• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

After forcing workers back to the office, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are now letting their staff work remotely—but only for the World Cup

2

The Pentagon said Iran War costs $29 billion, but the real cost is closer to $200 billion—and counting

3

Current price of oil as of June 23, 2026

1

After forcing workers back to the office, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are now letting their staff work remotely—but only for the World Cup

2

The Pentagon said Iran War costs $29 billion, but the real cost is closer to $200 billion—and counting

3

Current price of oil as of June 23, 2026
MPWMost Powerful Women

Men Really Are Clueless About Their Female Coworkers

By
Rick Wartzman
Rick Wartzman
and
Aaron Task
Aaron Task
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Rick Wartzman
Rick Wartzman
and
Aaron Task
Aaron Task
Down Arrow Button Icon
March 10, 2016, 9:00 AM ET
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Glass ceiling? What glass ceiling?

That’s the view of the vast majority of male employees when it comes to workplace discrimination faced by women, according to a new PayScale survey—and it points up a huge challenge to overcoming the problem: You can’t fix something that you don’t see.

The PayScale survey, conducted online over the past couple of months with about 140,000 people from a broad range of industries, found that 67% of men believe that in most workplaces “men and women have equal opportunities.” Yet only 38% of women say that’s the case.

For those in jobs related to technology—a field that has found itself under heavy scrutiny for the way women are treated—the gap is even larger: 66% of men in tech positions say there is equal opportunity for all in most workplaces, while just 30% of women in tech do.

The findings jibe with studies done by others, including this 2015 study by the Pew Research Center.

“There’s clearly a difference in perception,” says Aubrey Bach, a senior manager at PayScale, a Seattle-based provider of compensation data, who will present the survey results during a panel on Sunday at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. “Men don’t think inequity is an issue.”

The reality, however, is that it is.

Overall, women continue to earn 15% to 20% less than men—a disparity that grows the longer that women remain working outside the home. In the U.S. and Canada, Mercer has found, women account for a mere 22% of corporate executives, 30% of senior managers, and 38% of managers (even though they make up nearly half the American labor force). And research by Michelle Budig, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, shows that when families have children, fathers get a wage bonus; mothers suffer a wage penalty.

Interestingly, the PayScale survey found that both men and women have relatively favorable impressions of how women are treated inside their own companies. Seventy-five percent of male employees in general and 80% of men in tech jobs say there is equal opportunity for all at their workplace. By comparison, 51% of women and 44% of women in tech positions say that’s so.

Matt Wallaert, a behavioral scientist who will take part in the SxSW panel, suggests that people often have a hard time admitting that their own employers aren’t fair to everyone because it can make them uncomfortable. “It’s psychological protection,” he says. In any event, the gulf between what men and women feel is happening where they themselves work is every bit as enormous as what they think is true of the wider world.

That so much empirical information is out there—and yet so many men fail to recognize what their female colleagues are up against, especially in tech—frustrates Wallaert, who is the co-founder of GetRaised.com, a free service that helps women obtain higher pay.

“It’s those in the tech industry, which thinks of itself as full of logical and data-driven engineers, who are most likely to say sexism isn’t a problem in their workplace,” he says. “That’s just amazing. There is a real need for men to step up to the plate.”

Perhaps part of the reason that men are largely blind to gender bias in the workplace is that, all in all, it’s not nearly as blatant as it was in the 1950s and ’60s, when the ranks of women entering the labor force began to swell. Back then, it wasn’t uncommon for major employers to focus on a woman’s appearance, not her aptitude.

“This winsome lass is Carol Goff, a clerk-typist in shipping,” General Electric’s distribution transformer department in Oakland, Calif., announced in the “Who’s New” section of its internal newsletter in late 1961. “Another pretty lil’ gal, Joyce A. Tate, is our new mail girl.” When one of GE’s few female engineers had visited a company factory in Massachusetts in the mid-1950s to check on some production parts, she’d gotten the same treatment. “Not even a visitor from Mars could have attracted more attention than Betty Lou Bailey,” a GE publication reported. “Not that the visitor had any of the characteristics of a Martian—in fact, with her blue-eyed, blonde-haired attractiveness she would have been an eye-catcher anywhere.”

But just because sexism is now simmering more beneath the surface doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

“Companies play hot potato with the issue,” says Liz Morgan, who is in charge of recruiting Bay Area engineering leaders at LinkedIn (LNKD). “They usually look to HR and recruiting to fix the problem by increasing the talent pipeline with more female candidates and conducting unconscious-bias training. It’s a good start, but more needs to be done.”

Morgan, who will join Sunday’s panel, recommends that companies take a number of specific steps, including more rigorously evaluating and making transparent hiring, compensation, turnover, and retention data—“and holding management accountable” when there are inconsistencies between men and women. At least a few companies, such as Salesforce (CRM) and Pinterest, are moving in this direction.

Morgan also calls on companies to do what the NFL — not normally regarded as a paragon of progressive attitudes toward women — is doing: instituting “the Rooney Rule,” which would require that they interview women (and others who would bring more diversity to the organization) for executive positions. In addition, she says, they must build a deeper internal bench of potential women leaders and that it’s important for companies to establish equal standards and expectations for men and women on policies such as flex time, and paternity and maternity leave.

Finally, says Morgan, corporate leaders need to work harder to foster a truly “collaborative culture.” One key to this, she says, is that companies should make sure that formal support networks designed to help women include men.

“Right now, they’re not consistently part of those conversations,” Morgan says.

Evidently, that’s helped them reach a faulty conclusion: that gender discrimination is a thing of the past when, the truth is, there’s a long, long way to go.

Rick Wartzman is senior advisor to the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. The author or editor of five books, he is currently writing a narrative history of how the social contract between employer and employee in America has changed since the end of World War II.

About the Authors
By Rick Wartzman
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
By Aaron Task
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in MPW

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in MPW

rp
CommentaryLaw
Cooley CEO: Big Law won’t survive if it treats AI as just an efficiency tool
By Rachel ProffittJune 23, 2026
1 day ago
astronaut
Commentaryspace
NASA just named an all-male crew for ‘Artemis III’: what’s a woman to do?
By Savanah F.S. Bray, PhDJune 22, 2026
2 days ago
gg
PoliticsElections
‘People are tired of hearing what government can’t do’: Democratic Socialists surge nationwide
By Matt Brown and The Associated PressJune 20, 2026
4 days ago
With the exits of Apple’s Tim Cook and Dow’s Jim Fitterling, the Fortune 500 is losing two groundbreaking gay CEOs—leaving just one 
C-SuiteLeadership
With the exits of Apple’s Tim Cook and Dow’s Jim Fitterling, the Fortune 500 is losing two groundbreaking gay CEOs—leaving just one 
By Phil WahbaJune 20, 2026
4 days ago
Exclusive: Azzi Fudd joins Project B, the international league chasing a billion-dollar opportunity in global basketball
MPWSports
Exclusive: Azzi Fudd joins Project B, the international league chasing a billion-dollar opportunity in global basketball
By Emma HinchliffeJune 19, 2026
5 days ago
Arianna Huffington swears by one boundary to switch off from work every night—and Ralph Lauren’s CHRO says it’s the best thing she’s ever done too
SuccessDay in the Life of a CEO
Arianna Huffington swears by one boundary to switch off from work every night—and Ralph Lauren’s CHRO says it’s the best thing she’s ever done too
By Orianna Rosa RoyleJune 19, 2026
5 days ago

Most Popular

After forcing workers back to the office, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are now letting their staff work remotely—but only for the World Cup
Success
After forcing workers back to the office, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are now letting their staff work remotely—but only for the World Cup
By Orianna Rosa RoyleJune 23, 2026
1 day ago
The Pentagon said Iran War costs $29 billion, but the real cost is closer to $200 billion—and counting
Economy
The Pentagon said Iran War costs $29 billion, but the real cost is closer to $200 billion—and counting
By Jacqueline MunisJune 24, 2026
11 hours ago
Current price of oil as of June 23, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of June 23, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJune 23, 2026
1 day ago
Markets tumble worldwide as Fed resets expectations: $400 billion wiped off SpaceX stock
Banking
Markets tumble worldwide as Fed resets expectations: $400 billion wiped off SpaceX stock
By Jim EdwardsJune 23, 2026
1 day ago
Current price of gold as of June 23, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of gold as of June 23, 2026
By Danny BakstJune 23, 2026
1 day ago
Texas and Charlotte used to build huge McMansions—now they're copying the California design tricks they once mocked
Real Estate
Texas and Charlotte used to build huge McMansions—now they're copying the California design tricks they once mocked
By Sydney LakeJune 22, 2026
2 days ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.