Month: June 2017

Help Women Work to Bolster Our Economy

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Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve, keeps a close eye on the United States economy. One of the concerns of the Federal Reserve since the Great Recession (officially 2007–2009) has been the sluggish rate of overall economic growth in the United States, which impacts the well-being of all of us. In a recent speech, reported by Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times, Chair Yellen said that policies making it easier for women to work could significantly improve the nation’s economic growth. She suggests three policy areas that would make it easier for women to participate in the labor market:

  • Expand the availability of paid leave.
  • Make affordable child care available.
  • Make flexible work schedules more available.
Yellen notes that raising women’s participation in the workforce to the same level as men’s could increase annual economic output by 5 percent. The fact is that, since the early 1990s, women’s level of participation in the workforce has been falling in the United States. Appelbaum notes that a recent study by Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn, both of Cornell University, found that the United States has fallen to seventeenth place out of twenty-two developed nations in women’s workplace participation. The researchers attribute the decline in workforce participation by women to a lack of government policies. They suggest that the United States should adopt European policies on paid leave and affordable child care to close the employment gap. Yellen noted in her speech that we are squandering “the potential of many of our citizens and (will) incur substantial loss to the productive capacity of our economy” if we do not make it easier for women to work. Why don’t we have the same level of government support for working women and men in the United States as is available in Europe? Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times  notes that while Americans agree that paid family leave should be available to workers to take care of a new baby or a sick family member, we cannot agree on who should pay for it, or whether it should be mandatory or voluntary. Miller cites a recent Pew Foundation report showing that 94 percent of Americans say paid leave would help families, 65 percent say that paid leave would help the economy, and 67–87 percent support paid leave being available. However, Miller notes that Americans are torn about gender roles and also about whether paid leave should be a government mandate or offered voluntarily by businesses. She notes that
  • Some Americans feel a massive distrust of mandatory government policies; 69 percent of Democrats support a government mandate for paid leave, while only 33 percent of Republicans do.
  • US culture shows deep ambivalence about gender roles; a majority of Republicans feel it is not in the best interest of families for women to work outside of the home.
Unfortunately, the people who most need to work are the most affected by the lack of government policies that support working families. Low-income workers (including women, blacks, Hispanics, and those without a college degree) are often thrown into poverty when a baby is born or a family member is ill and the worker must take time off. Workers lose income and also can lose their jobs. Workers, families, and our economy will all benefit from mandated family leave and the availability of affordable child care. The United States is the only industrialized country that does not mandate paid leave. Shame on us. We must find the will to do this for the greater good. What are your thoughts?   Photo courtesy of Katrinaelsl. CC by-nd 2.0]]>

Insights from New Research on the Gender Wage Gap

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My niece just had a baby and is worried about being paid less than her male peers. She is an engineer with solid work experience on her resume, and she intends to return to work full time. She wants answers from me about how to avoid becoming a victim of the gender wage gap. Unfortunately, new research reported by Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times reinforces that, as a new mother in her late twenties with a college degree and a professional career, she is poised to become a wage gap statistic. I don’t know what to tell her about how to avoid this. Because most companies keep salary data secret, she will probably only be able to suspect unfair treatment but will not be able to prove it. The odds, and statistics, are stacked against her. Miller reports on two new studies on the gender wage gap that sharpen our understanding of what is happening to women’s pay, when it’s happening, and why. The studies, conducted by Sari Kerr of Wellesley College in collaboration with several female colleagues at other universities, combine two databases from the Census Bureau on private sector companies that reveal fresh nuances in the gender wage gap picture:

  • The gender wage gap is wider for college-educated women than for those with no college degree and occurs between the ages of twenty-four and forty-five.
  • College-educated women make 90 percent as much as men their age at twenty-five, but only 55 percent as much by the age of forty-five.
  • Men with college degrees get significant pay increases when they change jobs during those years. When married women change jobs, they are less likely to get big pay increases.
  • Miller cites Kerr as explaining that the bulk of the pay gap, accounting for fully 73 percent of the gap, is from “women not getting raises and promotions at the same rate as men within companies. Seniority and experience seem to pay off much more for men than women.”
  • The wage gap is not as wide for women without college degrees. The gap for this group is 28 percent instead of 55 percent because there are fewer high paying jobs available for men without college degrees to create the larger gap.
Why does the wage gap happen? Miller cites Kerr’s report to explain:
  • High-paying jobs requiring college degrees place more value on long, inflexible hours and face time. Because studies show that the division of labor at home is still unequal, even when both spouses work full time, women’s careers tend to suffer.
  • Women are more likely to give up job opportunities in favor of their husband’s job.
  • Even when women continue to work full time after having children, employers pay them less because they assume women are less committed.
  • When mothers cut back on their hours, their pay is disproportionately cut.
What can be done to achieve pay equity? Miller suggests some workplace and policy changes needed to break the wage gap cycle:
  • Companies can put less priority on long hours and face time in the office and reward results instead.
  • Government-subsidized child care can make it possible for both parents to balance the demands of career and family.
  • Companies should offer moderate-length parental leave for both women and men. (While my niece received a three-month maternity leave, her husband’s company allowed only three days for paternity leave.)
  • Companies need to be transparent about salary data.
I wish I had specific guidance to offer my niece, but I don’t. We are all going to have to continue to push for policy changes that will make equity possible. In the meantime, I hope she keeps fighting for fairness and does not get discouraged. What suggestions do you have for young women who want pay equity? Photo courtesy of Skeddy in NYC. CC by 2.0  ]]>

Male CEOs with Daughters Are More Socially Responsible Leaders

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I just came across an interesting new study, reported in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), showing that companies run by male executives with female children rated higher on measures of corporate social responsibility (CSR), defined as “measures of diversity, employee relations, and environmental stewardship,” than is true for comparable companies led by men with no daughters.  This means that male CEOs with daughters spend significantly more net income on CSR priorities than is true for other companies (unless the CEO is a woman, but more on this later). Alison Beard, writing for HBR, reports on this research by Henrik Cronqvist of the University of Miami and Frank Yu of China Europe International Business School, who examined the CSR ratings of S&P 500 companies tracked between 1992 and 2012 and compared the CSR ratings for male executives with male and female offspring.  Beard notes that other researchers have found similar results on voting records for US congressmen who have daughters and for the decisions of US Court of Appeals judges with daughters.  Here are some of the findings:

  • Male CEOs with daughters spend significantly more net income on CSR than the median. Cronqvist and Yu explain that the literature in economics, psychology, and sociology support the notion that “women tend to care more about the well-being of other people and of society than men do, and that female children can increase those sympathies in their parents.” They hypothesize that because the median age of S&P 500 CEOs in the research sample was fifty-seven, these male CEOs may have seen their daughters discriminated against in the workplace and become sensitized to issues of inequality.
  • Male CEOs with only sons did not spend more on CSR.
  • Male CEOs with female spouses and no daughters did not spend more on CSR.
  • Research from Yale University by Eboyna Washington shows that US congressmen with daughters tend to vote more liberally, especially for legislation involving reproductive rights.
  • Beard reports on research by Adam Glynn of Emory and Maya Sen of Harvard that found similar patters among US Court of Appeals judges in cases involving gender issues.
As for female CEOs, Cronqvist and Yu had only a small sample of them available in their study, so they could not draw firm conclusions.  They did make these interesting observations that are worth noting:
  • The companies in their sample with female CEOs had much stronger CSR ratings in every category—diversity, employee relations, environment, product, human rights, and community—than did those of the male-led companies.
  • The researchers calculate that a male CEO with a daughter produces “slightly less than a third of the effect of having a female CEO. Comparisons of the data on congressmen and judges yield similar numbers.”  They conclude that “any man behaves one-third more ‘female’ when he parents a girl.”
These findings add to the growing body of research showing that gender does influence the decisions of leaders, legislators, judges, and other decision makers, in one way or another.  Doesn’t it make sense to have more gender-balanced representation in all decision-making arenas? Photo courtesy of Ruben Diaz, Jr.. CC by-nd 2.0]]>

How We Can Stop Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

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Women, for the most part, just want sexual harassment to stop when it happens. But, as Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times reports, women (and it is mostly women who are harassed) rarely report sexual harassment for good reasons: fear of retaliation that can take the form of hostility from supervisors, bad references, or loss of opportunity when labeled as a “troublemaker.”  This is not a small problem for women.  Miller reports that an analysis of fifty-five surveys shows that close to 50 percent of women have experienced sexual harassment, but only one-fourth to one-third of people who have been harassed report it to a supervisor or a union representative.  Only 2 percent to 13 percent file a formal complaint. Miller notes that official harassment policies and grievance procedures are often designed primarily to protect the organization from lawsuits—not to protect the employees.  Susan Fowler, a former Uber employee, and Ellen Pao, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, are both at the center of high profile cases where women who reported sexual harassment were not protected by their companies. Noam Scheiber of the New York Times also explains that anonymous hotlines are ineffective, another example of how grievance procedures that should protect employees do not.  Scheiber describes several instances where anonymous hotlines were actually used to suppress allegations of sexual harassment rather than dealing with them.  These hotlines often exist in obscurity to insulate the organization from legal liability, and employees never know they exist. This was found to be the case at Fox News when the O’Reilly case recently came to light. Claire Cain Miller points out that it is not policies, HR departments or training sessions that prevent sexual harassment—it is an organizational culture where, top down, sexual harassment is really not tolerated.  Miller offers some steps that organizations can take, drawn from recommendations by commissions and researchers, to ensure that employees are protected and can safely report sexual harassment:

  • Authorize dozens of employees throughout the organization to receive complaints
  • Hire an ombudsman
  • Promote more women to positions of power
  • Train people in how to be civil and how to speak up as bystanders—and be sure that senior managers attend the trainings
  • Put in proportional consequences for offenses so that low-grade instances can be handled with conversations rather than firing
Bryce Covert adds that we are all losing when sexual harassment is hidden and does not come to light.  For this reason, he adds this additional recommendation to the list of changes needed to prevent and stop sexual harassment:
  • Eliminate arbitration clauses in contracts, which almost always favor employers, and eliminate nondisclosure agreements when settlements are made
Sexual harassment will continue to be pervasive unless organizations start to really care about protecting their employees.  We must all continue to speak out in whatever forums we have available to us to insist on workplaces that are free of sexual harassment and other demeaning behavior.   Photo courtesy of Tony Webster. CC by-sa 2.0]]>