For a generation of women raised to believe that they can achieve just about anything, the US professor Virginia Valian has some sobering thoughts. While European women may look to the US for models of equality, she has compelling evidence that, even in the most seemingly liberal American boardrooms, women still lag behind in the professional world.
After analysing hundreds of studies, Dr Valian found that highly qualified women were not getting promoted at the same rate as male colleagues with equivalent education and experience. She believes that women in top professions - law, medicine, science, academia and business - are losing out.
A lot of anger seeps from the pages of Dr Valian's recently published book, Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women. A certain group of UCD women academics would empathise with her when she says that every time she sees one graph in the book about the promotion of women in US universities, her blood boils.
A sturdy, energetic figure with a shock of white hair and thick black eyebrows, psychology professor Dr Valian works from a book-cluttered office in Hunter College, New York. She admits that no woman wants to feel like a victim. But the 56-year-old author believes that the only way of dealing with the absence of equality in the professions, is to recognise its existence.
A 1996 review of the thousand largest firms in the US shows that only one per cent of the top five jobs in these corporations - 60 out of 5,000 - were filled by women (Greene & Greene 1996).
Businesswomen like to think that they will be promoted on the basis of their qualifications. But a 1991 (Egan and Bendick) survey of US professionals working in international business found that a bachelor's degree contributed £20,000 to a man's salary but only £6,400 to a woman's. A degree from a high-prestige university added £8,200 for men, but subtracted £1,700 from female wage packets.
"Such women are seen as smart, but not necessarily at that institution to better themselves. [People assume] that they have rich parents or want to find a husband who will achieve a lot," says Dr Valian. Similarly, deliberately choosing international work added £7,785 for men but subtracted £3,000 for women.
Dr Valian explains: "A man who gets that type of experience is seen as doing it because he has an eye on the future and sees it as helpful to succeed. A woman is seen as doing it because it would be nice to live in France."
Men have the advantage of simply being men. "The same achievements are evaluated in different ways, depending on whether a person is male or female. Women get less from their investment than men do," she argues.
Dr Valian blames the disparity between male and female salaries and promotion records on gender stereotypes. Traditional ideas about men being more assertive or having more leadership potential and women being more nurturing have persisted through the feminist wars. These stereotypes, she believes, make men appear more competent and women less.
"Even people of egalitarian beliefs tend to see men and women in stereotypical ways. . . These gender schemas operate without our will or knowledge in many cases," Dr Valian says. "What this means in professional cases is that the achievements [of women] tend to be down-graded slightly."
In general, women may be less willing than men to sell their life and soul to the company. Often, they will put the needs of family and children first. Isn't the female approach to career a more balanced one that men should perhaps adopt too?
"Having a full life is important to women," replies Dr Valian. "We are always asking how women can combine a career and a family. But we should ask this question of men. Women already know how to do it. It is men who have this lopsided life."
Why So Slow documents how small disparities in the way men and women are viewed add up. One computer exercise showed what happens in an hierarchical organisation, when it is staffed initially with equal numbers of males and females, but the men are given a tiny advantage in the promotion process - a mere one per cent. The programmers continued the simulation until there had been a complete staff turnover. At the end, the top level was 65 per cent male, 35 per cent female.
Dr Valian points out: "This minute amount of bias may not be perceptible to anyone in an institution. But over time a small imbalance becomes a very large imbalance."
The good news is that something can be done to improve the opportunities for women in the professions. Dr Valian suggests some ways in which people can make the effort to evaluate colleagues in a gender-neutral way: "Institutions can do things that legitimise the leadership of women and minorities who would otherwise be seen as not up to the job. People will accept female leaders if someone says `They really know what they are doing'. Also we know that if people are accountable for decisions they make, they tend to make them in a more egalitarian manner."
Should women be outraged by her findings? "Any injustice to any group ought to make all of us angry," she answers. "But personal anger is usually counter-productive. It's important to recognise wrong when it exists and be passionate about correcting that wrong."
Why So Slow: The Advancement of Women is published by MIT Press, £22.50 in UK.
