November 20, 2008

By the Numbers—Most Powerful Women in Cable Edition

A SLIGHTLY IRREVERENT BUT HIGHLY RELEVANT LOOK AT FACTS AND FIGURES OF IMPORTANCE.

18%: Percentage of married couples in ’06 in which the wife earned at least $5K more than her husband.
32%: Percentage of women, 25-29, who attained a B.A. or higher (as of ’06).
25%: The percentage of men who had. [U.S. Census Bureau]

37%: Percentage of women, 16 and older, who work in management, professional and related occupations.
31%: The percentage of men working in those areas. [U.S. Census Bureau]

77 Cents: What women earn for every dollar earned by men. African-American women earn 64 cents; Hispanic women 52 cents.
58 Cents: What women earned for every dollar earned by men in 1963, when the passage of the Equal Pay Act made it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women doing the same job. [National Women’s Law Center]

46%: Percentage of women, 16 and older, in the labor force (2006).
33%: Percentage in 1960, when season 1 of AMC’s Mad Men takes place. [U.S. Dept. of Labor]

925 million: Estimated number of people living in chronic hunger.
75 million: Those who joined that group this year.
$22 billion: U.S. foreign aid in ’07, down 4%; advocates fear the financial crisis will put pressure on foreign aid in ’09. [The United Nations]

4 million+: The average number of viewers Bill O’Reilly had nightly since Sept. ’08, nearly double his Sept ’07 avg.
1.7 million: Avg. number of viewers for MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow since she began in Sept., more than double the avg. for the network at 9 p.m. [NYTimes, 10/22/08]

36%: Percentage of women in cable’s workforce.
15%: Percentage of women of color in it; women were 41% of all female cable employees. Both were industry highs. Since the percentage of cable industry managers also is 36%, cable has achieved parity. [WICT’s ’07 PAR Report]

62%: Percentage of mothers in the U.S. labor force in 2004.
25%: Percentage of them in the U.S. labor force in 1965. [U.S. Dept. of Labor]

68: The U.S.’s rank, out of 134 nations worldwide, for female national office holders; 17% of the U.S. House and 16% of the Senate were women as of June ’08. [International Women’s Democracy Center]

4: The number of women killed every 24 hours in South Africa by their husband or intimate partner.
2: The number of women killed weekly in the U.K. by their husband or intimate partner. [Womankind Worldwide]

50%: The estimated federal tax hike during the next 25 years. [Robert J. Samuelson, 10/22/08, The Washington Post]

5.9%: Percentage of full power commercial TV stations owned by women.
51%: Percentage of women in the U.S. population. [Out of the Picture, Oct. 2007]

1 in 7: Number of female U.S. veterans of Afghanistan or Iraq who reported being a victim of sexual assault or harassment during military duty; 1 in 100 male vets reported being sexually assaulted.
50%+: Percentage of these woman who have post-traumatic stress disorder. [National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Oct. ’08]

12 years: The time it took for women’s groups, including Lifetime Television, to get Congress to schedule a hearing on a bill that would prevent drive-through mastectomies, in which insurance companies prohibit mastectomy patients from spending an extra night in the hospital. The resulting bill stalled in the Senate last month. [Lifetime Television]

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