Tag Archives: gender gap

04.29.2013 | Wikipedia’s Gender Gap

By Lilli DeBode, guest blogger and senior at Kent Place School

Wikipedia is a widely known encyclopedia, providing free access to millions of articles to anyone with an internet connection. Anyone is free to edit or create a page (granted, those edits might be removed) but there are absolutely no qualifications necessary to become an editor. So then how can one explain the fact that barely 13% of contributors are women? This is the puzzle that Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, is trying to solve.

Speculations on why men make the majority of the edits are not that unexpected.

Technology has always been in the stereotypical male realm. Because Wikipedia’s creation was organic, men gravitated towards it more quickly and things haven’t changed very much since its founding in 2001.

According to Sarah Stierch, a fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation, “The average Wikipedia editor is a well-educated white male. Well-educated white males have been writing history and the story of the world since ancient times.” She certainly has a point; why would this case be any different?

Some might wonder why it even matters who makes the edits. It matters because a major goal of Wikipedia’s team is to create a site where “Everyone brings their crumb of information to the table,” to create a well-rounded resource. If mostly men create and edit pages, topics that concern men are updated and lengthy while the woman-focused topics are neglected. Gardner provided her own example: Pat Barker is an acclaimed author living in England. She had three paragraphs on her entire page. Niko Bellic, a fictional character in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV, had five times more information on his page.

Hopefully now that the Wikipedia gender gap is a priority for the Wikimedia Foundation, women will start to be more represented in the editor community to bring more perspective to our sources.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: gender gap, Wikipedia, wikipedia's gender gap
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02.18.2013 | Gender Issues: STEMinists on the Rise?

By Lilli DeBode, guest blogger, senior at Kent Place School

Girls are naturally bad at math, right? Wrong. Unfortunately though, this impression creeps into many young girls’ minds and turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy, inhibiting intellectual growth.

This stereotype, which is deeply rooted in our society, could explain why science, technology, engineer, and math (STEM) fields have always been male dominated.

Women in STEM jobs earn 33% more than women in other occupations and experience a smaller wage gap. Yet the gender gaps in these fields are some of the widest in America. Only one in every seven engineers is a woman, and 27% of computer science jobs are held by women. What’s worse? These numbers haven’t grown since 2000.

Jocelyn Goldfein, a director of engineering at Facebook explained, “The reason there aren’t more women computer scientists is because there aren’t more women computer scientists.” The entrenched stereotypes that men are supposed to be into math and science while women are into humanities and arts has left young women with no one to look up to and no footsteps to follow.

Now, when technology plays such a pivotal role in our society, the demand for more women in STEM fields is much greater. Luckily, measures have been made in order to increase the supply of girls willing to move into these fields.

In a few cities, programs are being brought to schools in order to cultivate interest in STEM in the new generation. These programs teach teachers more about STEM so that they can then relay the information to their students. They also send women engineers into schools to talk to the students and answer any questions they have, hopefully dispelling any incorrect preconceptions concerning STEM jobs. This is all very well on the smaller scale, but in order for these statistics to improve, changes must be made on the larger scale. Larger programs are necessary to reach all of the new generation in order to make science, technology, engineering, and math cooler for girls. As soon as they see that they are just as capable as the boys, girls will be able to achieve equality in these fields and make more technological advancements for the U.S. and the economy.

Sources and Resources: This post provides a personal account by a woman who became an engineer and is now working on bringing STEM into schools. This article in Forbes provides more suggestions about how America can get more girls interested in STEM career paths. This is an amazing three-minute video made by a young woman who created a children’s toy called GoldieBlox to spark an interest in engineering in young girls.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: gender gap, STEM jobs, STEMinists, women in science, women in technology
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12.24.2012 | Gender Issues: A Swedish and French Mystery

What happens to a woman’s career trajectory when her job is family-friendly? The results have not been what policy makers expected.

In their work lives, Swedish women receive generous paid maternity leave and and can opt for flexible work hours. Politically, the Swedish Parliament has gender balance as do 2 major Swedish political parties’ electoral slates. In France, 17 of President Hollande’s 34 cabinet ministers are female and the French Constitution was amended in 2010 to mandate corporate and public gender equality. In France, Sweden and across the EU, there is a commitment to end gender inequality.

And yet, in France and Sweden, in private industry, men are in charge. Among France’s 87 universities, only 8 presidents are female. In large French law firms, a vast minority of the partners are female. Even when their boards implement gender balance quotas, large corporations have few, if any, females CEOs.

Social scientists are not sure why women are not rising to the top when the work world has made it easier to combine work and family. One theory is children. When labor force participation enables women to divide their time and energy between work and the family, they select the balance. As a result, many do not become the professional alpha women who can compete against committed males who rise to the top.

Monday Gender Issues Posts

Hetty Green and the Pay Gap: 12/17

Sources and Resources: This excellent discussion of “The Plight of the Alpha Female” appeared recently in the City Journal while this paper, “Is There a Glass Ceiling in Sweden?” presents details on the the surprising results of the Swedish family-friendly work environment. Also, you might want to look at an avalanche of gender stats and ideas in this most recent 300+ page OECD report, “Closing the Gender Gap.”

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: alpha females, Claudia Goldin, feminism, flextime, France, French Constitution, gender gap, glass ceiling, Kay Hymowitz, Marissa Mayer, President Hollande, Sheryl Sandberg, Sweden, work life balance
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08.16.2012 | A Female Friendly (Industrial) City?

Sometimes it is tough to make your economy more productive.

In Saudi Arabia, just one woman at the office means you have to have a thick barrier separating her from everyone else. She needs her own entrance, her own bathroom, and a security guard to be sure she and all other females have no contact with the men. Meanwhile, if she wants to work for you, a man has to be available, maybe her husband or father, to drive her to work each day. If she earns some money, a man has to open her bank account.

In a World Economic Forum gender gap report, Saudi Arabia scored zero for women’s political empowerment. Surpassing only Pakistan and Yemen, the Saudis were ranked 133 out of 135 countries for women’s economic participation and opportunity. Yes, they do have the world’s largest all female university but many graduates are unemployed.

With this huge underutilization of talent, what to do? The Saudi answer is a female friendly city.

MODON (the Saudi Industrial Property Authority) has announced that it has begun to plan and develop a prototype industrial city for approximately 50 business projects that will create 2000 to 5000 jobs for men and women. The project is unique because its women-only sections will preserve the religious rules “consistent with the privacy of women according to Islamic guidelines…” while its location will enable women to get to work more easily. Combining religion, women, investors and entrepreneurs, the model is designed to spread throughout the Kingdom.

Looking at the constraints on Saudi women, I keep returning to thoughts about human capital. Reflecting the skills, creativity and education that people bring to the workplace, human capital fuels economic growth. By limiting women’s access to jobs, to shopping, to financial services, the Saudi government is diminishing its human capital, its economic potential, and its productivity.

Researching this post I started with an article from the Guardian but soon discovered that it and other news outlets inaccurately stated that the Saudi industrial cities would be single sex/women only. I am basing my facts on the Saudi press release from MODON. Also, you might enjoy reading more about Saudi women here at econlife.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: Booz and Co., female friendly industrial cities, gender gap, human capital, MODOM, Saudi Arabia, woman's rights, women's rights, World Economic Forum
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06.07.2012 | Do You Believe in “Pink Quotas?”

Italy has just declared its “pink quota.”

A new law mandates that by 2015, women should be one-third of all board members for listed and Italian state-owned firms. Currently, the total is somewhere between 3.7 and 6%. (Checking 2 sources, I found different statistics.)

Looking at how Australia and France have raised female board presence, which approach do you favor? Here are some facts:

Australia:

Legislative incentives.
Mandated diversity policy reporting.
Female board membership up by 5.3% from 2009-2011.
Currently at 13.8%.
A formal mentoring program is bringing female candidates to boards’ attention.

France:

Legislative fiat.
Female board membership has skyrocketed by 7.5% from 2009-2011.
Currently at 16.6%.
Mandated to rise to 40% by 2016.

Here are some interesting statistics from Catalyst, a group that gathers information about women:

Women on the Board (countries at the top of a 44 country list):

Country	% Board Seats Held By Women
Norway	40.1
Sweden	27.3
Finland	24.5
United States	16.1

Women on the Board (countries at the bottom a 44 country list):

Country	% Board Seats Held By Women
Japan	0.9
United Arab Emirates	0.8
Qatar	0.3
Saudi Arabia	0.1

A note: On the 44 country list, at #34, Italy is close to the bottom.

At first, I learned about Italy’s “pink quota” in a WSJ article. Here though, is the best report I accessed about women on corporate boards and the source of some statistics while the others came from Catalyst, a research organization that focuses on women. For further discussion on occupational and wage gender gaps, you could go to these econlife posts here and here.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: Australia, Catalyst, corporate boards, France, gender gap, glass ceiling, Italy, pink quotas
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