News from the WNY Women's Fund

Barbara is looking to reach the top and expand women's voice in the decisions and policies that shape our region.

Developing a career pathway with leadership goals often requires an advanced education to build technical expertise and cultivate career interests and aspirations.

Overall, women earn a greater share of graduate degrees in WNY, but are underrepresented in many technical fields.

Roadblocks to Developing Leadership Pathways:

WNY colleges and universities graduate nearly twice as many women as men with graduate degrees, indicating a highly qualified pool of labor for WNY institutions looking to groom women leaders

Within WNY colleges and universities, women are at near parity in earning the degrees that will allow them to enter traditionally male-dominated fields, including business, law and the medical sciences. In several fields -- mainly those such as education and social work with a historically high female presence -- they dominate the graduate pool

Yet women remain underrepresented among those studying at advanced levels in the sciences and techinical fields, most significantly in engineering and computer science. This gap is part of a trend of waning interest in the sciences that begins for girls in middle school and continues into higher education and then the labor force

Roadblocks to Leading Public, Private and Civic Institutions in WNY:

Women represent 24% of all top executives in both the public and private sectors. That's three men for every woman leading the companies, organizations and governments of WNY

Despite holding a majority of professional positions in WNY, women are underrepresented as managers and are outnumbered 3:1 among top executives

Among those at the pinnacle of WNY's top companies and organizations, women are outnumbered in nearly every sector

Roadblocks to Balancing Career with Family:

Child and family responsibilities remain the No. 1 factor behind women stepping off or falling behind in their careers

Stress, a lack of time and a range of other challenges for women balancing work and family contribute to health problems. In Erie County, one in 10 women age 45-64 describes her health as "poor"

WNY women appear to achieve a work-family balance through reduced hours, certainly to a greater degree than WNY men and even relative to women across the state and nation

The good news is that there are ways that these roadblocks can be removed, including several important leverage points:

Leverage Point #1: Eliminate policies, practices and values that contribute to the exclusion of women from leadership

Leverage Point #2: Expand the pipeline of women leaders

Leverage Point #3: Strengthen and expand work-family policies

Leverage Point #4: Connect emerging leaders with leadership development resources

In WNY, many women's advocates believe that the region's traditional culture plays a part in keeping women out of leadership. Often women choose to follow traditional roles or are influenced by presumptions that they will. The region's "old boy's network" -- characterized by established circles of power and social settings where important decisions are made -- has yet to completely integrate women, according to many community leaders consulted for this project. On many boards and legislative bodies, women, especially minority women, are often perceived to be "token" representatives.

What If: We Achieved Gender Parity in Leadership in the Public and Private Institutions of WNY?

2,000 more women would lead private institutions with 6,100 more women, including minority women, working as managers

The collective earnings of women would rise by an estimated $59 million

Across the region's top employers, we would see 35 more women heading the 100 largest employers in the region, 33 more female managing partners at the top 63 law firms in town and 25 more women on the boards of the top 5 public companies in town