Working women more satisfied

By Barbara Clements

Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

TACOMA — It’s getting better for women in the workplace, a new survey shows.

More women report they are satisfied with their jobs, and many women no longer feel they have to be twice as good to get the same recognition as a man on the job.

That said, there’s still a significant split between men and women over how much progress has been made in cracking the glass ceiling, according to survey results released by the accounting and management firm Deloitte &amp Touche.

This survey of 380 Washington state professionals was compared with results from a similar survey in 1995.

"There’s been progress," said Trish Zuccotti, study organizer at Deloitte &amp Touche. "But maybe there was the expectation that it would change faster."

Both men and women agreed, for the most part, that barriers still exist. They include:

Women have difficulties balancing work and family.

The existence of a male-dominated culture that in many workplaces excludes women from advancement opportunities.

Whereas women ranked the latter point as the top impediment to advancement, men in this year’s survey ranked the work-family balance issue as the main reason women may have problems advancing.

And for the first time, men listed family conflicts as one of their own workplace issues, noted Cindy Delaney, who also worked on the study.

"This seems to be on the table as a universal issue," Delaney said earlier this week during presentation of the survey at a Seattle luncheon.

"I can’t imagine that six years ago a man would say, ‘Hey, I can’t make it to that meeting because I have to pick up my daughter from softball at 5 p.m.’ "

Many women may be struggling with the male-dominated culture at work because of the differences in the way that women and men establish relationships, Zuccotti said.

"If you put two businesswomen in a group together, they may talk about personal things like vacation, day care or children," she said. "Two guys can work together for a long time and never have that conversation."

Men may value competition in the workplace for its own sake, Zuccotti said. Women can be as competitive as men, but seem to need a reason to compete, she said.

Other survey results:

Most men, 78 percent, believe women need only equal qualifications for the same recognition on the job. About 68 percent of the women still believe that women need a little more job experience, though not quite as much as in the past, when applying for the same job as a man.

While both groups say that companies have made substantial progress in providing career advancement for women in the last six years, women see more room for improvement than men. This year, 59 percent of the men polled rated their companies as "excellent" in efforts to position women for senior management roles.

Only 29 percent of the women believed this was true. This survey will be conducted again in 2006.