Gender parity: Not a foregone conclusion in all fields

Women constitute approximately 47 percent of the workforce yet are underrepresented at the highest levels of business, government, medical and academic hierarchies. A team of researchers has developed a model to study the ascension of women through professional hierarchies. It factors in the relative roles of bias and homophily and predicts that gender parity is not inevitable and deliberate intervention may be required in various fields to achieve gender balance.