At a time when Americans are congratulating themselves for having a diverse field of political candidates, their business leadership still doesn't equally value diverse employees and managers. In fact, progress for women and minorities in terms of both pay and power has stalled or regressed at many of the nation's biggest companies. This inequality shapes perceptions about who can or should be a leader.

More than 40 years after job discrimination was outlawed, the wage gap between white men and just about everyone else persists. The one exception is for Asian-American men, whose median wages were just 1% less than those of white men who worked full time, year round, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' survey in 2005, the latest year for which data are available.

Black men, by contrast, earned 74% of the wages of white males; Hispanic men earned 58%.

Women, overall, are substantially lagging behind men in pay. Full-time female employees earned 77% of all men's median wages. Breaking it down in terms of race, Asian-American women earned 78% of the median annual pay of white men; white women earned 73%; black women, 63%; and Hispanic women, 52%.

There are, of course, many theories about the reasons behind the pay discrepancies. Women may take time off to care for children, so they don't build up the tenure that leads to promotions and higher salaries; or they don't demand raises as often as men do because they've been socialized not to be assertive; or they don't have the right skills for the best-paying jobs.

The wage gap persists among young women who have more education than men their age. Last year, 45% of women ages 25 to 34 had a college degree, compared with 36% of young men. But women's median earnings overall were 14% lower, according to an analysis of recent Census Bureau data by Timothy Casey, a senior staff attorney at Legal Momentum, a New York advocacy group. Again, the gap may partly reflect that far fewer women than men major in engineering, business and other fields leading to high-paying jobs. Still, it is a reminder of how girls need to be encouraged to recognize their math and science abilities.

Young women earned 20% to 25% less than young men at the same education level -- about equal to men at an education level below theirs. 'It's disheartening because the rate of progress toward equality that we saw in the 1970s and 1980s has slowed in recent years,' says Heidi Hartmann, president and economist at the Institute for Women's Policy Research. 'At the current rate, equal pay will take another 50 years.'

White men also still wield the most power in business. Whites make up 81.6% of the work force and 83.5% of managers. Men of color held 6.4% of corporate-officer positions at the 260 big companies that agreed to verify data in a 2005 survey by research group Catalyst. Typically, corporate officers hold titles of director or vice president and higher.

For women, who now represent half of all managers and professionals, the climb to the top has gotten tougher. In 2007, women held 15.4% of corporate-officer posts at the nation's top 500 companies, down from 16.4% in 2005, Catalyst said. Women of color hold just 2%.

The percentage of female officers in line jobs that lead to the corner office also fell -- by 6% to 27.2% last year, according to a Catalyst survey of the top 500 companies. By comparison, one-half of male corporate officers held line jobs. Some 74 of the nation's top 500 companies -- 10 more than in 2006 -- had no female corporate officers at all. Many other household-name companies, including Microsoft, GE and Wal-Mart, had fewer than 25% women in C-level posts.

Just five companies -- Reynolds American, Office Depot, Northeast Utilities, Edison International, Reliance Steel & Aluminum and Thrivent Financial for Lutherans -- had women in more than 40% of their corporate-officer jobs.

The lack of diversity means that whenever a top minority or female executive is ousted or retires, any gains are erased. It also reinforces stereotypes that women and minorities somehow lack leadership skills.

Morgan Stanley, for example, now has just four female corporate officers since the recent ouster of co-president Zoe Cruz and the departure of Eileen Murray, former head of global technology and operations. There are just three African-American CEOs at large companies -- American Express, Aetna and Darden Restaurants. That's 50% fewer than late last year before Merrill Lynch's Stan O'Neal and Sears' Aylwin B. Lewis left their jobs and Time Warner's Richard Parsons retired.

What will it take to change this picture at a time of fierce competition for a shrinking number of management jobs? It requires business chiefs who understand that diversity is good for the bottom line because it enables them to recruit the best talent, enlist broad thinking and reach diverse customers world-wide. And it requires CEOs to link their managers' compensation to achieving more diversity while offering development programs for all employees.

This is happening at companies like Ernst & Young and IBM, which evaluate managers on how well they retain and advance women and minorities. IBM, which does business in 170 countries, 'wants a work force as broad and diversified as its customer base,' says Ron Glover, vice president, global workforce diversity.

当美国人为有多元化的政治候选人而庆幸时，他们的商界领袖却没有对多元性的员工和管理人员一视同仁。事实上，在美国许多大公司里，女性和少数族裔在薪酬和权力方面的进展都停滞不前甚至出现退步。这种不平等造就了人们对于何人能够或者应该成为领导者这一问题的传统观念。

在用工歧视被定为非法的40多年后，白人男性和其他所有人种间的薪酬差距依然存在。唯一的例外是亚裔美国人，据美国劳工统计局(Bureau of Labor Statistics)2005年的一项调查，亚裔美国男性的薪酬中值只比全年全职工作的白人男性低1%。这一结果是可获得的最新数据。

相比之下，黑人男性的薪水仅为白人男性的74%，西班牙裔男性为58%。

总体而言，女性的薪酬远远落后于男性。全职女性员工的薪酬仅为所有男性薪酬中值的77%。若按族裔划分，亚裔美国女性的薪酬为白人男性年薪中值的78%，白人女性为73%，黑人女性63%，而西班牙裔女性为52%。

当然，有许多关于薪酬差异原因的理论。女性可能会抽出时间照顾孩子，因此她们难以积聚升迁和加薪所需的足够"资本"；或是她们不像男性那样经常要求擢升，因为她们谦逊低调；又或者她们不具备相关技能而无法胜任一份肥差。

有些女性虽然受教育程度高于同龄男性，但她们的薪酬依然不及后者。据纽约女权组织Legal Momentum资深律师蒂莫西•凯西(Timothy Casey)对人口普查局(Census Bureau)新近数据进行的分析，去年，年龄在25至34岁的女性中有大学学历的比例为45%，而同龄男性只有36%。但女性总体的薪酬中值却比男性低14%。这一差距再次从某种程度上反映出，以工程学、商务及其他高薪工作领域为专业的女性比男性少得多。这也提醒人们，应当鼓励女性发挥自己的数学和科学才能。

如果处于同一教育水平，女性的薪酬则要比男性低20%至25%──与教育水平比自己低一个层次的男性相当。妇女政策研究协会(Institute for Women's Policy Research)会长、经济学家海蒂•哈特曼(Heidi Hartmann)谈到，"这种情况令人沮丧，因为上世纪七、八十年代那种走向平等的趋势近年来又减缓了。按当前的速度，同工同酬还得再要50年才能实现。"

白人男性在商场上仍是权利的主导。白种人占员工总数的81.6%，管理人员中有83.5%为白种人。研究机构Catalyst 2005年进行的一项调查中，同意核实数据的260家大公司里，担任高级管理职务的有色人种男性仅占6.4%。高级职员的头衔通常是董事或副总裁以上级别。

对于已占据所有经理和专业技术人员半数的女性而言，升迁至高级职位变得越来越难了。Catalyst指出，2007年美国500强公司中，15.4%的高管职位由女性担任，较2005年的16.4%有所下降。由有色人种女性担任的高管职位仅占2%。

根据Catalyst对500强公司的一项调查，有机会升任高管的女性管理人员的比例也有所下降，去年的比例为27.2%，降幅达6%。相比之下，男性管理人员中，半数担任着具有升迁机会的职位。美国500强公司中约有74家根本没有女性高管，这一数字比2006年多了10家。微软(Microsoft)、通用电气(GE)和沃尔玛(Wal-Mart)等许多知名公司的高管职位中，女性比例还不到25%。

只有Reynolds American、Office Depot、Northeast Utilities、Edison International、Reliance Steel & Aluminum以及Thrivent Financial for Lutherans，这些公司的女性高管比例超过了40%。

缺乏多元性意味着，只要一个少数族裔或女性高管去职或退休，所有的进展就不复存在了。这种情况也强化了人们认为女性和少数族裔缺乏领导才能的过时观点。

以摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)为例，自其联席总裁佐伊•克鲁兹(Zoe Cruz)离职、全球操作及技术部前主管艾琳•默里(Eileen Murray)离任之后，该公司现仅有四名女性高管。大公司里只有美国运通(American Express)、安泰保险公司(Aetna)和Darden Restaurants三家的CEO为非裔美国人。去年年底，美林公司(Merrill Lynch)的斯坦•奥尼尔(Stan O'Neal)、Sears的埃尔文•B.刘易斯(Aylwin B. Lewis)以及时代华纳(Time Warner)的理查德•帕森斯(Richard Parsons)相继离任，这使得非裔CEO的比例下降了50%。

在管理层职位减少，竞争尤为激烈的时代，怎样才能改变如此现状？这需要商界领袖从内心深处明白，多元化是个好东西，它可以帮助企业招募到最优秀的人才，获得广泛的见解，并影响全世界的各类客户群。不仅如此，它还要求CEO在为所有员工提供发展规划的同时，将给管理人员的奖励与更好地实现多元化联系起来。

安永(Ernst & Young)和IBM等公司正是如此，这些公司会根据管理人员保有和提升女性及少数族裔员工的情况对他们进行评估。IBM全球员工多元化副总裁罗恩•格罗夫(Ron Glover)说，在170个国家开展业务的IBM希望自己的员工像其客户群一样广泛和多样化。
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