International Women's Day is a time to celebrate the amazing accomplishments of women, but it also comes with an important mandate to reflect and take action for organizations everywhere. After all, a quick survey of the latest workforce data reveals lingering gaps, asymmetries and some pretty serious room for improvement.
Take the following, for example:
- In the U.S., while women are the majority of the population by a small margin, they earn the majority of undergraduate and graduate degrees by much larger ones: 7% and 9%, respectively.
- Despite those dual majorities, women are promoted less often than men: Research shows that for every 100 men who are promoted to managerial roles, only 85 women are promoted.
- Worse, that underrepresentation tends to increase with every tier that you climb on the organizational chart—to the point where only 5.2% of CEOs are women.
While we've been making great strides to fix imbalances like these at Johnson & Johnson, we recognize that there's still a lot more work to be done. We also strongly believe that what we do is just as important as how we do it—and supporting women in STEM, while advancing a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion more generally, is absolutely foundational within that framework.
With that in mind, and to help mark the arrival of International Women's Day, a few of our colleagues shared reflections and insights inspired by the occasion.
