Pen-Elayne on the Web

The Slippery Statistics of the Glass Ceiling

Ampersand mentions this Washington Times article (the byline says "UPI," which is owned, like the WTimes, by the Rev. Moon's Unification Church, operating as News World Communications) which says, "Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicates that, as of Nov. 30, women represent 50.6 percent of the 48 million employees in management, professional and related occupations." Considering that I take everything the Moonies write with a heaping amount of salt, I went on the BLS website to see if I could find the raw data. Friends, I rooted around there for almost an hour this morning, and couldn't find a damn thing. Maybe I just don't read stats very well. Can someone point me to the data in question on the site? Of course, even then you have (presumably) non-Moonies pointing out that "15.7 percent of the top officers of companies in the Fortune 500 are women and that their corporate boards include just 13.6 percent women." In other words, "Women getting better jobs, but exec suite remains men's club." Nothing we didn't already know. So as this "news" has yet to hit any feminist sites that I know of, it doesn't really seem to me like there's a gain for women at all, as much as it's right-wingers playing with numbers to scare their predominantly male base or something... Update: Thank you, Echidne, for finding the raw data and explaining it better than I ever could.