Today, I was most fascinated to come across a blog post at The Chronicle of Philanthropy titled, "Why Women are Held Back in the Nonprofit World."

I was even more fascinated to see that it was based on actual research, and not just the anecdotal tidbits and random theories I’ve long used with my friends to try to explain this phenomenon.

Which, based on our collective experience, and the experience of our friends and people we hardly know, we are fairly certain exists.

And clearly does, since now it’s on the Internet.  And in The Chronicle, no less.  And everything either on the Internet or in The Chronicle has to be true.  And if it’s in both, well, I dare you to argue.

But let me get to the point, before I italicize us all to death.

The blog cites research done by Futures Leaders in Philanthropy (FLIP), reported in an article called, "The Women’s Sector? Not Quite," which finds that:

• Women hold 68 percent of nonprofit jobs, but,  
• They are scarce when it comes to running the biggest organizations and they earn less overall than their male colleagues.  Also,
• Almost 85 percent of the chief executives at nonprofit groups with budgets of at least $50 million are men and,
• Men in all nonprofit jobs earn a median compensation that is 28 percent higher than that of women.

Dude.  Or dudettes, I should say.

Why?

Well, our friends at FLIP speculated, of course.  They came up with a few theories:

1. Women may fill the majority of nonprofit jobs because, if married, they feel less pressure to be the primary breadwinner, so they can give priority to their “feel-good” career goals.
2. In terms of wages, women who grow within organizations can find themselves on the bottom of the pay scale at each promotion, whereas men who come to organizations from the outside more often demand to be hired on their previous pay scales.
3. Nonprofit groups should do more to bring women into senior management positions for the good of the charity.  In a study of 353 Fortune 500 companies, it was found that companies with the highest number of women in senior management positions had a 34 percent higher return to shareholders than companies with the lowest number of women in such positions.

Interesting theories all.  And I have some to add (which The Chronicle encouraged, so it’s okay).

1.  The payscales and number of opportunities within the nonprofit world are a mirror of societal values–we value helping the homeless and free tax education less than we do celeb magazines and Coca-Cola, and therefore we invest less in it. 

Heck, we’re way more likely to contribute to the fight against AIDS when there’s a Red iPod attached, right?   

As a result, there are fewer opportunities and funds to go around, and where funds and opportunities are slim, women have always traditionally been the least likely to cash in.

2.  This is compounded by the fact that women, typically, don’t ask.  Which has been documented thoroughly in a book by that same title (which is worth a read) which explains that in many respects, women don’t earn as much as men in great part because we don’t ask or expect to. 

We have the best natural negotiation skills, but we, for whatever reason, are far better at using them on behalf of others instead of ourselves. 

So again, smaller pie, less to go around, so you use it on those who are more likely to demand a higher salary, what they’re worth against a fair market and the opportunities that match their skills: men. 

Women therefore are left holding the remaining positions and salaries.

3.  People in nonprofits are largely values driven.  That is why they’re there. 

But my sense from numerous discussions with women, including a recent one at a Women’s Information Network nonprofit networking event, is that women are more prone to be swayed by guilt in salary negotiations when confronted with the whole "contrast between what we could give you vs. what we could give the children or women or beneficiaries of our work" card. 

(I’d be very curious, however, to know, if that card is played more, on average, with women than men, but my anecdotal jury hasn’t turned up a decision on that yet.) 

And it’s possible, of course, that women play that card on themselves before the negotiation even begins–that we tell ourselves that to work in the nonprofit sector, or to do good, we are expected to make sacrifices.

Maybe men just don’t expect the tradeoff.  

In any case, if these trends continue, it seems that it will continue to be yet another–albeit subtle–way that women subsidize societal advancement and welfare.

But at what cost? 

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Blog, Economy, Women. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.