It's Time American Women Jump Ship on the Mayflower

RedTracker| There’s a buzz in the air around women’s slow progress in America. Perhaps enough of us are hammering away at the results of the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Report 2009, that the bad news is starting to sink in. The world is leaving American women in the dust, in terms of gender equity.

At the risk of antagonizing readers, I wrote last summer that American women are ‘good girls’. So it was music from heaven to read that Gloria Steinem — when asked about her biggest regret — answered: ‘that we were so nice’.

We missed the earlier study produced by Catalyst and published in the Harvard Business Review, underscoring the reality that the pipeline theory hasn’t worked for American women. For 40 years we’ve been told that if women paid our dues, we would rise to the top. Nada.

Catalyst and HBR say the pipeline is broken. America’s top women aren’t advancing, commensurate with their skills. A bad attitude or lacking ‘killer instinct’ isn’t the problem.

Sexy women aren’t advancing and plain Janes are staying in place. Short skirts, great legs, or looking like a librarian — women aren’t going very far in American business.

As the country moves to restore America back to the days of the founding fathers, when women had no rights except to abortion (this is true), is this the life American women really want for ourselves? I say, let’s jump ship. (Sorry guy. I love you but the facts are the facts.)

Get smart by reading the Catalyst study in Women Rebels.