WOMEN AND THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY
23 Jul 2010
Recent reports have suggested that women are making headway when it comes to equality in the workplace.
Maria Shriver's report for the Center for American progress, published in October last year, found that for the first time in US history, women make up half of all workers and mothers are the primary breadwinners of co-earners in almost two-thirds of families.
This represents a dramatic change over a generation, as in 1967 women made up just a third of the US workforce. The report said that the economic downturn was accelerating the trend of women providing the main source of income in a household.
In Europe, the University of Cambridge recently found that more women than men are now employed in high-status occupations, although men are still paid more.
The report by Dr Robert Blackburn, entitled Gender Inequality At Work in Industrial Countries, looked at pay in ten different nations and suggested that there had been "a quiet revolution in the workplace".
Dr Blackburn and his colleagues looked at census data and labour force surveys in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
They compared the data to a widely-accepted method of ranking occupations on the social scale and found that women tended to dominate in higher-status occupations in all countries except Austria.
The same prevalence of women in preeminent positions was also found in the US.
Dr Blackburn said: "The change results from changes in the occupational structure.
"Formerly women were more likely than men to be in manual occupations, but as manual work has declined, it is predominantly women who have moved into non-manual jobs, so that now it is men who are more likely than women to be manual workers."
A look at Fortune's 100 Best Companies To Work For in 2009 suggests that pharmaceutical firms are among the businesses that are following the trend in taking on more female staff.
Of Novo Nordisk's 3,053 staff, fifty-five percent are women, while fifty-one percent of Genentech's employees are female workers. Alcon Laboratories also hover around the fifty percent mark. Genentech was also in the top ten overall best companies to work.
Pharmaceutical representatives also feature on Fortune's list of the Fifty Most Powerful Women in Business. Melanie Healey, Procter and Gamble's group president of global feminine and healthcare, ranked fifteen last year, moving up from thirty-seventh place in 2008.
Her contribution to the pharmaceutical industry is significant, as she oversees forty percent of Procter and Gamble's revenue, which represents around $32 billion (£19.8 billion).
In addition, worldwide chairman of Johnson & Johnson's pharmaceuticals group Sheri McCoy also makes the top twenty. She is ranked fourteenth, up from forty-fourth in 2008.
The company's worldwide chairman of its consumer group, Colleen Goggins, features in the top twenty as well, at nineteenth on the list. This also marks a rise up the rankings from 2008, when she was placed in twenty-fourth.
Just outside the top twenty is Carrie Cox, executive vice-president and president of global pharmaceuticals at Schering-Plough, while GlaxoSmithKline's Deirdre Connelly also features in the top fifty.
Furthermore, there is even a pharmaceutical business, Paragon Biomedical, which is dedicated to maintaining a corporate culture which is based on equal opportunity and diversity, with women making up the majority of its workforce.
Nevertheless, Maxine Benson, co-founder of training and resources website Everywoman, still believes more needs to be done to help women break through the glass ceiling and gain equal pay.
"Women should be encouraged to aspire to the very top of their career, but once there, they deserve to expect the same opportunities, recognition and remuneration as their male colleagues," she said.
