Catalyst Blog

Be assertive, focus on objectives, and stay online as much as possible. These are three helpful tips for virtual workers drawn from a recent study on remote work. Researchers found that most women would prefer to work remotely at least three days per week. Our philosophy at Catalyst is simple: if you can get the work done, it doesn’t matter where you do it. It’s heartening to see so many women recognizing the same thing—now it’s up to more companies to take heed as well.

Read more about the remote work survey, and other news, in today’s C This.

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Fibbing to the Top?

Men’s capacity to exaggerate previous performance may play an important role in creating gender gaps. When asked in a recent study how they scored on a test taken one year prior, men rated their performance about 30% higher than it actually was, while women ranked their performance about 15% higher. Managers should take note that men tend to exaggerate. According to researcher Ernesto Reuben, the findings call for “more sophistication on the part of hiring committees and recruiters to understand there are gender differences in how people evaluate themselves.”

READ: “Is Cockiness a Man’s C-Suite Edge?” CFO World, 12/18/12

Pradhan Power

The power of roles models is profound. An MIT study in India found that towns with without female village leaders, or pradhan, experience deep gender gaps, while villages with female pradhan have virtually no gaps. For example, boys are 6 percent more likely to attend school and 4 percent more likely to be literate in villages with male-only pradhan. But in places that have had a female pradhan for at least two terms in office, that gap disappears.

READ: “Leading by Example,” MIT News, 1/13/11

Fueling Growth

With a projected annual GDP growth of 7 percent, Indian companies need all the talent they can get. Yet women make up only 36 percent of the Indian labor force. In this interview, I explain why women are vital to the country’s sustained economic growth, and how corporations can work towards advancing more women into leadership.

READ: “India Has Pressing Need for More Women at the Workplace,” Economic Times, 1/17/11

Working @ Home

A recent survey by Microsoft Office 365 and 85 Broads found that women would prefer to work remotely an average of 3.1 days per week. In this so-called “blended” remote setup, employees work from home a few days a week, then step into the office the other days. Respondents said that this arrangement leads to better work/life balance. From my experience at Catalyst—an organization where many work on fully virtual or “blended” schedules—I couldn’t agree more.

READ: “Women Finding Balance in Remote Work Arrangements,” Forbes, 1/17/11

Looking Towards the Future

Economic gains and political power are two sides of the same coin of women’s advancement.  Fortunately, 2012 promises to be a year for making strides on both fronts, as record numbers of women run for United States Senate seats and the number of companies launching programs to advance women hit a critical mass.

READ: “High Hopes 2012 Will Be a Good Year for Women,” The New York Times, 1/10/11

UPDATE: Disappointing news: the Paycheck Fairness Act stalled on Capitol Hill. Below is our official statement:

Catalyst’s Statement on Blockage of Paycheck Fairness Act in US Senate

A crucial bill targeting the gender pay gap in the United States was blocked today as too few senators voted to move forward with the legislation. Among other remedies, the Paycheck Fairness Act would have required employers to provide an explanation for wage differences between women and men doing the same type of work. Today, women working full-time and year round are paid 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. This harms women, their families and American business. The Act’s blockage represents a defeat for this nation’s working women, and our economy.

The gender pay gap will persist in the United States until 2058 if we fail to act. Equality—and equity—can’t wait.

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(Original Post)

What will the world look like in the next 50 years? It will be filled with helper-robots, flying cars, quantum computers—oh, and one more thing—gender pay gaps!

Technologies keep marching forward, but companies do not. Today, women earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. And the rate of change is glacially slow: less than half a cent a year. At this pace, it will take until 2058 for full-time wages between women and men to be equal.

Who’s got 48 years to wait for equality?

A 23-cent-a-dollar difference today adds up over the span of a career. Over 40 years, a woman in the United States will lose an average of $431,000 in pay. This is money that could be spent on doctor’s visits, tuition fees, cars, and just about anything that keeps us healthy and happy and our economy ticking.

The stakes are high—that’s why Congress must pass the Paycheck Fairness Act when it comes up for a vote in Congress later this month.

Critics claim that the Equal Pay Act of 1963 gives women enough protection from wage discrimination. When this law was passed, full-time working women made 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Forty-seven years later, the gap closed by only 18 cents! Does this law seem effective to you?

The Equal Pay Act has loopholes big enough to drive trucks through, and the Paycheck Fairness Act plugs them. The new act would require employers to provide an explanation for wage differences between women and men doing the same type of work, ensure that women can obtain the same legal remedies as those subject to racial or ethnic discrimination, bolster the federal collection of wage data, and prohibit retaliation against workers who ask bosses about their wages.

Pay gaps should be a thing of the past, not an everyday reality for ourselves, our children and grandchildren. Too much is at stake. The Paycheck Fairness Act was already approved by the House, and the Senate is poised to act on it as soon as November 17, 2010.

Here is Catalyst’s statement on the bill—please support all efforts to get it passed!

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Cross-posted in The Huffington Post

The number of women in Congress has gone down in 2010 for the first time in 30 years despite a record number of women who ran for the House and Senate. Gender stereotyping is behind the decline.

“It’s always been tougher for women to get elected in a tough economy because voters tend to think women aren’t as good on the economy,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “They don’t want to take risks in a bad economy, and they perceive women as being riskier.”

Catalyst has found that gender stereotyping is rampant in corporate America, too, where women are deemed “too soft, too tough and never just right.” We call it the “double bind.”  As I discussed in Monday’s post, when women act in ways consistent with gender stereotypes, they are viewed as incompetent. When they behave in ways that aren’t consistent with stereotypes, they are considered unfeminine. It’s a lose-lose situation.

It shouldn’t be. The first female Congresswoman served in 1922—it’s hard to believe that nearly 90 years later we are still maligned based on gender when seeking, or serving in, public office.

But when you combine the “double-bind” with media that is hostile to female candidates, it’s no surprise that in America men are nearly twice as likely as women to seriously consider running for state-level office and 65 percent more likely than women to assess themselves as “very qualified” to run. Sexist attacks reinforce negative stereotypes and can contribute to a climate that keeps women from entering politics.

A Catalyzing reader asked me how we can change the toxic conversation into something more productive. A recent study found that gender-based attacks damage women candidates in the polls, but the damage could be lessened by addressing sexism head-on.  The same is true at work. To escape the “double bind,” Catalyst advises women to talk openly about the issue—whether it is an inappropriate comment or a statement that unfairly generalizes about women’s abilities.

What helps is to bring stereotyping out in the open—expose it when you see it.

Look at the money in your wallet. Consider the name of the street you live on. Think about the great monuments in Washington, D.C., or your favorite Hollywood director.

Chances are you’re thinking about men.

Women make up 47% of the non-farm U.S. workforce and 50.7% of the U.S. population, but we are absent from the symbols, icons, images and voices that fill our world. I call it The Invisible Woman phenomenon. And it’s pervasive.

Only one of the 45 major monuments in Washington D.C. honors women, and women make up only nine out of the 100 statues in National Statuary Hall. About 7% of traffic circles in D.C. are named after women, a trend representative of street names nationwide. Only 21% of U.S. postage stamps produced from 2000 to 2009 feature an image of a woman. And all U.S. paper money features men.

The invisible woman phenomenon is not just about statues and coins. The phenomenon includes disparities across politics, media and arts. Women hold 16.8% of seats in the U.S. Congress, while less than 20 female world leaders are in power. Women hold only 3% of positions of clout in mainstream media. Less than 10% of TV sports coverage in the United States is devoted to female athletes. And of the 250 top-grossing movies produced last year, 7% were directed by women. And that’s just a small sampling.

So what’s the deal?

We have inherited a legacy of male-dominated monuments and street names, a by-product of thinking women had less to contribute to society than men. And ingrained biases persist. These shadows of the past still permeate our lives. They need to be replaced.

We tell our children that they can be anything they want to be, but The Invisible Woman phenomenon narrows their vision. Our sons need to see women out there if they are to embrace a culture where everyone is valued when they grow up. And if all our daughters see and hear is men, what does this tell them about themselves and their position in the world?

Women must be visible. Everywhere.