After more than 40 years of the feminist movement, you'd thinkthat women in the workplace wouldn't be much of a novelty. But theissue has taken on new life as the post-movement generations ofGen-Xs and Millennial women grapple with the challenges ofwork/life balance and career advancement in a workplace where thefemale-to-male wage gap is still 80 percent.

And guess what: Gender is still an issue in the insuranceindustry.

Turns out there are lots of women in the industry, but darn fewin the upper echelons of companies smaller than the Fortune 500,said Susan Fleming, a professor at Cornell University who hasserved on the boards of five publicly traded insurers

“When you get below the Fortune 500, to smaller companies, it'smuch worse,” she said. “There's more institutional pressure atbigger companies to have female representation and in insurance,it's very low, even less than in investment banking.”

Here are some facts from 2012 from the U.S. Bureau of LaborStatistics:

• Women made up 27.4 percent of chief executives in the“management, business and financial operations occupations.”
• Women made up 81.9 percent of “insurance claims and policyprocessing clerks.”
• While the the ratio of women's to men's earnings for alloccupations was 81.2 percent in 2010, the gap for “insurance salesagents” (not specifying which kind) was 66.7 percent.

One of the highlights of the upcoming IICF Women in Insurance GlobalConference will be the unveiling of a survey conducted bySt. Joseph's University on femalerepresentation in the industry. Understandably, IICF didn't want toleak these numbers before the event, so I looked for othersources to find out about how women were represented in theinsurance industry. There isn't too much available where insuranceisn't lumped in with financial services.

According to Catalyst, anonprofit organization tasked with improving women's businessopportunities, here's the breakout for women in the U.S. financeand insurance sector:

• CEOs: 2.6%
• Board directors: 19%
• Executive officers: 18.6%
• Industry labor force: 56.1%

Of course, numbers don't tell the whole story. And thepleasant surprise is that when it comes to workplacediversity, the independent agency system is actually prettyprogressive, said Madelyn Flannagan, vice president of agentdevelopment, education and research for the IIABA. Neweragencies are especially prone to be gender or raciallydiverse, with 33 percent having a female agency principal,according to the 2010 Big I Agency Universe study.

Here's the breakout for agency personnel from the 2012Agency Universe study:

• Agency principals/senior managers: 88% men, 31% women
• Non-principal agency managers: 39% men, 73% women
• Non-principal producers: 69% men, 56% women
• CSRs: 20% men, 90% women
• Other (administrative): 26% men, 84% women

Yeah, we know, that's an awful lot of women CSRs. But in manycases, CSRs serve as the feeder system for future ownership,Flannagan said.

“If you have four agency owners, usually one will be awoman,” she said. “Many principals start out in a CSRcapacity, and there is obviously family ownership. Because ofthe type of business, agenies attract women, and they do well.”

And they don't have to be producers to wield power within anagency. Flannagan pointed to events like the recent NetVU conference, where the roughly3,000 attendees were primarily women who are running the tech showat their agencies.

Still, the lack of representation at the upper levels could boildown to a lot of things, including less female representation inthe actuarial sciences or finances, she said. Without soundingsexist, Flannagan points out that “women areservice focused” and that they “do well at making people feelsecure.”

This is borne out in the new “2013Women, Money & Power” study released by Allianz Life, whichfinds that 69 percent of women don't view their financialprofessionals as a “go to” source for information about how tosave, spend and invest. The study concludes that with morewomen than ever making family financial decisions, it makes senseto increase the ranks of female financial advisors.

And while this study deals with financial advisors, it hasimplications for agents as well.

“Women are empathetic and listen well,” Flannagan said. “And youhave to be a great listener to be a great producer.”