Is Venus Catching Up To Mars?

ADB (a multilateral development finance institution, working with the Organizational and Institutional Gender Information Network - ORIGIN) known for its wide reaching studies relating to global employment development, noted that companies in their research group, reported that they are expanding their global talent banks and using more focused and competency-based selection tools. "More women are listed as candidates for key overseas positions than they were 5 to 10 years ago. We are no longer making the faulty assumption that women are not mobile and not interested in a foreign assignment," said one HR executive. Reyer A. Swaak is currently vice president, International Human Resources Services, of the National Foreign Trade Council, Inc. Prior to that; he was associated with the Schering-Plough Corporation for more than 23 years. As an HR executive in the company's international division, he helped engineer Schering-Plough's expansion from a small pharmaceutical house with international branches to a major multinational organization. ADB was established in 1966; is headquartered in Manila and has 27 other offices around the world.

The rather striking increase in female relocation, particularly in global terms, is the glowing (and sometimes blaring) light at the approach towards the end of the feminist movement tunnel.

In the early 1960s, working women were in the minority, working mothers even more so. In 1960, 35.5 percent of women aged 20 and older worked outside the home, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics in the USA. The percentage of mothers of children under 18 who worked was not even tracked in 1960. Not until the late 1960s did Department of Labour, in the USA, take an interest in the employment patterns of mothers. From the introduction, to the public, of the birth control pill in the early 1960s to the Department of Defense sanctioned movement towards women in active combat, in the early 1990's, women's lives and impact on society, changed. Some will argue that this has lead to the deterioration of the family unit, and will go so far as to say, the deterioration of the quality of life in general. Others are elated that women's rights have reached today's level and only wish for more change to come. Whichever way the pendulum of public opinion swings, it is without doubt that change is as certain as death and taxes.

It is rare to find a parent, today, who does not try to imprint their daughter with the conviction that there is nothing she cannot achieve, because of her femininity. It is therefore not surprising that the rate of increase in female university graduates is astounding. Statistics Canada reports "Graduation rates have increased at a faster rate for women than men at the undergraduate and master's levels. Close to 60% of all university degrees awarded in 1998 were to women. The USA's National Center for Education Statistics, published in their Education Statistics Quarterly: Vol 2, Issue 3, Featured Topic: Projections of Education Statistics to 2010, saying that: "Graduation rates have increased at a faster rate for women than men at the undergraduate and master's levels. Close to 60% of all university degrees awarded in 1998 were to women. RAIC (Royal Architectural Institute of Canada) notes that in 1960, of the 2400 architects registered in Canada, 30 were women, a total of 1.25%. By 1995, almost 40% of all architectural students in Canada were women. Similar results play out in the field of Engineering, Science and Technology, Law and Medicine, as well as in most other professional fields.

Internet Resources for Women Executives published an article by Margaret Riley Dikel, wherein Dikel states: "More than half of Fortune 500 firms have more than one female corporate officer and two have women chief executive officers, according to a study by Catalyst, a research organization based in New York. Among the privately held firms that make up the Inc. 500, 8% are run by women. In addition, the Small Business Administration's Office of Women's Business Ownership reports that women own nearly 40% of all firms in the U.S. While some of these statistics may still seem woefully low, women executives are making strides in corporate America, and the Web has many career-related resources to assist them." It follows that if there are more women professionals and more women in senior corporate management roles that there would be more opportunities for women to be relocated both domestically and internationally."

Over the years, women have held a small but growing proportion of expatriate managerial positions. Women's representation had risen from 3% in the early 1980's (Adler, 1984) to 14% (Tung, 1997) and 15% (Wyndham International, 1997) in two more recent studies. Though this situation appears changing, women remain under-represented. The paucity of women in international management has been attributed primarily to factors external to the home country organization: women fail to demonstrate as much interest as men in international careers; women in dual-career relationships would find overseas assignments difficult; and host countries prejudice women expatriates. However, the most probable causes may lie within organizations' human resource practices (Harris, 1999).

Worldwide ERC Vice-President, Research and Education Jan Hatfield-Goldman notes: "with the exception of salary, we haven't seen any major changes in the typical transferee profile over the last two decades. As before, most transferees are male, between 36 - 40 years old, and married with dependent children. However, certain transferee demographics are changing, particularly in terms of gender, marital status and incidence of dependent children."

Without any doubt, change is a constant, and there is no exception to this truth in the corporate relocation world.

The truth is also that Venus, Earth, and Mars are approximately at the same distance from the Sun, and there is no indication in the Sky & Telescope, the essential magazine of Astronomy, that this is about to change.