We need affirmative action to build women and minority owned businesses. In higher education women are only 15 percent of all engineering graduates and only nine percent work as engineers. We need affirmative action to increase the number of women in science, engineering and technology. In the corporate world, women and people of color are still too few in number in management and executive positions. A recent study of 100 companies by the Business and Professional Women's Foundation and the American Management Association found that companies whose senior management teams are a mixture of genders, ethnic backgrounds and ages achieve superior corporate performance.
Affirmative action boosts the bottom line.
At every turn examples cry out for affirmative action to open opportunities for qualified women and capitalizes on their enormous economic and creative power. She earned those qualifications through hard work, but it was through NASA's affirmative action that she and other women have been sought and recruited for the space program. Through affirmative action all American women and people of color can have equal opportunities in education, government, industry and the professions. Someday, a person's gender or race will have no bearing at all on their education, jobs, promotions or professions to which they may aspire. Someday, women's paychecks and business balance sheets will equal men's.