Month: September 2018

The Pregnant Prime Minister and Other Working Moms

by

Many young women feel they must choose between pursuing a career and having children. While support is (slowly) growing for paid family leave and employer-supported day care, only a few role models exist of women in senior leadership roles who are also new mothers. Some recent examples provide inspiration for both women and men. Charlotte Graham-McLay of the New York Times reports that Prime Minister Jacinda Arden of New Zealand recently became only the second world leader to give birth while in office (Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan was the first in 1990). While Prime Minister Arden acknowledged that she is privileged to have a partner who will be a stay-at-home parent, she also speaks openly about how her dual responsibilities as a leader and a parent still require a balancing act. “And there is guilt behind every door,” she explains. Her hope is that one day women will be able to feel satisfied with making choices and doing the best they can in both the workplace and the family without guilt. Prime Minister Arden notes that seeing women who are both leaders and new parents is still unusual, but she predicts that one day this situation will become normal. In fact, in the New Zealand Parliament, at least five lawmakers returned to work after the most recent elections as parents of babies under a year old. In the United States, Senator Tammy Duckworth became the first senator to deliver a baby while in office in April 2018, forcing changes in senate rules that previously did not allow children in the senate chamber. Another example of a new mother forging pathways is Rebecca Slaughter, a newly appointed Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commissioner—one of the nation’s top business regulators in Washington, DC. Cecilia Kang of the New York Times reports that Slaughter, who gave birth to her third child on the day of her nomination to the FTC, brings her nursing baby to work. Slaughter shares that while she is tired, she cares deeply about her career and her family and it feels worth it to navigate the two. None of the senior leaders in these examples say that having a new baby and a career is easy, but they stress that certain adaptations can help, like cutting back on business travel and evening networking events. Kang reports that the male colleagues of Slaughter say that her decision to continue working with the baby helps all working parents. What has worked for you?   Photo by Sai De Silva on Unsplash]]>

Girls Do More Chores and Get Paid Less: The Gender Gap Starts Early

by

Can it really be that a source of the stubborn gender wage gap in the workplace is how girls and boys are treated at home? Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times reports new research that supports this idea. What has the treatment of children in the home got to do with adults in the workplace? Researchers agree that one big reason for the gender pay gap is that because women often carry a bigger share of the responsibility for home maintenance and childcare, they may work fewer hours for some part of their career and fall behind men in pay and career advancement. Miller cites researchers as explaining that “achieving equality . . . will require not just preparing girls for paid work, but also teaching boys to do unpaid work.” The roles children play in the home growing up shape the roles they take as adults. Miller reports new studies that show “girls still spend more time on household chores. They are also paid less than boys for doing chores and have smaller allowances.” The gender pay gap, and the gaps in responsibility for housework start early. Here are some of the findings reported by Miller from these new research studies:

  • One study found that boys ages 15 to 19 do about half an hour of housework a day while girls do about forty-five minutes. Housework is defined as cooking, cleaning, pet care, yard care, and home and car maintenance.
  • Another study based on American Time Use Survey diaries between 2003 and 2014 of 6,358 high school students aged 15 to 19 found differences based on the education level of parents. College-educated parents expected daughters to spend slightly less time on chores than do parents with a high school education. Both sets of parents expect girls to spend more time than boys overall, and expectations for boys from both sets of parents have not changed.
  • Another study found that boys are paid more allowance for doing chores. This study analyzed 10,000 families using the chore app BusyKid and found that boys using the app earned twice what girls did for doing chores—$13.80 per week compared to $6.71 for girls.
  • This same study based on the BusyKid app also found that boys were more likely to be paid for personal hygiene like brushing their teeth or taking a shower while girls are paid for cleaning.
Scholars note that the gender gap for chores for children is worldwide. Miller cites Christia Spears Brown, a psychology professor at the University of Kentucky, as explaining, “Chores are really practice for adult living, so the problem is it just gets generationally perpetuated.” We need to become aware of the lessons and training we are giving our children about gender-role expectations if we are ever going to see gender equality in work and pay in the future. How do you handle this challenge in your family? Please share with us what works to equalize gender roles in your family.   Photo courtesy of David D (CC BY 2.0)]]>

Working Women Are Happier

by

An interesting new study, conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and the Chicago Federal Reserve, which looks at eighty years of workplace history, reports interesting findings: over time, women have become happier and more satisfied with work, while men have become less happy and less satisfied. Evan Horowitz of the Boston Globe notes that the researchers acknowledge the challenges of measuring something like happiness and satisfaction when they don’t use a consistent year-by-year survey that asks the same questions. But the researchers explain that they built their research on several existing solid studies and devised new methods of data analysis to draw the longitudinal conclusion that only women have improved their working lives. Here are some reasons for this gender difference offered by the researchers:

  • Changing social norms allowed more women to enter the workplace in recent decades.
  • The work options available for working women have expanded dramatically since the 1950s, and even more so since the 1990s.
  • Women have been shifting into better jobs with less clerical activity and more professional and managerial jobs and fewer assembly-line jobs.
  • More women than men now graduate in the United States with college and graduate school degrees, which increases their options.
  • Lower-educated women have enjoyed the greatest increase in workplace satisfaction, possibly because they were the most constrained to begin with under the old gendered rules.
What about men? Why is their satisfaction lower than in the past? The researchers have some suggestions:
  • While physically demanding work, such as mining and assembly-line work, has become less common, men seem to enjoy factory work much more than women do. Consequently, the shift from assembly lines to desk work left women feeling more content and men feeling less content.
  • The shift from assembly-line work also coincides with the erosion of labor union membership and job security, leaving men feeling more stress and less contentment even when they are able to find factory work.
The researchers note that their findings of decreased happiness and satisfaction with work for men “is consistent with a growing body of research about the struggles of men.” While I definitely do not wish for men to be less happy with their work, I do note, with pride, the increased happiness of women in the workplace. I am grateful for the struggles of the second-wave feminist movement since the 1960s to open up work options for women. I remember when very few options existed for women. The struggle is not over. I have written recent articles about the gender pay gap and challenges that women still face with having access to leadership roles and to nontraditional jobs. But I am pleased that we have more options and are happier. Do you “remember when”? What do see that is different for women now?   Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash]]>

Universities Must Do More to Stop Harassment: New Report

by

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, highly respected independent agencies, issued their first-ever report on sexual harassment and found that universities have failed to prevent sexual harassment. Pam Belluck of the New York Times writes that the conclusions of the 311-page report are the result of a two-year study started before the #MeToo movement began. Belluck notes that “academic workplaces are second only to the military in the rate of sexual harassment.” One study cited in the report found that 58 percent of academic employees report experiencing sexual harassment. The report also cited a 2017 survey by the University of Texas system of students in scientific fields that found the following rates of sexual harassment:

  • 20 percent of female science students.
  • More than 25 percent of female engineering students.
  • More than 40 percent of female medical students experience sexual harassment from faculty or staff members. In addition, female medical students experience sexual harassment from patients.
Belluck notes that the report identified three types of sexual harassment in universities:
  • Sexual coercion
  • Unwanted sexual attention
  • Gender harassment, described as “verbal and nonverbal behaviors that convey hostility, objectification, exclusion or second-class status.”
Gender harassment was by far the most common type women experienced. The National Academies report notes that the cost of any form of sexual harassment for women is high and can “undermine work and well-being in a whole host of ways.” For example, the experience can trigger depression, sleep disruption, cardiac stress, and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Lilia Cortina, a member of the study team. Cortina, a professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Michigan, notes that sexual harassment experiences can be even worse for women of color and lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women. The cost to the scientific fields themselves is also high because women leave and the fields are not able to retain a full range of talent. The National Academies report states that universities must stop focusing on “symbolic compliance with current law” and on avoiding liability for their institutions and instead focus on preventing sexual harassment. Belluck notes that the report offers fifteen detailed recommendations, including
  • Overhauling academic advising systems so that students and junior researchers are not at the mercy of one senior researcher for advancement and access to grants.
  • Establishing informal ways for students and staff to report sexual harassment.
  • Urging legislators to pass laws so people can file harassment lawsuits directly against faculty and not just the university.
  • Abolishing nondisclosure agreements where settlements are made. These agreements currently allow a perpetrator to move on to other academic institutions without disclosure of their inappropriate behavior.
  • Adopting training programs that focus on changing behavior, not beliefs.
Ultimately, the cultures of academic institutions have to change if sexual harassment is to be prevented. Power structures, policies, and procedures that protect powerful faculty and prioritize protecting the institution from liability will never be able to create safe and respectful work environments for students and staff.   Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash]]>