Sexism in the workplace by Harriet Rubin April 2008 Issue Weren't we supposed to be beyond this by now? After years of progress, women's gains at work have come to a baffling halt.
30years ago, two Harvard Business School professors had a plan. They wanted to change the world. Start filling the pipeline with female managers, they predicted, and in 10 or 20 years at most, those women would shift into senior positions. Once that took place, could an end to sexism in the workplace (and maybe everywhere else too) be far off? Anne Jardim and her partner, Margaret Hennig, wrote one of the first books of career advice for pigeonholed secretaries and ambitious assistants: The Managerial Woman. (View an interactive feature showing differences between men and women in corporate America.)

When it was published, in 1977, just 2.3 percent of the executives in U.S. firms were women. The book—a "groundbreaking" bestseller, according to the New York Times—was onto something big. Now, three decades later, 52 percent of all middle managers are women.

Poof! Sexism in corporate America—gone.

Twenty or 30 years ago, people thought it could actually work like that: Deal with sexism and be done with it. (View an interactive timeline of gender wars in America.) But sexism didn't end. Now we dread having to bring it up again. Why? Maybe because our failure stirs up fear and embarrassment at the idea that it will never go away. These thoughts are always with us but never more so than today, thanks to Senator Hillary Clinton's tumultuous presidential campaign. She was the "inevitable" Democratic candidate—until she wasn't. Once there was a charismatic male contender, we as a nation had to once again face our true feelings about gender and power. Suddenly the question is whether we are more gender-blind or color-blind.
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