There was a moment of shocked happiness last week when celebrants of the Des Moines Business Record’s annual Women of Influence event realized that their ceremony fell on the 83rd anniversary of the 19th amendment.

Amid the clapping and the congratulations, however, there was an undercurrent of dissatisfaction that more needs to be done to advance women’s progress in Iowa. And there was an impatience to get the work completed.

In Central Iowa, the Nexus breakfast club, which is made up of female business and community leaders, is compiling a study on the progress of women in the state. Nexus members focus primarily on ways to improve opportunities for financial stability and leadership for young women.

The group plans to present its findings this fall, but the information it has gathered so far raises important issues.

For instance, there are more female than male valedictorians at Iowa high schools. Young women in Iowa are more likely than men to win other scholarly recognition. Across the nation, females are more likely to earn advanced degrees.

Yet in the workplace, the situation reverses. There, men occupy the majority of leadership positions.

“Women do very well in educational settings where the measure of success is very objective, whether that’s a grade or test scores,” said Sheila Riggs, executive director of the Wellmark Foundation and a Nexus member. “Women are not doing well in Iowa when it comes to peak earnings potential or for-profit leadership opportunities. We should all wonder why.”

The Nexus report promises to become part of an annual tracking mechanism to measure female progress in Iowa, Riggs said.

In 1999, 64 percent of Iowa women earned less than $25,000, while 65 percent of men in the state earned more than that, according to a Feb. 1 report from the Iowa Commission on the Status of Women.

Part of the difference in salary has to do with job choice, of course. Women are more likely than men to choose low-paying jobs in child care, teaching and nursing. Other explanations for the gap are not as easy to find.

Domestic violence figures are still too high, and there aren’t enough women in politics. Just 22 percent of the Iowa General Assembly were females last year. The state has never elected a female governor or sent a women to Congress.

A report released last week by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Women’s Business Research said that Iowa ranked 45th in the nation in the growth of women-owned firms between 1997 and 2002. Women-owned businesses now employ more than 95,000 people across Iowa, the report said.

Despite the figures, women across the state are making steady progress. In 1974, only 14 percent of the members of state boards and commissions were female. Last year, 49 percent were.

We encourage impatience and hope efforts to improve the lives of women in Iowa continues.