First Posted: 2/9/2015
LIMA — Women have come a long way in the business world, but, they still have a ways to go.
Thirty years ago, there was a good chance women would be told they couldn’t do something or go farther in their career simply because they were women.
Now, those things still occassionally happen, but women have come a long way.
“There is still a glass ceiling, and someday it will be broken,” said Nicole Scott, director of communications at the Lima/Allen County Chamber of Commerce. “We just haven’t made it there yet. It’s just going to be society. It’s just going to take sometime, but we’re working on it.”
For Cynthia Leis, Van Wert City Economic and Community Development Director, the existence of the glass ceiling depends on the company.
“I think it depends on what company you work for, whether there are women in higher positions or not,” she said. “I see a lot (more) women in higher positions than I did 10 years ago.”
Women can bring value to the workplace and something different than what men can bring to the table, she said.
To accomodate this realization, companies have changed some of their policies and processes, Leis said.
Part of those policies changes have to do with hiring, which Leis said happens more through committees these days than through one individual.
“I think companies are doing a much better job of recruiting and hiring because of the committee-type atmosphere,” she said.
Charlene Gilbert, the dean at the Ohio State University Lima campus, said she remembers a time when recruiting and hiring was all about men.
“There was a time when men would get positions simply because they were men,” Gilbert said. “Men were not competing against a full pool of people.”
Now, it’s about selecting the best person for the job, she said.
“Women now compete against more people than anyone else in our similar positions ever have in the past,” Gilbert said.
Years ago, women had to do more and try twice as hard to get the same positions, said Judy Cowan, president and chief exectutive officer of the Ohio Energy and Advanced Manufacturing Center.
Now, women sometimes feel that way, but Elia Lopez, plant manager at Proctor and Gamble, said those feelings could also just come from being ambitious.
Marcelyn Boone, plant manager at INEOS in Lima, said the world has changed a lot during her time in the workforce.
“My boss right now is younger than I am. It’s a man, and I don’t get any sense of any of that kind of bias,” she said. “I think its important to stay positive and I don’t really think the barriers that used to be out there are there.”
She encourages people to move if they get to a point where they’ve leveled out in their careers.
“I’d be lying if I said there weren’t any obstacles,” said Debra McCurdy, president of Rhodes State College. “There absolutely were, but I don’t think you should focus on the obstacles. You face the reality of them and you look for ways to get around them or go through them.”
Gilbert sees more women than ever before in the workplace today.
“We’ve made lot of progress and come a long way, but we still have lots of battles to fight,” she said. “We’re reaching greater levels of equality in terms of women going into engineering and medicine.”
Though there are still barriers, it’s important not to forget the ones that have been conquered.
“It’s been a lot of work to get women through the door and we’ve got to keep doing the work to help women break through some of those glass ceilings,” Gilbert said.
