Magazines such as Working Mother and Business Week regularly publish lists of
woman-friendly companies. The compiler of one such list asks to see the com
pany's newsletter as an indicator of how a company treats its people. An analysis
of photographs for 2 two-year periods (January 1985 through December 1986 and
January 1991 through December 1992)
showed that women were not portrayed
equitably in IBM's employee newsletter Think.
Compared to their presence in IBM's labor force, women were significantly
underrepresented in photographs, both in 1985-86 and 1991-92. Although women
constituted approximately 29%
of IBM's workforce, only 23% of the 820 subjects of
the coded pictures were females. Moreover, although women were pictured more
frequently in 1991-92 than in 1985-86, the mean proportion of women in Think photos did not increase significantly.
Women's portrayal as leaders (17.4%)
did not differ significantly from the
proportion of IBM managerial positions (20.0%) held by women, and the propor
tion remained stable over time. However, a large percentage of small-group
photographs portrayed no clear leader, male or female. This fact was attributed to
IBM's tendency to downplay managers in the magazine sent to all employees.
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