Women in the Pipeline: A Tableau Poster for Makeover Monday

I’ve fallen more than a little behind on the Makeover Monday series. Sometimes, I save a data set for later, as something I want to explore a bit deeper. Other times, I look up and realize it’s Thursday.

This week’s topic tied back to a great source where I could pull in a bit more data without loads of extra research (double-win in my book). Here’s the hook:

From entry level to the C-suite, women are underrepresented at US corporations, less likely to advance than men, and face more barriers to senior leadership. In fact, at the rate of progress of the past three years, it will take more than 100 years for the upper reaches of US corporations to achieve gender parity.

Women in the Workplace

You’re joking, right? Naturally, I had to look. (Spoiler alert: my math says 99 years. I could be wrong, but I like my number better. I’m going to blame rounding. Either that, or sleeping through math class.)

I managed to avoid seeing most things on Twitter. Fortunately, I had #Data16 and images of VizQL (PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, TELL ME YOU WILL PRESENT THAT IN AUSTIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) filling my Twitter feed. I did see some and that likely had an impact (if I copied you, sorry and thank you).

I ran this through my normal process to figure out how I wanted to tell the story. The inverted area chart found its way on there first and I thought it’d make a great backdrop. It went down(hill) from there, including getting more data, stealing the diverging chart from Steve Wexler again, and finding oddball things to do with legends. I decided to go full poster and infographic style. Smart kids read books on best practice. Me? I get the Dummies book on infographics.

As I’m contrary, I couldn’t force myself to use standard colors. It’s my favorite shade of teal, kids. I do have other versions framed up to play with colors, so who knows, it may change.

I also had to toss my normal basket of icons on there to help reinforce the points. Blame interpreting – you repeat things for sake of clarification. Pity the people who live with me.

What surprised me most is the mentorship piece. Let’s look at this:

Only 37% of men have had a notable influence from women mentors. Is it due to lack of females in roles where they’d mentor others? Possibly. Within that same study, (I didn’t viz it), it shows the advancement gap. So, one factor, possibly. But, is it also possible women also choose to mentor or impact male peers less (and vice versa for men)? Is that influence sometimes missed? Is it that birds of a feather flock together? I don’t know, but I came away with more questions. (Personally, I fall in the 50/50 camp. But, I will say I take different things from each.) What’s your take?