Changing Face of Business

Women.

Throughout the 1990s business offered women a mixture of advances and disappointments. Increasing numbers of women entered the workplace and moved into traditionally male-dominated occupations. At the same time, women were paid on average 30 percent less than their male counterparts doing the same job. The National Committee on Pay Equity found that women lost an average $12,573 per year, or as much as $440,047 during the course of a life-time because of unequal pay practices. Yet, as the decade drew to a close, women themselves noted the positive changes taking place in the office and boardroom. "In the past decade," observed Renee Amoore of Amoore Health Systems Inc. in 1997, "the work place has become more dynamic. Women are now able to compete aggressively at the same level as men. I have found over the years that men are now more receptive to including us at the executive-management level" E. Lee Beard of First Federal...