After more than 40 years of the feminist movement, you would think that women in the workplace wouldn't be much of a novelty. But the issue has taken on new life as the post-movement generations of Gen-Xs and Millennial women grapple with the challenges of work/life balance and career advancement in a workplace where the female-to-male wage gap is still 80 percent.
To address these and other gender-based issues, the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation (IICF) has developed the first Women in Insurance Global Conference, scheduled for June 12 through 14 in New York.
Underwritten by some of insurance's heaviest hitters, including Farmers, Munich Re, Travelers, ACE and Chubb, the conference features an impressive roster of keynote speakers from both inside and outside the industry (read the full story online, “Women in Insurance Conference to Focus on Mending the Gender Gap.”)
There's a need for discussion. According to 2012 BLS stats, while women made up only 27.4 percent of chief executives in the “management, business and financial operations occupations,” they comprised 81.9 percent of “insurance claims and policy processing clerks.”
And while the BLS found the ratio of women's to men's earnings for all occupations was 81.2 percent in 2010, the gap for “insurance sales agents” (not specifying which kind) was 66.7 percent.
Of course, these numbers don't tell the whole story. Newer agencies are more likely to be gender or racially diverse, with 33 percent having a female agency principal, according to the 2010 Big I Agency Universe study. And most big insurers and brokerages, recognizing the power that can be harnessed in a diverse workforce, have aggressive diversity programs in place.
But gender is still enough of a concern in our industry to warrant some serious discussion. In fact, the idea for the conference came from IICF board members who named gender diversity one of their top challenges, according to IICF Chair Bill Ross.
“The assumption is that (gender) performance and representation is no different than the financial industry as a whole, but everyone feels that from a diversity standpoint that gender relationships are very important,” he said. “There's so much research showing that a mixture of diversity brings a higher level of creativity.”
He's probably referencing, among other things, a 2012 study by Credit Suisse analyzing the performance of almost 2,400 companies with and without women board members from 2005 onward. The study found that a gender-diversified board yielded a better mix of leadership skills, improved corporate governance, less risky corporate behavior and was a more accurate reflection of the consumer decision-maker than all-male boards.
AA&B will be attending the IICF conference and spotlighting top women in the industry in our August issue. If you'd like to recommend someone, contact me directly at [email protected].
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