Commission Reports and Recommendations

COMMISSION REPORTS AND

RECOMMENDATIONS

On March 8, 1995, the commission voted to accept the final report. Nineteen members voted in the affirmative, one did not indicate a vote, and another withdrew from the commission due to time constraints. The report, Good for Business: Making Full Use of the Nation's Human Capital, was released on March 16. Criticisms of the ceiling dominated the report, which indicated that 60 percent of the country's population is represented in 7 percent of the jobs. The report labeled progress discouragingly slow despite recognition by America's corporate leadership of the existence of a glass ceiling, a ceiling the final report characterized as firmly in place as a barrier to the advancement of women and minorities in upper management positions at three levels—government, business, and society. Minorities and women expressed dismay and anger at the ceiling, despite corporate promises to correct the problems. In order to provide positive examples of breaking the glass ceiling, the report included brief descriptions of dozens of practices used by some companies to advance minorities and women.

The initial report was disappointing to the extent that recommendations were not included. The Glass Ceiling Commission, after four years, still faced the task of agreeing on recommendations to eliminate the barriers. But the subsequent events of 1995 did not bring a consensus among commission members until November. In June the Glass Ceiling Commission met in Williamsburg to develop draft recommendations and to address the "women only" concept, which ignored blacks. The commission surprised no one with the finding that 97 percent of senior managers atFortune 1000 industrials and Fortune 500 companies are white or that 95 to 97 percent are male. The fact that the remaining 3 to 5 percent are white females further reinforced the decision to group blacks with women as those affected by the ceiling. Commission members fell short of agreement on recommendations at the Williamsburg session but did produce a working copy of proposals and recommendations. The proposals included grouping women and blacks as victims of discrimination and the elimination of what were referred to as" twofers," or black women counting in two categories—blacks and women—of those climbing the management ladder. More radical among the commission proposals was a call to require the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to disclose the race and ethnicity as well as the salary of all board members and officers of publicly held companies. Other proposals centered on a media campaign to present the positive aspects of women in the workplace and to hold a national conference annually to promote and discuss glass ceiling ideas and progress.

The draft recommendations that were developed were sweeping generalizations such as eliminating the