Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/913027
{ SOMMjournal.com } 93 has tracked sommelier salaries for the last three years. The most recent survey in 2016 revealed that the median income of female sommeliers ($58,000) was $7,000 less than the median income for male sommeliers ($65,000), again controlling for education, experience, and location. We know that many investigations, including a recent McKinsey & Company report, show that men are promoted based on potential while women are promoted on accomplishments—and that women are 15 percent less likely to be promoted in general. This effectively means it will take about a century to achieve gender parity among executives. Most puzzlingly (and sadly), we know that a lot of women opt out professionally even when they are most poised to advance and gain some measure of professional power. This is true in dozens of industries. Women now earn the majority of the bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and PhDs in the country. Generally speaking, learning more has meant earning more—for men. But somehow education doesn't translate when it comes to women. Indeed, a sig - nificant percentage of educated women simply disappear from the labor market. In our own industry, women make up 62 percent of undergraduates in the Viticulture & Enology program at UC Davis, yet women represent just 10 percent of all the winemak - ers in California. And only 4 percent of those women own their own wineries, while 48 percent of the male winemakers own theirs. What is happening? Where are all the talented, educated women in wine going? There's a black hole here that can't be explained. And I don't believe it's fully explained even when we factor in the real - ity that some percentage of women opt out to have children. The fact remains that the wine industry needs more women. First off, it would be a better, more effec - tive industry. No one has expressed this more succinctly than legendary investor Warren Buffett, who, when asked why he'd been so successful, responded that he'd only had to compete with half the population. Some important social science research about this has also recently come out. The Atlantic, the New York Times and the Harvard Business Review have all reported on sev - eral studies by Anita Williams Woolley of Carnegie Mellon; Thomas Malone, Alex Pentland, and Nada Hashmi of MIT; and Christopher Chabris of Union College. Their research looks at why some groups of people are smarter than other groups. It's tempting, of course, to think that groups made up of smart individuals would be smarter groups. But when you give groups a battery of problems to solve, it turns out that I believe women can excel and move into more leadership positions within the industry. But I also believe that's not happening right now. Right now, we're treading water."