gender gap

How Gender Bias in Medicine Affects Women’s Health: A Book Review

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Doing Harm by Maya Dusenbery, a new book recently reviewed in the New York Times by Parul Sehgal, is a rich collection of studies and statistics that reveal sexism at every level of medicine. Sehgal notes that the core message of the author is that the ancient distrust of women to be reliable narrators of their own experiences or their bodily pain is linked to the current “believe women” moment we are in as more speak out in the “Me Too” movement. The author also points out that this suppression of women’s voices is linked to how frequently women get interrupted in meetings and how rarely women are quoted as experts. Women’s voices are ignored or belittled and, in addition to the other challenges we face, this dynamic impacts our ability to get good medical care. Dusenbery offers multiple examples to make her point:

  • Women with abdominal pain wait in emergency rooms for sixty-five minutes compared to forty-nine minutes for men.
  • Young women are seven times more likely to be sent home from the hospital while in the middle of a heart attack.
  • Doctors rarely communicate (or understand) how drugs from aspirin to antidepressants affect women and men differently.
  • Autoimmune disorders have been understudied because a majority of the patients are women.
  • Women are consistently undertreated for pain: male patients are given pain relief while women are given sedatives and told their pain is emotional.
  • For women of color, especially black women, the situation is worse. Black patients are twenty-two times less likely to get any kind of pain relief in emergency rooms.
Sehgal suggests that the solution is not more female doctors because female doctors can have implicit bias, too. The best action we can take is to speak out about sexist and paternalistic experiences we have with doctors. We must share our stories. We can also put pressure on medical professionals to study women’s health. And we have to insist on having our voices heard. I remember when my mother kept going to her doctor and complaining that she “didn’t feel right.” The doctor told her that older women often experience aches and pains and sent her home. But my mother knew something was wrong and she kept going back to the doctor and insisting on tests. Finally, they listened to her and she was, in fact, about to have a massive heart attack. She needed open-heart bypass surgery. She saved her own life by refusing to be ignored. We must not allow ourselves to be silenced.   Photo courtesy of Wellcome Images (CC BY 4.0)]]>

International Roundup: Women Are Making Progress

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Inspiring news about women’s progress comes from many parts of the world. We all need some good news these days, so I am glad to shine a spotlight on a few of them: Iceland: Katrin Bennhold, writing for the New York Times, identifies Iceland as practically a gender utopia. She explains that

  • Selling pornography has been banned in Iceland since 1869.
  • Iceland directly elected the world’s first female president in 1980.
  • Iceland elected the world’s first openly lesbian prime minister in 2009.
  • The World Economic Forum (WEF) has ranked Iceland first for gender equality for nine years in a row, using an index that includes educational opportunities, life expectancy, pay equity, and other factors.
  • Eight out of ten Icelandic women work.
  • The pay gap is due to be closed in 2022, while globally, the WEF says it will take 217 more years to close the gender pay gap.
  • A new law went into effect in Iceland on January 1, 2018, that requires organizations with more than twenty-five employees to prove they are paying men and women equally. Despite many measures of success in terms of gender equality, a gender pay gap has stubbornly persisted in Iceland and the government determined that additional measures are required to eradicate it.
Iran: Thomas Erdbrink of the New York Times reports on a small number of Iranian women who are staging public protests against the government’s strict enforcement of Islamic law since 1979 concerning women’s clothing. These brave women are removing their head scarfs in public places, placing them on a stick, and waving them for all to see. Some have been arrested. More and more small groups of women are staging these public rejections of authority. As one woman stated, “If a lot of people do this, it will have more influence,” and the numbers are growing. Oxford, England: Stephen Castle writes in the New York Times that for the first time in the thousand years of Oxford University’s existence, incoming female students outnumber their male peers. He notes that this change could reflect the growing proportion of female academics at Oxford who could be positively impacting the unconscious bias that previously screened women out of the selection process. Castle cites Sam Smethers, chief executive of a gender equality charity, as saying that this may be only a step on a longer road. “What matters is . . . what happens when they leave,” she says. “We know that women are still underrepresented in math, science and engineering subjects, and female graduates experience a pay gap on entering the workplace.” Yes, but this is still an important step. South Korea: In South Korea, the #MeToo movement has broken down a wall of silence as sexual harassment complaints now trickle out on social media, reported by Choe Sang-Hun in the New York Times. A strictly hierarchical societal code and a command-and-compliance work culture leave women in South Korea particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and assault. The WEF ranks this country 118 of 144 in terms of gender equality, yet public accusations from actresses, a female prosecutor, factory workers, nurses, and writers in publishing houses are giving other women courage to speak out and demand change. Canada: Ian Austen and Catherine Porter of the New York Times write that thanks to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements in the United States, “Canada is reeling from a maelstrom of accusations of sexually inappropriate behavior against men in positions of power, and their swift removal.” One big difference between Canada and the United States is that Canadian politicians from all parties are calling for change and supporting the victims, unlike the government in Washington. Women in Canada are not only emboldened by the #MeToo movement, but they are also galvanized by the election of President Donald Trump. They are determined to speak out to ensure that they do not ever end up with a prime minister who is accused of (and taped bragging about) sexual assault as is the case with Trump. In fact, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been leading the push for change and his government introduced a broad definition of sexual harassment as “any comment, gesture or touching ‘of a sexual nature’ that could offend or humiliate an employee.” Have you heard more good news for women in other parts of the world? Please share your stories.   Photo courtesy of Al Jazeera English (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

How You Can Take Steps to Close the Gender Pay Gap in Your Company

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Research indicates that pay transparency does result in smaller pay gaps. At the very least, if employees are aware of pay discrepancies in the company, women and people of color can confidently negotiate for higher salaries than those offered. But most companies keep salary information secret and are not transparent. That is why the step taken by employees at Google is so important—they took matters into their own hands to create transparency. Daisuke Wakabayashi of the New York Times reports that in 2015, a female engineer at Google created a self-reported salary spreadsheet that employees are still using. In 2017, twelve hundred United States Google employees posted their salary and bonus information to this spreadsheet, which shows that female employees are paid less than male staff members in comparable jobs at most levels. The spreadsheet does not cover all levels and is admittedly incomplete. Nonetheless, since Google’s board voted against making pay transparent for women’s and men’s salaries, and Google is in a court battle with the United States Department of Labor because it is refusing to hand over data as part of a routine audit of its pay practices, the self-reported data is the only source of transparency for Google employees. Without the spreadsheet, Google would not be held accountable at all. Now, more than ever, employees need to self-organize to collect salary data and make it transparent to expose pay gaps. Why? Because, as Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times reports, the Trump administration just reversed a regulation that the Obama administration put into place to address the pay gap. Miller explains that the Obama administration regulation, which was about to take effect, would have “required companies to report how much they paid people, along with their sex and race.” Europe and Britain require companies to report this information, but now, under the Trump administration, we do not. Without this pressure from the Federal government, companies have no incentive to close the pay gaps and will continue to keep salary information secret and, accordingly, to hide discrimination and avoid accountability. Miller reports that, according to an analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the Pew Research Center, we know the following general statistics about the pay gap in the United States:

  • White women’s median hourly earnings are 82 percent of those of white men
  • Asian women earn 87 percent of what white men earn
  • Black women earn 65 percent of what white men earn
  • Hispanic women earn 58 percent of what white men earn
  • Black and Hispanic men earn less than white men, while Asian men outearn them
An example of the importance of transparency recently occurred in Britain at the BBC. Britain only recently implemented a new regulation requiring that companies report salary data. Steven Erlanger of the New York Times explains that when the government forced the BBC to publish the salary ranges of its highest paid employees, the resulting report showed significant disparities. An open letter signed by forty-two employees stated that the report confirmed a long-held suspicion that “women at the BBC are being paid less than men for the same work.” Until the data was made public, no confirmation of those suspicions was possible. Employees and the government are now pressuring the BBC to close this gender pay gap. If your company does not make salary data public, you could consider following the example of the Google employees and organizing a way for employees to self-report so that people have some information available to them when it is time for them to negotiate for salary increases. I recommend that a group of people, including both women and men, get together to organize this collection of information. If the company finds out and is unhappy, a group is at less risk than an individual when taking steps that the company may find threatening. The gender and race pay gaps will never close if we don’t take some steps to bring disparities to light. Let us know if you have been successful at creating pay transparency in your company. Photo courtesy of businessforward (CC by 2.0)]]>

Joblessness and the “Care Chasm”: Why Women Drop Out of the Workforce

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There was a lot of focus on a dearth of middle-class jobs for men in the United States during the recent presidential election. This discussion centered on the loss of good-paying manufacturing and mining jobs for men, which have been in decline since the 1960s due to automation and globalization. Not much attention has been paid, however, to the declining number of women in the US workforce. This trend is the opposite of trends in women’s employment in other industrialized countries. What explains this difference for women in the United States? While the decline in workforce participation for working-class men began in the 1960s, the slide for women’s participation did not begin until the early 2000s. Patricia Cohen of the New York Times explains that the drop in women’s workforce participation occurred for different reasons than it did for men. During this period, women have been earning college degrees in greater numbers; also, service sector jobs, where women are traditionally concentrated, have been growing. So why have women been dropping out of the workforce? Cohen notes that we do not have the family support policies in the United States that other industrialized countries have. In fact, here “women are still the primary caregivers—for children, aging parents, and ailing relatives.” Women often cite caregiving responsibility as the reason they are unable to hold on to unstable and inflexible jobs. Cohen cites economist Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, who reports, “Hardly any men who have dropped out say it is because they are helping with children or other family members.” Eberstadt goes on to note that a “care chasm” explains the stark contrast between women’s workforce participation in the United States and their participation rate in Europe. He explains that European countries with comprehensive family support policies have seen women’s labor force participation go up since 2000, while ours has plummeted. We need to demand that our legislators support policies for affordable child care, paid family leave, elder care support, and a living wage in the United States. Family support policies are good for all of us and for our economy.   Photo courtesy of Univ. of Salford. CC by 2.0    ]]>

What Sexism Looks Like in Politics and Life

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Examples of sexism are rampant in the United States as demonstrated in our presidential contest, sexual harassment scandals, and other public-sector examples like the gender-wage gap. Let’s be clear—both women and men can hold sexist attitudes about women. Sexist attitudes usually include negative stereotypes that create barriers or unfair double standards for women. I have written about many ways that internalized sexism makes it difficult for women to support strong women leaders in my book, New Rules for Women: Revolutionizing the Way Women Work Together. Below are some examples of sexist attitudes currently on display. Gail Collins of the New York Times notes several instances of sexism in the current presidential race demonstrated by Trump and his supporters:

  • Yelling. Collins notes that Trump and his supporters complain that Clinton yells too much. Collins also notes that Trump yells all the time. She goes on to explain that voice is a sensitive issue for women, who have learned that for their ideas to get heard, they must speak as assertively as men. Yet messages about the sound of women’s voices being unacceptable in public roles are deeply ingrained in our culture. Collins reflects that not too long ago, no women news anchors were on television because it was thought that no one wanted to hear the news from women’s voices. I remember being told when I was growing up that “women should be seen and not heard.” It seems this message is still operating in the underbelly of our culture.
  • Being Weak. Collins notes that Trump and his surrogates like to describe Clinton as lacking in stamina. Nobody who watched Hillary Clinton as secretary of state can accuse her of lacking stamina. This is sexist code language reflecting a negative stereotype of women being too weak and indecisive to be leaders.
  • Not Looking Presidential. Trump likes to talk about how he looks presidential because he is tough, and that Clinton is not tough and therefore does not look presidential. One of the other criticisms of Clinton has been that she is not feminine or emotional enough. This seems to be a classic double bind and makes me wonder if only men are allowed to be tough.
  • Failure to Smile. Collins notes that Clinton has been roundly criticized for not smiling enough during debates. Really? This is actually a common critique of women in leadership roles in organizations as well. The same criticism is not leveled at male leaders. And besides, how can you communicate toughness (if this is what’s required to be presidential) if you are smiling all the time while talking about very serious matters of global importance?
  • Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former lieutenant governor of Maryland, writes that she endured many of the same sexist criticisms about her appearance that Clinton now endures, including unending criticism about her hair style, for not wearing heels or enough make up, and for wearing too many bracelets. Kennedy Townsend notes that we have no archetype for a powerful woman in our culture and few role models.
Andi Zeisler writes in the New York Times about another expression of sexism in our presidential contest—the use of the B word by Trump and his supporters to describe Hillary Clinton. Zeisler points out that calling a woman a bitch “has long been an effective way to silence women because so many of us have been brought up to believe that remaining likeable to others—even those we ourselves don’t like—is paramount.” She suggests we reframe the word to be positive, using it to mean these traits:
  • Flexing influence
  • Standing up for your beliefs
  • Not acting according to feminine norms and expectations
  • Wanting to win and going for it
  • Rejecting the expectations, assumptions, and double standards that have always dogged women in American politics
In other words, Zeisler suggests that we reframe the term to mean being a strong woman who gets things done. Isn’t this what we need from women leaders and from our president? Count me in. I’m with her. If I am ever called a bitch, I will be proud that my strength is showing. Why are you proud of being a strong woman, or what do you admire about the strong women you know? Let me know in the comments section.   The image in this post is courtesy of businessforward (CC BY-SA 2.0).  ]]>

New Mothers in the Cockpit: Challenges for Female Pilots

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The commercial aviation industry remains one of the toughest and least accommodating for new mothers. Annalyn Kurtz of the New York Times notes that “pilots are exempt from a provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring employers to accommodate new mothers.” Perhaps because only 4 percent of the 159,000 certified commercial airline pilots are women, and only a portion of these are childbearing age, the issues of paid maternity leave and accommodation for breast-feeding are not priorities for union collective bargaining efforts. Many male pilots are also not supportive of fighting for these policy changes on behalf of their female colleagues because they do not see the policies as important. For these reasons, female pilots have begun to join forces to pressure their male colleagues and unions to support demands for paid maternity leave and alternative work assignments so that women can keep their jobs and support their families during pregnancy and while nursing newborns. Female pilots are in a unique situation in that providing accommodation, time, or privacy for breast pumping while on the job is no simple matter. Because female pilots are on the job in the cockpit of an airplane, they cannot easily gain privacy for pumping without leaving the cockpit, usually for about twenty minutes at a time, which can raise safety concerns. While a flight attendant can enter the cockpit while the female pilot is pumping in the bathroom to meet the requirement of having at least two people present at all times in the flight deck, not everyone feels this arrangement is acceptable for safety purposes. For this reason, female pilots are demanding paid maternity leave or temporary ground assignments while pregnant or nursing so that they can continue to support their families. Without paid leave, they must choose between earning a living or breast-feeding their babies. Some airlines also force pregnant pilots to stop flying between eight to fourteen weeks before birth, which means lost wages. While some airlines offer unpaid leave, this does not allow the female pilot to pay her bills. Paid leave and temporary ground assignments would be reasonable accommodations for female pilots. Female flight attendants face many of the same issues. It’s time for the aviation industry to change their antiquated policies and create a more inclusive workplace.   The image in this post is in the public domain courtesy of Poli.]]>

How Men Can Help Close the Gender Equity Gap: Examples of Success

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“Sisterhood is not enough; men must be involved in efforts to equalize workplace culture,” writes Peggy Klaus in the New York Times. Klaus goes on to quote Belinda Parmar, head of the tech consultancy Lady Geek, as saying, “gender equity is not a ‘women’s problem,’ it’s a society problem.” I could not agree more, and we need to do more to change workplace culture. Klaus notes that over the past twenty-five years, many large organizations have invested significant resources to promote women’s leadership conferences and workshops as their way of supporting the advancement of women, yet not much has changed in the representation of women at the senior levels of management. Women comprise only 3 percent of CEO positions in the United States. Women’s leadership conferences and training programs create networks and provide crucial support, especially for women working in male-dominated industries. They help women face the challenges of cultural biases and stereotypes that men don’t have to deal with. For example, women have to negotiate differently than men to be effective, and they have more difficult challenges around executive leadership and self-promotion because of the “likeability factor.” The issue is that American corporations think that investing in conferences is enough to fix deep and systemic issues. Klaus notes, “Relying on women’s conferences and trainings to fix the problem amounts to little more than checking a diversity box and sidelining the issue of gender equity.” Women cannot change organizational cultures, which are held in place by policies, procedures, and deeply ingrained society biases, without the engagement of men. Men hold the power and must be part of the solution. Fortunately, Klaus reports that we have some positive examples of how men can become allies:

  • Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, conducted a gender-pay audit at his company and spent millions correcting the gender-pay gap that he discovered.
  • Bradley Cooper announced that he would do his part by sharing information about what he was making on a film with female costars before they signed their deals after several Hollywood actresses, including Jennifer Lawrence, discovered they were being paid significantly less than their male costars.
  • The investment firm BlackRock developed a women’s leadership program that addressed gaps in leadership skills, global networks, and sponsorship. The CEO and other senior leaders invested significant time, energy, and resources into the program, which led to advancement for the majority of the 160 participants. This was not a program that sidelined the issues. This program made a comprehensive commitment to changing the organization’s culture.
Nicholas Kristof writes about the ways that men, organizations, and society win when women win, and I also wrote about this in a previous article. Here are some of the benefits for men and organizations when women are more involved:
  • Bringing on more women makes work teams more successful.
  • Women bring knowledge, skills, and new networks to the table.
  • Women take fewer unnecessary risks.
  • Women tend to collaborate in ways that strengthen teams and organizations.
  • Successful venture-backed start-ups have more female executives than failed ones.
  • Firms with more women in senior leadership generate more market value.
Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant note that “economists estimate that raising women’s participation in the work force to the same level as men could raise GDP by 5 percent in the United States,” which means more jobs and wider prosperity. As Parmar noted, this is not just a women’s issue, it is a societal issue. We need to work together, women and men, to change societal attitudes and organizational cultures that limit opportunities for women. We will all benefit in the long run.   The image in this post is in the public domain courtesy of Unsplash.]]>

A Gender Gap for Female Attorneys: Where Are the Women?

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Even though women make up close to half of all law school graduates, Shirley Leung of the Boston Globe notes that a gaping gender gap exists in the legal profession. She speculates that it could be the long hours required by large firms, the male-dominated culture of those firms, or outright discrimination, but “women drop out.” Leung reports that

  • Women comprise only 36 percent of the profession, according to the American Bar Association
  • Only 18 percent of women are equity partners at the largest firms
  • Women earn only 80 percent of the typical equity partner, according to a study done by the National Association of Women Lawyers
  • In high profile cases, women may be on the litigation teams, but they are relegated to roles behind the scenes and do not have speaking parts
Why does this last point matter? Leung cites Kim Dougherty, past president of the Women’s Bar Association, as noting, “getting more women to play big roles in courtrooms increases their chances for advancement, better pay, and opportunities to seek judgeships, which require lead trial experience.” Both Dougherty and Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge, suggest that judges can impact change from the bench by asking for more gender diversity among attorneys in courtroom proceedings. By setting such policy for their courtrooms, they can open opportunities for women to litigate in lead roles. The judge presiding over the Sumner Redstone case in Boston is a recent example of a judge who “walks his talk.” When only male attorneys spoke for both sides in the opening arguments of the trial, Judge George Phelan commented on the lack of female attorneys. His comment may result in participation by more women lawyers as this case moves forward, but Gertner notes that this will only matter if the women have real speaking roles rather than just cameo appearances. We need more judges like Phelan and Gertner who create fairness and opportunity for all lawyers in their courtrooms.   The image in this post is in the public domain courtesy of Activedia.]]>