Manufacturing.net: Why The Gender Pay Gap Matters For Manufacturing
The source is interesting--the online newsletter is hardly a bleeding heart liberal publication.
http://www.manufacturing.net/blogs/2015/03/why-the-gender-pay-gap-matters-for-manufacturing?et_cid=4468672&et_rid=54679148&type=headline
The manufacturing industry factors prominently into this trend. A recent Fortune article that provides a list of 20 job types with the biggest wage gaps disproportionately featured manufacturing-related positions:
70.0 percent wage gap: First-line supervisors of production and operating workers
72.1 percent wage gap: Production, planning and expediting clerks
72.8 percent wage gap: Production workers, all other
“Women represent manufacturing’s largest pool of untapped talent,” says the Manufacturing Institute study Untapped Resource: How Manufacturers Can Attract, Retain, and Advance Talented Women.
However, less than 10 percent of young women in a survey by Plante Moran selected manufacturing among the top five career fields they felt offer the most opportunity for young women.
This impacts the manufacturing industry on a large scale—companies that advance women are just more profitable. According to a 2012 study by Catalyst:
Companies with the highest representation of women on their top management teams experienced better financial performance than the group of companies with the lowest women’s representation.
The same study shows that companies with higher percentages of women executives received a 35 percent higher return on equity than those with fewer women in advanced positions.