One might think that this view of roles in our society is rapidly changing. However, there are many statistics that show that these changes are not happening as quickly as we would want. If women were indeed perceived as equals to men in our society this number would be consistently changing and becoming more equal. In the last couple of years the number has actually decreased only a few cents on the dollar for women. It tells us that in our society men still have the majority of power positions.
Women are still a muted group.
There is no getting around this point at this time. The second assumption above discusses power from another perspective, that men sustain their power to some extent by suppressing women s positions on issues within the organization. In this situation, the powerful attorneys suppressed the ideas that their female assistants had by pretending to listen to them, but in actuality, they did not really hear what the women had to say. This is known because no action was ever taken as a result of any of the recommendations made by either of the two female assistants of the male attorneys. Another example of the political power exercised by the male attorney that I worked for is the many times that he actually put down what I was saying in front of clients.