More women in the workforce, or more women at the top?

"Another day, more government figures showing how few women we have in top jobs. Women get more As at A-level than men, they get 56 per cent of first-class degrees, and they make up 58 per cent of graduates – so why are only three of them FTSE 100 CEOs?"





I’ve done a fair bit of work experience, almost all in male-dominated fields like journalism, law and politics. I’ve never felt a victim of sexism, excluded because of laddish banter or deprived of female role models. It’s often said that organisations need to recruit more women, but the start of the career ladder is already a friendly place for us girls: between the ages of 22 and 30, there’s a pay gap in our favour.
The problem isn’t with starting out, but with progressing – the problem is maternity leave.
Contrast America, where mothers get no guarantee of paid time off, with the “enlightened” Scandinavian countries. In Norway new mothers get 46 weeks' leave, in Sweden 480 days at 80 per cent salary, and in Denmark a whopping 50 weeks at full pay. As you would expect, the result is that the Nordic countries have a higher percentage of women in the workforce – around 85 per cent on average, compared to 75.2 per cent in the US.
But there’s a flip side. Scandinavia might have more women working, but America has more women in top jobs. The US has one of the highest proportions of female managers in the world, conclusively beating Europe. At the top end of the scale, the pay gap in the States is far smaller than it is in Sweden: despite their miserly maternity leave, there are plenty of American women earning as much as the best-paid men.
The explanation is that long periods of maternity leave put women at a disadvantage when returning to the office. After a year off, Danish women are likely to find their skills rusty, their work networks disintegrating and their momentum slowed. Employers are, understandably, scared off promoting young women to the positions of serious responsibility from which they could ascend to the boardroom.
Which is more important: more women in the workforce, or more women at the top? It’s a tough choice, and if you picked the latter the solution is ruthless: to smash the glass ceiling, we have to slash maternity leave.

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Source:  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/carolabinney/100240135/if-we-want-more-women-at-the-top-we-should-cut-maternity-leave/