-Women Power in America- Is America a sexist nation?

March 16, 2013
Every year in March, we celebrate the International Women’s History Month (IWHM). Like any special day devoted to a cause, IWHM brings attention to the many issues important to women, equality and empowerment among them. It looks like women’s causes are making inroads in the traditional American psyche. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed by President Barack Obama in January 2009, is one such advancement and is considered a victory for all women in the work force who took lesser pay for the same kind of work they do as their male counterparts.
In business, more and more women CEOs for Fortune 500 companies are proving themselves just as competent, if not more competent than men. Based on a survey conducted by a not for profit research organization advocating for women in business, between 2004 and 2008 Fortune 500 boards with the most amount of women outperformed return on sales by roughly 16% compared to the companies with the least number of women.
Currently, 20 female CEOs are running America’s largest companies. Though the number (4%) is still insignificant it’s already a record. Eleven of these women landed the top job between 2011 and 2012. For the first time, IBM broke its 100 year track record appointed a woman, Virginia Rometty, to lead the company. Wal-Mart appointed Rosalind Brewer as its first woman and first African-American to head a subsidiary company, Sam’s Club.
Marissa Mayer at Yahoo!, HP’s Meg Whitman, Sheri McCoy at Avon and Time Inc.’s Laura Lang, plus Rometty and Brewer. Mayer, 37, the youngest CEO in the list, has a base salary of $1 million at Yahoo! Already, she has a net worth of roughly $300 million. Meg Whitman, a billionaire, brought to Hewlett-Packard an impressive resume and experience from eBay, DreamWorks and Proctor & Gamble. Whitman is expected to turn the struggling HP around.
Patricia Woertz, who started as a CPA for Ernst & Ernst (now Ernst & Young), presently runs the largest agricultural processors in the world, Archer Daniels Midland. She earned approximately $11 million in total compensation. Indra Nooyi became president and CEO of PepsiCo in October 2006. Nooyi’s 2011 total compensation was over $17 million. Virginia Rometty is the first female CEO of IBM, who, in 2011, took an annual salary of $715,000 but managed to get over $8.3 million in total compensation.
But despite American women’s huge success in the business world, American politics hasn’t been quite as all out for them. While other nations across the globe have elected women to the top government post, the United States is yet to see a woman get elected president. As we salute the Prime Minister of Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Prime Minister of Denmark, Yingluck Shinawatra, Prime Minister Thailand, Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia, et. al., we ask when it will be the United States’ turn to have a woman for its President?
This early, we see a clamor for Hillary Clinton to run for President. While others dismiss these talks as a fad that will not last till the next presidential election, some others believe that the US is just about ready for a woman president. Obama got elected and reelected as the first US black President and made history. Hillary Clinton could follow suit and become the first woman president of the United States. If she loses again, it will only lend credence to the theory that America is still a sexist nation, holding its women to the strictest rules and standards it never used on its male candidates.