If you think that women can have it all, stats by economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett may causes you to reconsider:
- 49% of women aged between 41-55 and who were earning over $100,000 per annum are childless.
- 33% of women aged between 41-55 earning $55,000 – $60,000 are childless; 57% are unmarried.
- Only 19% of men earning over $100,000 are childless and just 17% are unmarried.
Clearly the odds are stacked in favour of men earning more while having a family.
Stats from REIWA’s list of their top 100 salespeople by number of listing sold during the 2013 financial year show a clear bias toward males in the top 10 with the numbers beginning to even out further down the list.
I intend conducting a more thorough analysis on the distribution of gender in these awards. I suspect the numbers will be very close to evenly distributed further down the list.
| Grouping | # male | % male | # female | % female |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-10 | 8 | 80% | 2 | 20% |
| 1-20 | 15 | 75% | 5 | 25% |
| 1-30 | 20 | 67% | 10 | 33% |
| 1-40 | 26 | 65% | 14 | 35% |
| 1-50 | 32 | 64% | 18 | 36% |
| 1-100 | 62 | 62% | 38 | 38% |
Well done Peter in raising this issue – it’s one that needs exploring and I see no one else brave enough to tackle it. It’s not just real estate of course where we see gross gender imbalance, but that doesn’t make it OK (just cos “others do it too”). 15% of WA public company Boards are made up of women, even though they represent more than half of the workforce by numbers. WA actually does ‘better’ than the national average in this regard, but it’s still woeful. I have no issue with ladies (such as my dear wife) choosing raising children over career, but for those that want both, or a career, there are still too many roadblocks. For many households, there is no choice – the lady and the gent both have to work to make ends meet. I worry about the parenting that goes on. There are so many issues here.
It needs raising, discussing and we need some solutions; for it’s not only unfair to the ladies, it means we are all worse off.
Thanks Charlie. I intend on pursuing this line of thinking so will probably write more on the subject.