Posts Tagged ‘New York Times’
Starts With You
A 2010 New York Times headline posed the question: “Why take our children to work?”
Amid criticism of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day’s purpose and a decline in participation among some school districts, many parents have no doubt asked themselves the same thing as Thursday, April 28, nears in the U.S. But, the day’s importance has never been greater.
Women lag men in the workplace in pay and promotions—and remain a minority in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. But by taking our children to work, we can inspire them to achieve anything, regardless of gender. It’s all about boys seeing women at work in all types of roles—not just stereotypic women’s positions—and for girls to see role models they can aspire to become.
The program was initially called “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” in 1993—a time when women were given even fewer chances to advance in business—but was expanded to include “our sons” in 2003. Girls today are still bombarded by images that narrow their vision of what they should and should not do when they grow up. This is why the program is still so valuable and why many companies participate.
Last year, for example, GE hosted an official event to mark the day where 176 children learned about nanotechnology, slow-motion photography, glass blowing, sign engraving, and even firefighting! This video, filmed by a parent whose daughter participated, sums up the power of the day to shape and influence young minds.
Bringing your child to work can spark new thoughts about their future. This can impact the choices they make at school and later in life as they enter the business world. Along the way, it can influence the choices of the people around them.
You are a powerful role model for the next generation of girls and boys. This Thursday, show them that they can be anything they want to be. The future is theirs—but it starts with you.
And the Winners Are…
On March 18, 1976, Catalyst held our first-ever Awards Dinner at The Waldorf=Astoria Hotel in New York City to honor women board directors who supported Catalyst’s mission. Reflecting the mindset of the time, a 1979 New York Times article in the Family/Style section highlighted that year’s winners’ “conservatively styled long-sleeved evening dresses, a minimum amount of makeup and simple pageboy hairdos.”
Catalyst was expanding opportunities for women and business at a time when many believed that women had little to bring to the table of business leadership. Year after year, our Awards have been a platform for the change-makers destroying this myth.
And the 2011 Awards are no exception.
Kaiser Permanente, McDonald’s, and Time Warner drive change in the workplace through initiatives that value women’s talents, perspectives, and leadership skills. Their powerful initiatives are transforming business culture—benefitting employees, families, communities, the economy and society along the way.
So please join me in congratulating this year’s inspiring Award-winners—bravo, brava!
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
Numbers Game
Read the research—the numbers tell the whole story.
A lot of ink has been spilled over a recent New York Times article which argued that childless women had careers that tracked men’s. “Women do almost as well as men today, as long as they don’t have children,” a Columbia University professor told the Times.
The article hinged on a recent study of M.B.A. grads from the University of Chicago that probed “women’s underperformance in the corporate and financial sectors.” But what did this report really show?
The authors found a vast wage gap exists between women and men. According to the report, women earn $115,000 on average at graduation and $250,000 nine years out, while men earn $130,000 and $400,000, respectively. “Mean earnings by sex are comparable directly following M.B.A. receipt,” they wrote, “but they soon diverge.”
How’s that for an understatement? Their “comparable” earnings are a $15,000 difference. I’m not sure about you, but I’d be pretty ticked at making $15k less just because I’m a woman.
Was this dramatic finding headline news? Nope.
Instead, media coverage fixated on a detail buried deep into the report. On page 243, the authors’ state:
“Limiting the sample further to women without children, and with no career interruptions by 10 years out, makes the career paths of the women in the sample similar to those of men. For that comparison, the gender earning gap starts out slightly larger than for all women, but grows less rapidly.”
This suggests that for women without children, there’s still a gap at the start of their career after business school, and the gap still grows over time—albeit less quickly than it does for women with kids or who have taken time off.
Not really breaking news, is it? Catalyst actually reached a similar conclusion in Pipeline’s Broken Promise, which found that even among women and men without children, women still started behind men and the gap still grew over time.
The original New York Times article is accurate in saying there’s a bigger penalty for women who have kids and/or take time off (which isn’t surprising), but was misleading in suggesting to the reader that women without kids will face a level playing field with equal pay. The numbers are clear: Women are paid less than their male colleagues. They don’t call it a gender wage gap for nothing.
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