Because contemporary society automatically associated high-status medical professions like surgery with men, listeners routinely guessed that the surgeon was a stepfather, a biological father via adoption, or even a priest, overlooking the simple answer that the surgeon was the boy's mother.

If you posed that riddle to someone today, they immediately respond with the right answer, so women’s roles in society have improved, but not nearly enough.

I am grateful that for the lion’s share of my career, I’ve been exposed to an impressive slate of women executives in positions of authority, most probably because I began working in retail and advertising.

When I moved into a leadership role in a tech company named Tollgrade Communications, Inc., God blessed me further because we were able to hire even more top-notch women executives, such as our corporate counsel, Sara Antol; head of software R&D Carol Franklin; corporate communications director Ruth Dilts; product manager Laurie Garda; and a slew of others.

And in the Wall Street Journal, we’ve all read about stellar nationally known C-level executives, such as eBay’s Meg Whitman; Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg; HP’s Carly Fiorina; Advanced Micro Devices’ Lisa Su; Oracle’s Safra Katz and Northrop Grumman’s Kathy Warden.

Both Republican and Democratic Presidents appointed women Supreme Court Justices including Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

We’ve seen two women presidential candidates in Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Kamala Harris.

States elected Governors like Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Kathy Hochul of New York, Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Tina Kotek of Oregon, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Kay Ivey of Alabama and Katie Hobbs of Arizona, all of which represent 20% of the governorships in the United States.

As of August 2026, there are approximately 70 to 80 active-duty female general and flag officers serving across all branches of the U.S. military. While women make up roughly 18% to 19% of the total active-duty force and around 20% to 25% of the commissioned officer corps depending on the branch, they account for just over 7% of the total 900+ general and flag officers.

So, I possessed the flawed perspective that the percentage of women in positions of authority matched the percentage of women in the US population. I also erroneously thought we’ve closed the pay gap. If women scale the corporate mountain, they make comparable money to men, but not at lower levels.

According to the National Association of Homebuilders, as of mid-2026, women make up between 47% and 50.1% of the total U.S. workforce, depending on whether you are looking at broad labor force data or specific payroll employment indicators. While women have successfully scaled mid-management, now occupying nearly 40% of managerial roles, the upper echelons remain unbalanced.

The primary barrier is the "broken rung," the crucial first step where entry-level women are passed over for promotion to management in favor of their male peers.

The pay gap has narrowed, with full-time, year-round female workers making approximately 81 to 83 cents for every dollar earned by men. For younger women ages 25 to 34, the gap is much tighter, hovering around 95 cents on the dollar. Because women still earn roughly 18% less than men on a median basis, women do not hold a share of total economic earnings that reflects their 50.9% population footprint. This uncontrolled gap accumulates to an average loss of $1 million in lifetime earnings per woman compared to men.

Notably, women earn less than men across every single educational level and within all major occupational groups.

In terms of the percentage of CEOs of major corporations, the percentage is a fraction of that of the general workforce. Let’s look at the numbers for female CEOs in public companies, because depending on where you look, the data tells an interesting story.

Right at the top, women are hitting a new milestone, making up a record 11% of Fortune 500 CEOs. That is 55 companies total, ticking upward from 10.4% back in 2024.

Think heavy hitters like Mary Barra running the show at General Motors and Jane Fraser steering Citigroup. Zoom out slightly to the S&P 500, and women account for 9.4% of chief executives. Expand that view even further to the Fortune 1000, covering the biggest businesses across the US, and female leaders hold 9.3% of the top jobs.

The percentage starts to dip, though, when you widen the net to include mid-sized and smaller public firms. If you look at the Russell 3000 index, which basically captures around 98% of the entire US public stock market, the share of female CEOs drops down to 7.6%.

When you look under the hood at compensation, the gender wage gap gets wild. It turns out that the climb up the corporate ladder doesn't treat everyone the same, and the math splits into two completely different stories depending on how high you go.

First, the bad news. Across the broader executive world, such as VPs, directors, and most of the C-suite, the pay gap is still very real.

Payscale points out that the uncontrolled gap gets wider the higher you advance, leaving female executives making a mere $0.69 for every dollar their male peers pull in .

Why?

It usually comes down to who gets the massive bonuses and stock options. ON Partners found that while women are great at negotiating equal base salaries, their average total comp of $457,000 still trails behind men at $486,000 because men are landing more of those lucrative equity packages and performance perks.

But here is where things take a fascinating turn. At the absolute top of the mountain, the script completely flips. When you look strictly at S&P 500 and Fortune 500 CEOs, women outearn men.

Data from The Conference Board and Equilar shows that median pay for female CEOs ranges from $16.4 million to $17.6 million, comfortably beating out the guys' median of $15.6 million to $16.3 million.

Before we celebrate, there's a catch. It's a classic case of supply and demand.

Companies have to offer jaw-dropping, ultra-competitive packages to recruit the tiny handful of top-tier female CEOs out there. Since women only hold a minuscule 7.9% of S&P 500 CEO spots, that's a super small, elite club that skews higher median pay [1].

Let’s talk about who is running higher education in the US.

Right now, women hold about 33% of college and university president positions.

According to data tracked by the American Council on Education (ACE), it is a solid step up from twenty years ago when they only held 23% of those roles. However, men still outnumber women two-to-one in the president's office.

When you break it down by the type of school, it turns out that where you look matters.

The ACE findings show that women have the most leadership success at community colleges and smaller liberal arts schools, where they run about 40% to 43.6% of campuses. But when you look at the ultra-prestigious, heavily funded R1 research universities, female representation dips down to around 29% to 30%.

On top of that, there is a massive diversity gap inside those numbers: women of color hold a tiny 6% of all college presidencies nationwide.

So, what is keeping that overall number stuck at one-third?

The ACE report points out that it mostly comes down to how boards pick their leaders.

Almost 60% of female presidents climb up the traditional academic ladder, starting as professors, becoming deans, and serving as provosts first. Men, on the other hand, are much more likely to get picked from outside pipelines like business, politics, or fundraising, giving them more entry points into the top job.

So, in many professional walks of life, women have advanced, but not to the place they should. And those breakthroughs have been hard fought [1]. How did they do it? They fought hard and were strategic.

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote, “Men tend to define themselves according to their proximity to power; women according to their independence from it.”

At the start of the twentieth century, married women were bound by "coverture," a legal doctrine that absorbed their identities into their husbands', stripping them of property rights and paychecks. Recognizing the system was rigged, activists fought for the ultimate tool for change: the right to vote.

In 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in the UK under the motto "Deeds, not words." Shifting from polite lobbying to maximum disruption, suffragettes chained themselves to railings, smashed windows, and committed arson. In prison, their hunger strikes met with brutal force-feeding, outraging the public and exposing state cruelty.

This radical energy sparked a global wave.

By 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding voting rights and better labor conditions. In 1917, American suffragist Alice Paul organized the "Silent Sentinels" outside the White House. Jailed and force-fed for her protest, Paul's resilience made her a martyr, forcing President Woodrow Wilson to endorse suffrage.

World War I proved to be the tipping point. As millions of men headed to the front lines, women stepped up to run factories and farms, permanently dismantling the argument that they were too fragile for public life.

The UK passed the Representation of the People Act in 1918, granting narrow voting rights to property-owning women over thirty, before expanding to full equality in 1928.

Across the Atlantic, a dual strategy of mainstream lobbying and radical picketing led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in August 1920, transforming American women into full voting citizens. Securing the ballot was only the first step.

Economic independence was the next frontier. Women faced a double barrier, which include horizontal segregation represented in being funneled into low-paying clerical roles, and vertical segregation represented in the glass ceiling blocking promotion.

Legal breakthroughs chipped away at these barriers.

The US Equal Pay Act of 1963 established the principle of equal pay for equal work. The following year, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned gender discrimination in hiring and promotions. It also created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to enforce these rules.

Later, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 ensured that starting a family no longer meant automatic career termination.

So, I possessed the flawed perspective that the percentage of women in positions of authority matched the numbers in my own star-studded career bubble.

Clearly, while my personal tech and retail universes were packed with female powerhouses, the macro view proves we are still climbing the mountain. But if the corporate titans, courtroom trailblazers, and state governors mentioned above are any indication, the future isn’t just female. It’s efficiently run, brilliantly led, and likely to leave the old boys' club wondering where they left their keys.

Here’s to trading the flawed perspective for a flawless reality, one powerhouse promotion at a time.

Chris Allison is entrepreneur-in-residence at Allegheny College.  He was one of the founders of Tollgrade Communications, Inc., whose story was told in Hit It: A Tech Startup Story and Seven Rules For Entrepreneurs. His new book, now available on Amazon, is Forged In Fire: 12 Stories of Fantastic Transformation.