CLOSING THE GAP

2022 has been a year of ups and downs for women.

While the numbers show slow progress, there are reasons to be optimistic that gender equity in business and politics is moving in a positive direction — at least at the top.

In business, the number of female CEOs has reached historic highs this year, while in politics, several states elected their first female senators and governors. Just last week, Claudine Gay became the first person of color, and only the second woman ever, to be named president of Harvard University.

In other areas, however, progress toward gender equality has stalled. Women continue to face a significant wage gap that has hardly budged over the last 15 years, with women of color bearing the brunt of the disparity.

Here's an overview of some of the historic strides women made in the workforce and politics this year, especially in highly visible roles, as well as some of the barriers that remain for women as a whole.

The C-suite 

About 9% of CEOs in the Fortune 500, a total of 46, are women. That’s an all-time high, according to the Women Business Collaborative. 

• Of those CEOs, however, under 10 are women of color, including Roz Brewer, the CEO of Walgreen Boots Alliance, and Lisa Su, the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices. 
• Women CEOs who identify as LGBTQ+ are extremely rare. Beth Ford, the CEO of Land O’Lakes since 2018, is the first openly gay woman to serve as CEO of a Fortune 500 company, while Sue Y. Nabi, the CEO of Coty since 2020, is the only openly transgender woman leading a Fortune 500 company.
• The two industries that have the highest representation of women at the top are utilities and health care, where women hold 16% and 21% of leadership roles, respectively, according to Equilar. 

Pay gap

One of the biggest wins in the fight for equal pay this year happened in the courtroom: In February, the U.S. women’s national soccer team reached a historic settlement with the U.S. Soccer Federation in its long-running lawsuit over unequal pay with the men’s national team.

Aside from the USWNT victory, there has been little progress in closing the gender wage gap over the past decade.

• This year, the wage gap narrowed by only one penny. In 2021, women working full time, year-round earned 84 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to the National Women’s Law Center. In 2020, that number was 83 cents.
• The wage gap Black women face narrowed by about 4 cents in one year, while Latinas’ wage gap didn’t budge at all.
• The pay gap that Native American women face actually worsened this year. In 2021, Native American women working full time were paid approximately 57 cents for every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men, the NWLC reports — in 2020, that difference was 60 cents. 

Politics 

In November, women across the U.S. celebrated historic victories in the midterm elections.

• Republican Katie Britt became the first elected female senator from Alabama
• Democrat Delia Ramirez became the first Latina elected to Congress from Illinois, representing the state’s 3rd Congressional District in the House
• Democrat Summer Lee is the first Black woman to be elected to Congress from Pennsylvania, representing the state’s 12th Congressional District in the House

A record number of women won races at the state level, too. Arkansas, New York and Massachusetts elected their first female governors.

And in April, the Senate confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, making her the first Black woman to serve in that capacity.

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