Tag Archives: Working Women

Working Women

How Parents can Limit Girls’ Leadership and Achievement Potential

Leave a reply

Forbes Woman observed that seven parenting and teaching practices may still persist, and have been shown to limit girls’ potential for achievement in school and sports.

These practices can lay the foundation for unchallenged assumptions that may continue to limit their potential to advance in workplace leadership roles.

1. Teach her to be polite and quiet without skills to be proactive and assertive

2. Buy her gender-specific toys

3. Focus on her appearance more than her accomplishments

4. Give in to the allure of the ”princess cult”

5. Assign her father or male caretaker all the physical tasks around the house

6. Limit most of her social contract to other girls

7. Criticize your own body, and/or women’s bodies

-*How do you help girls develop leadership and achievement skills they will need in the next decade and beyond?

LinkedIn Open Group – Leadership Think Tank
Twitter: @kathrynwelds
Google+
Facebook Notes:
Blog: – Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary

©Kathryn Welds

Work-Life Balance – “Getting to 50/50”

Leave a reply
Sharon Meers

Sharon Meers

Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober are professionals with demanding careers in addition to their responsibilities as wives and parents.

Their book, Getting to 50/50: How Working Couples Can Have It All by Sharing It All, presents an action plan for couples to negotiate work-life balance (“have it all”), through equal participation so both partners “win.”

Joanna Strober

Joanna Strober

Many will question the feasibility and desirability of “having it all,” but the book’s practical suggestions on managing the sometimes conflicting demands of job, child-care, home-life, couple-relationship, and extended family responsibilities have been well-received by both men and women.

Meers and Strober conducted interviews with parents and employers, surveys with working mothers, and a comprehensive review of current social science research to conclude that children and parents benefit from equal partnership: Mothers work with less guilt, fathers bond more with their kids, and children have attention from two involved parents.

In addition to the tactical suggestions, Meers and Strober acknowledge that the foundation of this social change is based on acting on a new model of equal participation, and advocating for this model in the workplace and in social contexts.

-*What actions have helped you move toward “50/50”?

LinkedIn Open Group – Brazen Careerist
Twitter: @kathrynwelds
Google+
Facebook Notes:
Blog: – Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary

©Kathryn Welds

White Men can Lead in Improving Workplace Culture

5 Replies

Catalyst’s recent research study of employees at Rockwell Automation, Calling All White Men: Can Training Help Create Inclusive Workplaces?, found that white men who participate in leadership development training, modify their workplace attitudes and behavior to enable career advancement for women and minorities.
The study found that Rockwell employees who participated in leadership training labs presented by White Men as Full Diversity Partners:

• Reported increased in workplace civility and decreased gossip, attributable in part to improved communication and respect

• Managers were more likely to acknowledge that inequities exist in career advancement opportunities and practices for women and racial/ethnic minorities

• Managers increased five inclusion behaviors, including seeking out varied perspectives to becoming more direct in addressing emotionally charged matters

• Managers with few prior cross-racial relationships reported most change in thinking about issues and opportunities for different demographic groups

• Managers who reported least concern about appearing prejudiced reported most change in taking personal responsibility for being inclusive following the leadership training lab.

As in any civil rights transition, change adoption is increased when representative of the often privileges “majority” articulate the issue and present a call-to-action for change.

-*How have you seen men improve the culture in your workplace?

LinkedIn Open Group – Diversity
Twitter @kathrynwelds
Google+
Facebook Notes:
Blog: – Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary

©Kathryn Welds

“The Motherhood Penalty” in the Workplace

2 Replies

Myra Strober

Myra Strober, Labor Economist at Stanford University and Founder of Clayman Center for Gender Research, argues that women who are mothers are at an economic disadvantage in the workplace.
TED Talk

She found that they are less likely to be hired, are offered lower salaries, and are perceived as being less committed to a job than fathers or women without children, according to a recent study by Stanford sociologist Shelley Correll.

Shelley Correll

Strober and Correll discuss costs of child care (day care as well as nannies), as well as the cost of lost wages for the time that women leave the workplace to serve as primary caregivers to children.

-*What career impacts have you observed among employees with parenting responsibilities?

©Kathryn Welds

Women’s Post-Business School Work-Life Issues

2 Replies

Claudia Goldin

Harvard Business School’s Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz showed the high price women pay if they choose careers in finance

Goldin and Katz’s survey of 6,500 Harvard and Radcliffe graduates from 1969 and 1992, found that women who had earned an M.B.A. were less likely to be employed and have children (30%) at their fifteenth class reunion than were female who earned M.D. degrees (45%).

Lawrence Katz

They concluded that female M.B.A.s with children select professions with shorter hours, compared to their male peers with children and childless peers of both genders.

The financial impact of this choice is significant: Goldin and Katz found that even after correcting for the amount of time out of work, female M.B.A.s who took a year and a half off made 41 percent less than their counterparts who had worked continuously.
The pay gap was somewhat less for J.D.s (29 percent) and M.D.s (16 percent).

Marianne Bertrand

Goldin and Katz collaborated with University of Chicago economist Marianne Bertrand on another survey of 2,500 male and female University of Chicago M.B.A.s graduating between 1990 and 2006, considered women M.B.A.s involvement in finance roles.

They found that only 8 percent of respondents working in venture capital were women, half the rate of women in investment banking.
In contrast, 59 percent worked in advertising and 71 percent held roles in human resources.

Again, this choice has a significant financial impact for women: Nine years after graduating, the Chicago M.B.A.s working in investment banking (both male and female) were making, on average, $700,000 a year (median was $470,000), compared to an average income for all respondents of $370,000 (median was $190,000).

Occupations with the highest numbers of men also had the highest average number of hours worked, with investment banking averaging 74 hours a week, and consulting averaging 61 hours per week.

In contrast, occupations with the highest numbers of women had the shortest hours: Human resources averaged 51 hours per week and advertising averaged 52 hours a week.
These occupations tend to have lower average pay in addition to requiring fewer average hours of work.

This trend was replicated in medical specialties, in which those with shorter and more predictable hours tend to have more females.
Women now make up 41 percent of new M.D.s in the U.S., but fewer than 30 percent of physicians under the age of 35 practice emergency medicine or general surgery, but 70 percent of gynecologists and nearly 60 percent of dermatologists in the same age cohort are women.

These studies demonstrate the relationship between income, hours worked, and gender-based occupational role choice.

LinkedIn Open Group – Diversity:
Twitter: @kathrynwelds
Google+
Blog: – Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary
Facebook Notes:

©Kathryn Welds

Women Don’t Ask for Raises or Promotions as Often as Men

12 Replies
Linda Babcock

Linda Babcock

Linda Babcock‘s 2011 research at Carnegie-Mellon University identified one possible reason for the oft-reported pay gap between genders: Women don’t ask for raises as often as men
They wait to be offered a salary increase, a promotion, to be assigned the task or team or job that they want.

Researchers note that this type of unsolicited offer rarely occurs.
The study found that when women do ask, it can lead to others finding them “too demanding and aggressive.”

This trend was demonstrated when researchers showed people videos of a man and a woman each asking for a raise, following the same script.
Viewers of both genders reported similar negative perceptions of women who requested promotion.

The study reviewed approaches to help women improve their negotiation skills without challenging “preconceived notions about appropriate gender behavior.”

Some critics note that this analysis doesn’t consider larger scale inclusion and diversity interventions, such as resources offered by NCWIT.org to guide design and launch of merit-based systems for hiring, promoting, and managing women and other underrepresented groups.

–*How likely are you to ask for a salary increase or promotion?
-*What factors do you consider before making a request for more more or an expanded role?

©Kathryn Welds