Hewlett-Packard, the second largest computer maker in the country and the 13th biggest company in the United States, has appointed Carle Fiorina its new chief executive. Forty-four years old, Carle Fiorina, former president of the global services group at Lucent Technology, is the first woman to head a Fortune 100 company, and one of three to head a Fortune 500 company. Fiorina's appointment is, in my opinion, just the beginning of what is likely to occur on a much more regular basis in the next ten years. American women are clearly moving up in the business, professional, and academic worlds, and their roles in the next hundred years are likely to show even more dramatic upward mobility than they have in the past twenty or thirty years of this century. Before turning toward the future, let's take a brief look backward, and see where women have been, and how far they have come.

A 1995 study released by Dunn & Bradstreet Information Service reported that there were 7.7 million women-owned businesses in the United States generating $1.4 trillion in sales. These firms, with more than 15 million individuals on their payrolls, employ 35 percent more people than Fortune 500 companies do worldwide. As of 1999, women-owned businesses remain one of the fastest growing segments of our economy, and women continue to start businesses at twice the rate of men. U.S. Census Bureau statistics indicate that women will likely own 40 percent of the small businesses in the United States by the year 2006.

A report issued by the Office of Personnel Management in July, 1999 contains fiscal 1998 figures which show that women held 31 percent of the supervisory and managerial positions, and accounted for 22.4 percent of senior federal executives. In 1998 women accounted for 48 percent of the government's new hires, and 52 percent of the job promotions. OPM director Janice R. Lachance writes, "The report shows that while the glass ceiling hasn't completely shattered, women are lifting it to new heights. I am confident that this will continue."

Shifting the focus to academia, let's look at how different women's status is likely to be in the next 100 years from what it has been in the latter part of this century. In 1995 women earned 55 percent of the bachelor's degrees and 55 percent of the master's degrees. In 1994, women obtained more than 40 percent of the professional degrees, which is up from less than five percent in 1961. Women received 38 percent of the doctoral degrees in 1994, compared to ten percent in 1961. They received 40 percent of the doctorates in the biological and life sciences, as opposed to 12 percent in 1962. Forty years ago, women represented 22 percent of all faculty. In 1994, women made up 38 percent of all faculty at American universities. While the earnings ratios of women- to- men still favor men (especially at the full professor level of 88.5 compared to.93.0 at the associate and assistant professor, and 96.0 at the instructor level), given the direction of these ratios, it seems clear that by the time women instructors are promoted to full professor in the twenty-first century, they are likely to earn the same salaries as men.

More generally on the issue of earnings ratios, we see that when we control for such pertinent indices as years in the work force, educational leve1, field, and marital status, women who were compared against men who were between 27 and 33 years of age and childless, earned 98 percent of the men's salary. The difference between men and women who hold doctorates in economics is five percent in favor of men. In a recent study published in the American Sociological Review, the author reported the results of two national surveys (a longitudinal one conducted in 1982, 1984, 1986,and 1989, and a cross-sectional survey conducted in 1992) about the relative earnings of men and women engineers. On the basis of the longitudina1 survey, she concluded that the earnings penalty to women is more a matter of when an individual entered the profession, than how long she has been in it. Analyses of the 1992 survey showed that the overall earnings gap between men and women engineers was zero. Professor Morgan concluded that there may well be an absence of gender differentials in the earnings of men and women in law, medicine, accounting, academia and other professions among individuals who entered those professions within the past 15 or 20 years. In other words, we need to take another look at the earnings of men and women in all professions by examining cohort effects (when a woman enters a profession) rather than by assuming that there is a glass ceiling for women.

Shifting to another arena, the U.S. Armed Forces, we again have grounds for optimism that women are moving up and making it, even in that once strong bastion of male superiority. For example, as of June, 1998, there were 300,493 men and 65,448 women in the U.S. Air Force. Women thus make up 17.9 percent of the Air Force. But since 1997, there have been 30,200 enlistments, 28 percent of whom were women. Unlike the other branches of the Armed Forces, 99 percent of the Air Force specialties are open to women. For the past twenty years, basic training in the Air Force has been fully integrated for men and women, and GAO data indicate that from 1989 through 1997, women have been promoted to both officer and NCO ranks at the same rate as men.

On the basis of the data just described for the recent past, there are enormous grounds for optimism that women will play even more important and useful roles in American society in the next 100 years. They will hold visible, prominent positions in all spheres of public life: in the government, in the business world, at the universities, and in the military. Their behavior, and the decisions they make in each of these spheres will matter, and will make life in American society richer, happier, and more satisfying for all of us.