Archive for the ‘C This’ Category
C This
Kraft Chairman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld made her mark on the business world by constantly challenging herself. As she explained at last month’s Catalyst Awards Conference, while at General Foods she volunteered for a role others shied away from: reviving a troubled business division. Although risky, the opportunity offered exposure to higher-ups. “This gave me exposure I otherwise may not have had. It was an important career enabler.”
For more career advice from Rosenfeld, plus the latest round-up of news on women and work, check out today’s C This.
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Jump for Joy
In January 2011, I wrote about how the International Olympic Committee said it “needs more time” to decide the fate of women’s ski jumping in the 2014 Winter Games. Well, the committee has spoken: welcome women ski jumpers! The decision followed the Nordic world championships in early March, where women jumped in fog and strong wind. IOC sports director Christophe Dubi was impressed by “quality and depth” of the competition—and recommended approval of the sport for 2014. “We worked really hard for this,” said U.S. jumper Lindsey Van, the 2009 world champion. “It’s just a big relief for me and I’m really excited for the future of the sport.”
Unplugged
Between 2001 and 2010, the share of women in high-tech jobs dropped from 25.6% to 23.9%. Why are women unplugging? According to researchers, the answer is two-fold: a steep decline in the number of women pursuing computer science and engineering degrees, and a dearth of mentors in high-tech industries.
READ: “Women Unplug From the Tech Industry,” by Kyle Stock, FINS Technology, 4/8/11
Krafting Success
Just be yourself. This was among the many insights shared by Kraft Foods Chairman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld at last month’s Catalyst Awards Conference. Being authentic “can help to reshape the environment on the job” by shattering stereotypes about how a leader should look and act. Whatever you do, she added, do not be a “mini-man.”
READ: “Career Pointers From Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld,” by Barbara Mannino, Fox Business, 4/7/11
Getting Unstuck
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal convened almost 200 top leaders in government, business, and academia to tackle the question why progress for women has stalled and help chart new ways to increase the numbers. Among the many solutions was a proposal to encourage companies to shift female employees from traditional support roles to jobs with an impact on the bottom-line—an area considered crucial for CEOs-in-the-making.
READ: “A Blueprint for Change,” by Rebecca Blumenstein, The Wall Street Journal, 4/11/11
Money Men
Eighty-three percent of female finance executives see an invisible barrier in corporate America that prevents their advancement to the top—and Catalyst data on the number of women in finance bear this out. Women were 15.3% of executive and senior level managers in the U.S. investment banking and securities dealing industries in 2009, the most recent year data is available. Some CEOs have worked to reverse the trend. “It’s our firm belief that all types of diversity make complete economic sense and best serve our shareholders in the long run,” said Seth Waugh, CEO of Deutsche Bank Americas. “It allows us to attract the best and the brightest …which the last time I checked is a broader universe than just Anglo-Saxon straight men.”
READ: “M&A Still Overwhelmingly a Man’s Game,” by Megan Davies and Paritosh Bansal, Reuters, 4/11/11
C This
New evidence of the recession’s toll on women has emerged—and it isn’t pretty. The latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that of the 1.3 million jobs created in the last 12 months, about 90% have gone to men. This fact—combined with the Catalyst finding that women in senior roles were three times as likely to lose their jobs during the initial months of the recession—shows the true cost of the recent economic downturn. Some “mancession” this turned out to be!
Find out more about the recession’s impact, plus other important news about women and work, in this week’s C This.
Calling it Out
Media attention to the 2010 Catalyst Census: Financial Post 500 Women Senior Officers and Top Earners is still running strong. The Census revealed deep stagnation for women’s advancement in Canada’s top companies. In this article, my colleague Deborah Gillis targeted Canadian businesses for “vastly underutilizing talented women, even though women are the engine of our economies.” She’s speaking truth to power—go Deborah!
READ: “Women’s Advances in Workplace Not Always Easy,” by Darah Hansen, Ottawa Citizen, 3/15/11
Examining the Toll
Not only have men filled 90% of all new jobs in the past year, but women continue to lose jobs at a higher rate than men. Since the official end of the recession in July 2009, men have gained 600,000 jobs while women have lost 300,000 jobs. “I think that the recession has happened in stages,” said Myra Strober, a professor of education and economics at Stanford University. “The first stage hit manufacturing hard, and that’s where men have more jobs than women do, and now the recession has moved to state and local governments where women have a higher percentage of jobs.”
WATCH: “Women Lag Behind Men in Economic Recovery,” ABC World News with Diane Sawyer, 3/21/11
Leading the Way in Israel
Unlike in the US, women hold many of the top posts in Israeli construction, manufacturing and real estate firms. The new Catalyst Census of women’s representation in Tel Aviv 100 Index companies found that the companies Gazit Inc., Ormat Industries, Shikun & Binui, and Delek Drilling each have 50% women executive officers. Companies from other industries should follow their lead. “All studies show gender diversification in management is better for companies,” noted Ofra Strauss, Chairperson of the Strauss Group, upon the Census’ release.
READ: “Israel ranks global No. 2 for female board members, at 15%,” by Oren Majar, The Marker, 3/9/11
STEM Superstars
Although women make up roughly half of the American workforce, they hold only 14% of engineering positions and 25% of mathematics positions. Among the most powerful women to bust the myth that women can’t make it in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) careers is Ursula M. Burns, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Xerox Corporation. Ursula, who will chair the 2011 Catalyst Awards Dinner next week, made Working Mothers’ list of the “Most Powerful Moms in STEM.”
READ: “Most Powerful Moms in STEM,” by Leah Bourne, Working Mother, March 2011
Striking Ground
“There are museums in Washington, D.C., for everything from postage stamps to poetry to spies,” said actress Meryl Streep. So why isn’t there a museum to memorialize women’s contribution to America? Streep is the latest celebrity to lend her voice to the creation of a National Women’s History Museum. Supporters seek to raise funds and win Congressional approval to break ground in Washington DC. The museum currently exists only online—for now.
C This
An academic paper claiming that women are underrepresented in the sciences because of the lifestyle choices they make is getting a lot of play in the media. The only problem: the authors push aside clear evidence that sexism and institutional biases are to blame. Read more about this controversial study, plus news about the glass ceiling in the UK, the benefits of diverse leadership, gender equality in revolutionary Tunisia, and the lack of paid-parental leave in the United States, in today’s C This.
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Investing in Diversity
Invest in companies that invest in women. That’s the take-away message from a recent article highlighting this year’s Catalyst Award winners: Kaiser Permanente, McDonald’s, and Time Warner. Noting how female leadership is tied to strong financial performance, the article concludes: “When seeking winners for your portfolio, companies that embrace diversity and empower all their workers are a great place to start.”
READ: “Women Execs Drive Winning Performance,” by Selena Maranjian, MotleyFool/MSNBC, 2/16/11
Show Me the Data
Researchers Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams claim in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that discrimination against women in sciences does not exist. Many disagree. Among the trove of research Ceci and Williams overlook in their paper is a 2007 landmark study, “Beyond Bias and Barriers,” which found that in sciences and engineering people are less likely to hire a woman than a man with identical qualifications, less likely to give a woman credit for identical accomplishments, and will far more often give the benefit of the doubt to a man than to a woman. “The language attributing women’s lower pay to their own lifestyle choices is seductive,” said a critic of the report, Hillary Lips, Director of the Center for Gender Studies at Radford University. According to Lips, a closer look will reveal that “the impact of discrimination is actually deeply embedded in and constrains these choices.”
We’re Number One?
At least 178 countries have national laws guaranteeing paid leave for new mothers, while more than 50 nations—including most Western countries—also guarantee paid leave for new fathers. The United States has neither. “Despite its enthusiasm about ‘family values,’ the U.S. is decades behind other countries in ensuring the well-being of working families,” said Janet Walsh, deputy director of the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch. “Being an outlier is nothing to be proud of in a case like this.”
READ: “Report Decries Lack of Paid Parental Leave in US,” Associated Press, 2/23/11
Double Up, Or Else
A Parliamentary report on gender disparity in UK boardrooms called for companies to more than double the number of women on their boards by 2015—or face government action. Today, 18 FTSE 100 companies have no women in their boardrooms and nearly half of all FTSE 250 companies do not have female directors. “Radical change is needed in the mindset of the business community if we are to implement the scale of change that is needed,” said former minister Lord Davies of Abersoch, author of the report.
READ: “Davies Report Calls for More Women in Boardroom,” BBC, 2/24/11
Women’s Revolution
Revolutions now sweeping across North Africa and the Arab world had their genesis in the example set by Tunisia. But what drove Tunisia’s successful revolution? The country’s women. “It’s no coincidence that the revolution first started in Tunisia, where we have a high level of education, a sizeable middle class and a greater degree of gender equality,” said Fatma Bouvet de la Maisonneuve, a Tunisian-born psychiatrist and author now living in Paris. “We had all the ingredients of democracy but not democracy itself. That just couldn’t last.”
READ: “Women’s Rights a Strong Point in Tunisia,” by Katrin Bennhold, The New York Times, 2/22/11
C This
In European companies, face time still rules. While half of the women surveyed in our latest report, Unwritten Rules: Why Doing a Good Job Might Not Be Enough Europe, didn’t think working long hours was important, more than 83% said doing so was still key to advancement. “Workers may be told that you can work from wherever, but when they see that those advancing are in the office a lot, then there is a disconnect,” said Laura Sabattini, Director, Research, and author of the new report. Read about one novel solution to managing a culture of presentism—plus news from Australia and Canada—in this edition of C This.
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Use ‘Em or Lose ‘Em
Is it ethical for multinational corporations to swoop into foreign countries and hire talented women who are underutilized in the workforce? Yes! “Any time you can recruit talent it offers a company a competitive advantage,” said Lee E. Miller, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. “If a country is not using its local female talent then it is in the women’s interest and the multinational’s interest to put that talent to use.”
READ: “The Gender Advantage for Multicultural Firms,” by Elizabeth Harrin, The Glass Hammer, 1/27/11
Can a well-placed jacket earn you respect in an office that over-values face time? It couldn’t hurt, insists Eleanor Tabi Haller-Jorden, Catalyst’s General Manager in Europe. Haller-Jorden told The New York Times about a little experiment conducted by a senior-level female executive in Europe. “She put her jacket on a chair and started leaving at a reasonable hour,” she said. “Yet people started coming up to her and saying she was putting in a fabulous amount of hours. She said the jacket was the best investment of €250 that she had ever made.”
READ: “The Codes That Need To Be Broken,” by Doreen Carvajal, The New York Times, 1/26/11
A 2010 World Economic Forum survey found that managers from 600 large companies believed that a “lack of role models” and “masculine or patriarchal corporate culture” were the chief obstacles women face at work. Companies across Europe have responded by shifting away from leadership and assertiveness training to instituting formal sponsorship and mentorship programs that pair women with powerful company leaders. “European companies are waking up,” said INSEAD’s Herminia Ibarra. “They are realizing that it’s really about changing the culture.”
READ: “For Women in the Workplace, an ‘Upgrade Problem,’” by Nicola Clark, The New York Times, 1/26/11
Only 3.8% of the CEOs in Canada’s top 500 businesses are women. Are quotas one possible solution? In this wide-ranging discussion featuring background information from Catalyst’s Deborah Gillis, Canadian Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette outlines a proposed bill that would force all publicly traded Canadian companies, banks, insurance companies and trust companies to ensure that at least 5% of their directors are women. Hervieux-Payette was also joined by Dave Gregory, former CEO of First Calgary Credit Union, and Amy Dittmar, Associate Professor of Finance at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
LISTEN: “Women in Boardrooms,” The Current, CBC Radio, 1/14/11
The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) now requires member companies to set and report on targets for gender diversity at board and senior management level, add diversity indicators to senior management accountabilities, and establish programs to increase the pool of female candidates. With representation of women on ASX boards now roughly only 10%, the new rules are an important step to increasing awareness and transparency. “This year will tell whether rising awareness will force more assertive leadership,” wrote Steve Harris executive director of the Centre for Leadership and Public Interest at Swinburne University.
READ: “Find Room at the Top for Women,” by Steve Harris, The Australian, 1/27/11
Edit This!
New research into who creates and consumes content on Wikipedia raises more questions than it answers. A recent study found that barely 13% of Wikipedia’s articles are written by women. The site boasts more than 3.5 million articles in English and 17 million across all languages—each written and edited anonymously. Interestingly, women and men look for information on the site at similar rates. So why do fewer women contribute? Critics allege that women are less willing to assert their opinions in public, but if you ask me, I think women are simply too busy to spend their time anonymously updating the site without receiving any credit for their hard work. What do you think is behind the wiki-gap?
C This
American accounting firms lead the way in providing flexible work arrangements. Flex policies saved Deloitte more than $45 million a year by reducing turnover, while PricewaterhouseCoopers’ estimated turnover dropped to 15 percent a year, from 24 percent. “Every night, our assets walk out the door and go home,” said James S. Turley, Ernst & Young’s CEO. “And we need to be the kind of place that they want to come back to the next day.”
If these companies can operate flex programs—even during tax season—and find it good for their bottom line, why can’t all of corporate America follow suit? More details on the benefits of flex—plus news about women in tech (or the lack thereof), gender bias in India, discrimination claims in the United States, and Canada’s top earners—in today’s C This.
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Web 2.0 Lacks Women
Facebook and Twitter have revolutionized the way we communicate, but their boards look like they’re straight out of the Ma’ Bell era. These two Web 2.0 behemoths—not to mention Foursquare, Groupon, and Zynga—do not have any women on their boards. The women are out there: Oracle and Google have two women on board, while Yahoo has three. Women rule the social web, so shouldn’t they be on the boards of the companies that serve them?
READ: “The Men and No Women of Web 2.0 Boards,” by Kara Swisher, Wall Street Journal, 12/21/11
“The Ultimate Boy’s Club”
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’s list of Canada’s 100 best-paid CEOs includes only men. The dearth of women on the list reflects the lack of female corporate leaders in Canada. In our most recent Census, Catalyst found that 19 of Canada’s top 500 businesses were run by just 16 women. According to Deborah Gillis, Vice President, Membership & Global Operations, Catalyst, Canadian companies have a lot to lose by overlooking half of the population. “This is a talent issue,” she said. “No organization wants to be playing with half the deck.”
READ: “No Women in Best-Paid CEO Club … At Least Not Yet,” by Josh Rubin, Toronto Star, 1/8/11
The Bottom Line on Workplace Flex
Accounting firms estimate that the cost of hiring and training a new employee in their industry can be 1.5 times a departing worker’s salary, so reducing turnover by 200 employees saves roughly $30 million. Workplace flexibility programs are the key to reducing turnover. “Some businesses treat flexibility as just a set of policies—if we put policies on the books, that’s all we need,” said Kathleen E. Christensen, director of workplace flex programs at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “But what you really need is to have those policies embedded in the way work is done, and that’s what a lot of accounting firms have done.”
READ: “Flex Time Flourishes in Accounting Industry,” by Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times, 1/7/11
Re-think in India
Patna High Court Chief Justice Rekha M. Doshit—the first woman to hold this office—said that laws alone cannot end gender bias in India. According to Doshit, “there are several provisions in our Constitution aimed at empowering women, but they are hardly able to make any perceptible difference in our behaviour.” What’s needed, she said, is an attitudinal change to wipe out the root causes of gender bias.
READ: “Laws Alone Cannot End Gender Bias: CJ,” by B. K. Mishra, The Times of India, 1/10/11
Discrimination Spikes, But Why?
Accusations of workplace discrimination in the United States spiked last year to 99,922 claims made to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—an increase of 7.2 percent from the previous year. The largest increase in claims came from people who said they had been discriminated against due to disability. But experts cautioned that the increase may stem from an expansion of the legal definition of “disability” or tied to more employees challenging their termination amid the recession.
C This
Catalyst’s latest Census of female leadership in the Fortune 500 and our report, Mentoring: Necessary But Insufficient for Advancement, received strong media coverage last week. Below are two clips highlighting the new research. Also in C This, new studies point to the challenges that Indian women face in the workplace, the dearth of diversity programs in American companies, and the “glass cliff” women face when getting top jobs.
Sponsors Explained
“A sponsor is somebody who is really your advocate, your champion,” said Barbara Adachi, National Managing Director for Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Human Capital practice, in this interview about Catalyst’s 2010 Census and our new study on sponsorship. “A sponsor has a stake in your success and a stake in your career,” she added.
WATCH: “What Women Need to Know to Get Ahead,” Good Morning America, ABC, 12/13/10
To Find a Sponsor
Kerrie Peraino, Chief Diversity Officer at American Express, advised women to be bold in order to find a sponsor. “It’s not enough to say, ‘I’m doing good work,’ and put your head down on your desk,” she said. “To earn sponsorship someone needs to see your work.”
Get with the Program
A new survey of human resource and talent management leaders at more than 540 U.S. companies found that 43% had no formal activities or programs aimed at developing women leaders, and only 5% had “robust” initiatives. With numbers like these, it’s no wonder that the progress of women into business leadership is stuck—and has been so for years.
READ: “Why Are There So Few Women Leaders? Companies are not Trying,” by Joanne Cleaver, BNET, 12/8/10
The Cliff
Experts call it the “glass cliff”—the precarious place high up on the corporate ladder where women are judged more harshly than men. Victoria Brescoll, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Yale University, studied the phenomenon. “Stereotyping thrives on ambiguity. Mistakes create ambiguity and call the leader’s competence into question, which, in turn, leads to a loss of status,” she explained.
READ: “On the Other Side of the Glass Ceiling, a Glass Cliff,” by Belinda Luscombe, Time, 12/8/10
Indian Ambitions
New research shows that 80 percent of Indian women want the top jobs and are prepared to work hard for them, but less than 30 percent of Indian women outside the agrarian economy are in the workplace. But, participation is likely to increase as the cultural stigmas attached to female-employment fade. “If we’re doing so well with only 30 percent of women in the work force, imagine what we’ll achieve when that goes up to 50 percent,” said Preeti Singh, a 21-year-old business management student aiming for the C-Suite.
READ: “Ambitions Meet Reality in India,” by Nilanjana S. Roy, New York Times, 12/14/10
C This
Inspiration can come from unexpected places. In a recent op-ed for CNN, Nancy M. Carter, Vice President, Research, described how her grandchildren added urgency to her career-long fight to end gender inequity. “I want my four pre-school-aged granddaughters to have every opportunity to succeed as they grow older,” she wrote. Also in C This, the latest news on how gender stereotypes can harm your chances of landing a job, the failed Paycheck Fairness Act, and an important UN treaty designed to end discrimination against women.
Busting Barriers for the Next Generation
In this CNN exclusive, Nancy M. Carter outlines the challenges for women in the business world and some solutions to closing gender pay and leadership gaps. “Women should seek out mentors and sponsors who will teach them the ‘unwritten rules’ that can supercharge a career,” she wrote.
READ: “How to Close the Gender Pay Gap,” Nancy M. Carter, CNN, 11/26/10
Fair Pay? Not Today
“Our battle is not over,” said fair-pay advocate Lilly Ledbetter following blockage of the Paycheck Fairness Act in Congress. The Act would have helped close the gender wage gap by prohibiting retaliation against workers who ask bosses about pay disparity. Women earn only 77 cents to every dollar earned by a man. “It is upsetting to me that something that would benefit everyone got caught up in politics,” Ledbetter said.
READ: “Lilly Ledbetter’s fight for equal pay goes on,” Roy L. Williams, The Birmingham News, 11/21/10
With Friends Like These…
The United States joins Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Nauru, Palau, and Tonga in steadfast refusal to support CEDAW, or the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. President Jimmy Carter signed the treaty in 1980, but Congress has yet to ratify it. “Our ratification will send a powerful and unequivocal message about our commitment to equality for women across the globe,” said U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer at a recent hearing on the important treaty.
READ: “U.S. Ratification of Women’s Treaty Subject of Senate Hearing,” womenspolicy.org, 11/19/10
An Unkind Cut
Can a positive recommendation letter spoil your chances for a job? Yes—if stereotypical terms are used. Rice University researchers reviewed 624 letters for 194 applicants for faculty positions at a U.S. university. “Communal” terms such as “helpful,” “kind,” and “sympathetic” were commonly used to describe women, while men were often labeled “confident,” “aggressive,” and “outspoken.” The more the communal terms were used, the less favorably the candidate was viewed.
READ: “Are Recommendation Letters Biased Against Women?” Paula Szuchman, The Wall Street Journal, 11/15/10
Generations at Work
Businesses that ignore generational differences in the workplace can pay a serious price. “It impacts the bottom line,” said Adwoa Buahene, a Toronto-based talent management consultant. In Canada, a growing number of companies have tailored schedules and benefit packages to suit the needs of different age groups. “If you do not have engaged employees, you have higher turnover which costs money and results in lower customer engagement,” said Bauhene.
READ: “Best companies bridge the generation gap,” Tracy Tjaden, The Globe and Mail, 11/22/10
C This
The gender gap receives attention as a serious business issue as more corporate leaders adopt programs and policies to remove barriers to advancement of women. Women are being recognized as a source of talent and future leadership, and progressive business leaders are working toward a truly level playing field. Some recent stories point to research by Catalyst and others to support these actions.
Women in Power Is a Leadership Issue
In a opinion piece in The Globe and Mail’s Time to Lead: Women in Power series, North American Vice President Deborah Gillis uses facts and research to counter the misconceptions that women have made it and that promoting women disadvantages their male colleagues. The fact is that women continue to be underrepresented at senior levels of business and in Parliament. And corporations with women at senior levels are growing their bottom line—and opportunities for all their employees.
READ: “More Women in the Workplace is Good for Business”, by Deborah Gillis, The Globe and Mail, 10/13/10
Women on Boards Correlate to Stronger Financial Performance
Corporate recruiter Janice Ellig, CEO of Chadick Ellig, cites research by McKinsey & Company and Catalyst to demonstrate effect of senior women on financial performance. “It’s not just in the boardroom, it’s at the C-Suite too. Those are the people making the decisions.”
Gender Diversity: Not Just a Woman’s Issue
Gender equality is still an issue at work, but it is not a women’s issue. Gender initiatives have traditionally focused on improving women’s participation in the workplace, but recently (in sociological terms, anyway) there has been a shift towards making “gender-“’ a gender-neutral problem.
Powerful Women Make Mistakes—and Make the Most of Them
Moira Forbes blogs about the similarities between an effervescent seven-year- old’s “awesome” pink cast and the lessons some powerful women have learned from apparent setbacks.
READ: “What Do Highly Successful Women and 7-Year-Olds Have in Common? by Moira Forbes, Forbes, 10/12/10
C This
Where are the women of Wall Street? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 141,000 women—roughly 2.6% of female workers in finance—left the U.S. financial industry during the past decade. The drop suggests that women bore the brunt of the layoffs in the recent recession—a finding that dovetails with our discovery that women were three times more likely than men to lose their jobs during the recent recession. For more on this trend, plus the latest news on women and work, read on.
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Fruit of Life
Educate a woman…and save a life. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation estimates that increased education of women in 2009 prevented the deaths of 4 million children. How? Educated women are more likely to take their children to the doctor, seek preventative care, and create hygienic conditions in their homes.
READ: “Educating Women Saves Kids’ Lives,” by Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon, 9/17/10
Women on Wall Street
Brokerage firms, asset-management companies, and investment banks are losing women, especially young women, in droves. The number of women aged 20 to 35 working in the finance sector dropped 16.5% this past decade, while the number of men in that age group grew by 7.3%. Is sexism to blame? While industry-wide rates of sexual-discrimination charges dropped from 2000 to 2009, Meghan Muntean, formerly of Lehman Brothers, observed that “very subtle” sexist slights by male colleagues manifested in reduced bonuses for her female colleagues.
READ: “Ranks of Women on Wall Street Thin,” by Kyle Stock, The Wall Street Journal, 9/20/10
Head of the Class
For the first time, more women earned Ph.D. degrees this year than men. During the 2008/2009 academic year, 28,962 Ph.D.s went to women compared to 28,469 to men. While a milestone, I’ll hold off celebrating until we close the pay gap in academia. Men still earn more than women at every level of academic rank.
Heading UN Women
Michelle Bachelet, the first woman elected president of Chile, will head UN Women—the new UN office tasked with advancing gender equality worldwide. “We have to make sure that women’s issues are an essential element on the agendas of all heads of state, all governments,” said Bachelet following the announcement.
READ: “Former Chilean President to Lead New U.N. Agency,” by Neil MacFarquhar, The New York Times, 9/14/10
Sexism Found
The New Agenda, a women’s advocacy group, seeks to boost women leadership and expose the sexism and misogyny that pervades popular culture. In this video, New Agenda President Amy Siskind discovers that more than half of the people she spoke with in Hudson, NY, could not define sexism—and 1 in 3 thought some women deserve sexist treatment.
WATCH: “Searching for Sexism: Episode 1,” The New Agenda, 9/15/10
C This
A little-noticed provision in new U.S. legislation requires all federal financial agencies and firms to establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion to boost diversity. Banks and firms that fail to diversify their ranks do so at their own peril. According to the rule, failure to make “a good-faith effort to include minorities and women in their workforce” can result in cancelled government contracts. More on this ground-breaking provision in today’s C This.
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Laying Down the Law
Championed by California Democrat Maxine Waters, a powerful provision within U.S. financial reform legislation will hold federal agencies responsible for failing to diversify. “Firms must take steps to be more reflective of America,” said Michael Yaki of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “This is a wake-up call for Wall Street.”
Stop, Think, Act
“Would I want my daughters working here?” It’s a simple question, but it stops many men in their tracks. “If the answer is no, then you should own part of the solution,” insists Deloitte’s Ann Weisberg.
CEOs Speak
What traits do more than 300 CEOS from 40 countries have in common? Researcher Robert Rosen endeavored to find out.
READ: “The Secret to Leadership Success,” by Harvey Schachter, The Globe and Mail, 8/9/10
A Deadly Figure
Since the start of this year, The New York Times has published 698 obituaries— and only 92 were of women. This statistic made Fast Company magazine cofounder Bill Taylor wonder “about who deserves such recognition in the first place, and what their stories might suggest about a life well-lived.”
READ: “The New York Times Is Dead Wrong,” by Bill Taylor, Harvard Business Review, 9/2/10
No Trend Here
New market research has found that single, childless women aged 22 to 30 earn, on average, 8% more than their male counterparts in many U.S. cities. Is this a cause for celebration? Not so fast. “This small slice of data is unlikely to be indicative of a larger, penetrating trend,” wrote DailyFinance’s Melly Alazraki.
READ: “Young Single Women Now Earn More Than Men,” by Melly Alazraki, Daily Finance, 9/1/10
