A soon-to-be-released joint survey of 708 women by Prevue Meetings & Incentives and the Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE) finds that there’s still a glass ceiling in the meetings industry—and it has barely a dent in it.
The hospitality industry is known to lag behind others when it comes to breaking the glass ceiling — and new research by Prevue Meetings & Incentives and the Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE) found the same to be true. On the supplier side, more than half of respondents (52.9 percent) reported that fewer than 30 percent of C level positions in their companies were occupied by women. Only 12.8 percent of respondents worked in companies where the top management positions were held by women. Digging deeper, the vast majority of respondents’ companies where women held the top positions were small ones: 81.8 percent had fewer than 50 employees.
About half of respondents, both planners and suppliers, reported holding positions where they believed that being a woman had prohibited them from advancing any further. Interestingly, 61.5 percent of the planners and 65.4 percent of suppliers who reported this had 16+ years of experience. In both cases, the vast majority who felt discriminated against (around 75 percent) ended up changing jobs as a result.
48 percent of women meeting planners and 42 percent of female suppliers feel they are not paid equally to their male counterparts at their companies. In both cases, the respondents are spread equally across the various age groups.
Interestingly, the survey also found that almost half (47.3 percent) of the women meeting planners who believe they are paid unequally have more than 20 years of industry experience—a sign that this perception is strongest among the most senior planners.
The full survey will be released on November 15. See our other white papers here.
