The role of women in the workplace is a topic commanding much interest. Last week the Pentagon announced women can fill front-line combat positions...
The role of women in the workplace is a topic commanding much interest. Last week the Pentagon announced women can fill front-line combat positions and the “glass ceiling” surfaced as a hot topic at the World Economic Forum meetings. In a recent column for Bloomberg, my colleague Amity Shlaes offers her perspective:
Get them up front, yesterday. That will be the policy of the U.S. Defense Department in coming months after Secretary Leon Panetta reversed a ban on women in combat.
It’s also the position of those impatient with the pace at which women have been gaining top positions in the corporate field or government. At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, a big theme was that the appearance by women there has never exceeded 20 percent.
Discrimination against women is the explanation often offered, whether we are discussing formal rules, such as the ban on women in combat, or informal decisions, as in cases of corporate promotion or the allocation of Cabinet-level posts. Perhaps there is another reason women have sometimes been absent up to now in such places. That reason has to do with the difference between opportunity and entitlement.
