March 26, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Nonprofit organizations are more “warm and fuzzy” than the business world and therefore more likely to offer equal opportunities to men and women — right?
Well, not exactly, according to an article posted on Future Leaders in Philanthropy, a blog that is edited by young people who work for Changing Our World, a fund-raising consulting firm in New York.
The authors, Josh Moore and Maria Nardell, who are staff members of the firm, highlight data showing that while women hold 68 percent of nonprofit jobs, they are scarce when it comes to running the biggest organizations and they earn less overall than their male colleagues.
Almost 85 percent of the chief executives at nonprofit groups with budgets of at least $50-million are men, they note. Men in all nonprofit jobs earn a median compensation that is 28 percent higher than that of women, they add.
The article dissects some of the possible explanations for those disparities.
It says women may fill the majority of nonprofit jobs because, if married, they feel less pressure to be the primary breadwinner, so they can give priority to their “feel-good” career goals.
“In terms of wages, women who grow within organizations can find themselves on the bottom of the pay scale at each promotion, whereas men who come to organizations from the outside more often demand to be hired on their previous pay scales,” it adds.
Nonprofit groups should do more to bring women into senior management positions for the good of the charity, the authors say. They cite a recent study that examined 353 Fortune 500 companies, which found that companies with the highest number of women in senior management positions had a 34 percent higher return to shareholders than companies with the lowest number of women in such positions.
See The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s most recent article on the pay gap between male and female nonprofit executives. Plus, read this article for an analysis of the issue and tips on how women can overcome obstacles to getting salary increases.
If you have ideas about why men and women face different career paths at nonprofits groups, click on the comment link just below this posting to share your views.
