Tag Archives: gender inequality

04.15.2013 | Equal Pay Day

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

Last Tuesday, April 9^th was Equal Pay Day, the day symbolizing how far into 2013 women need to work in order to earn what men earned in 2012. You can hear all the numbers and statistics, see all of the graphs and tables, but nothing puts it into perspective quite like this. Women need to work roughly a third of a year longer in order to make what their male counterparts make. Let that sink in.

2013 marks the 50 year anniversary of the passing of the Equal Pay Act. A half a century ago, John F. Kennedy said that this act would help to end “the unconscionable practice of paying female employees less wages than male employees for the same job.” But 50 years later we still need to have an equal pay day. And although the situation is a lot better, we’re not that close to equality (four months is a pretty long time).

One solution that could make a huge difference is the Paycheck Fairness Act, which has been passed by the house twice. The act would combat a key component to gender wage gap: pay secrecy policies. In 2011, a poll showed that 50% of employees and 61% of employees in the private sector have worked in an environment where discussion of wages and salaries are either prohibited or discouraged by managers. By keeping employees from finding out the salaries of their coworkers, employers are able to carry on pay discrimination without any trouble. The Paycheck Fairness Act would ban retaliation against workers who discuss their wages, fundamentally banning pay secrecy.

President Obama spoke about fair pay in his State of the Union speech two months ago, showing that this longstanding problem has not been forgotten in Washington. This is a promising sign that more steps will be taken towards finally closing the gender wage gap in the near future.

Sources and Resources: To learn more about Equal Pay Day click here. Read this USA Today article to learn more about the gender pay gap.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: equal pay act, Equal Pay Day, gender inequality, gender pay gap, Paycheck Fairness Act, women's rights, working women
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04.08.2013 | Sheryl Sandberg’s Three-Point Plan

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

Almost a month ago, COO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, released her book “Lean in—Women, Work, and the will to lead.” In the past few weeks the author has received a lot of criticism; some say her book encourages women to change as opposed to encouraging society as a whole to change. Others say that her book only applies to a small group of elite women and her suggestions are simply unrealistic for the typical American woman. I say yes, her suggestions do focus on a very specific demographic of women, but they are extremely noteworthy and should be taken seriously.

In 2010 Sandberg gave a famous TED Talk on the [lack of] progress of women in the workforce. This video has been watched over two million times, and in just 15 minutes provides her female viewers with her three simple suggestions on how to achieve success in the workplace.

Her first point: “Sit at the Table.” Sandberg says that women systematically underestimate themselves while men often overestimate themselves. This is one of the key reasons there aren’t as many women as men in top corporate positions. When women are successful they attribute it to help from others, luck, or hard work. In addition, Sandberg brings up a study showing the salaries of Carnegie Mellon MBA graduates. In the study, women’s starting salaries were almost $4,000 less than those of their male peers. Why is this? Because only 7% of the women negotiated their salaries while 57% of the men asked for more money. Sandberg sums it up perfectly: “No one gets the promotion they don’t think they deserve.”

Her second point is very simple: “Make your partner a real partner.” In order for women to be successful in the workplace they need their partners to help out at home. Right now, full-time working women do twice as much housework and three times as much childcare as their male partners do. The ratio needs to be 50:50 if women are to have a shot at those promotions.

Finally her last point: “Don’t leave before you leave.” After interacting with many young women, Sandberg recognized a trend that is causing them to lower their aspirations. She found that long before they even have husbands, many young women start to minimize their career ambitions in preparation for the day that they have to leave to workforce to take care of their children. As a result, women pass up exciting career opportunities, thus making the idea of returning to work once they actually have children less appealing. In order to combat this premature settling, Sandberg urges young women to “Keep your foot on the gas pedal until the very day you need to leave.”

Sources and Resources: Watch Sandberg’s TED talk here. To learn more about her lecture, read this article from The Atlantic. To learn more about the Carnegie Mellon study she sited, click here.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: career women, gender inequality, gender issues, Sheryl Sandberg, TED talks, working women
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02.04.2013 | Sweden: Elusive Equality

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

Sweden has the reputation of a land of idyllic gender equality. I personally have cited the country numerous times in my previous posts. As close as we have come so far to parity, Sweden’s promising experiment is a beacon of hope, proving that it is in fact possible for women to be treated as men’s equals. But despite their immense progress, they still have one area they need to work on.

Sweden is among the top ranked countries for parental leave (16 months for each parent,) the female employment rate is above 70%, and the difference between male and female employment rates is about 5%. Women also make up 45% of parliament, and 64% of managers in the public sector are women. Sounds pretty good, right? Yes, it is incredibly impressive and it’s much more than almost all other countries can say, but the Swedes are still struggling with managers in the private sector. Women only make up 28% of all upper managerial positions. While this number pretty much aligns with the rest of the developed western nations, the Swedes find the inconsistency between the number of women representatives in the public and private sectors quite irritating.

So what is the reasoning behind this lack of women in executive management teams? Women are taking more time off to look after their children. As I stated above, both men and women get 16 months off from work after they have a baby, but just because each parent is offered the leave from work, doesn’t mean they both take the same amount of time. The option is out there but it is relatively new and the gender norms haven’t been dispelled yet. Men and women are forced to take at least 60 days off, but after that time period, it is up to them whether they want to return early or not. According to Statistics Sweden, “Women take 75% of parental leave and work part-time more than three times as often as men.”

Although it often may sound like it, Sweden isn’t a utopia where both the men and the women work and share equal part in the office and the home. They still struggle with the problems we face every day. Though they seem much less entrenched in Sweden, the notion that men should be the breadwinners and the women should be the homemakers is still present. It is projected to take 52 years before women make up 50% of company management position, but citizens want results now. It seems that if they keep up the battle for equality that they have been winning in spades, the Swedes will have their equality in all sectors much sooner than they had planned.

Sources and Resources: This article by Quartz provides more in-depth information about Sweden’s “Mom Trap.” The Economist’s article on female power contains more statistical information about female employment in Sweden and other developed countries around the world.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: female employment rates, female executives, gender inequality, mom trap, Sweden
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03.09.2012 | The Best Places to be a Woman

In colonial Massachusetts, the law required boys to attend school while girls were primarily educated at home. Because it was illegal for a married woman to own land, Abigail Adams had to use John’s name anytime she bought or sold land. And Abigail could not attend Harvard but John did.

Fast forward to 2012. In varying degrees around the world, still, women lack economic opportunity. In a recent report, The Economist tells us where and how.

First, a quick look at their criteria. Focusing on 5 broad categories, they looked at labor policy, finance, education, legal status and general business conditions. More specifically, variables included pay discrimination, ability to create a credit history, access to education, protection from violence, and property rights.

Next, the results.

Overall, ranking 128 countries, Sweden is first and Sudan last. The U.S. is #14.

Also dividing the world by affluence, researchers looked at 4 income groups. Among the 32 wealthiest nations, Sweden provides women with the most opportunity and Saudi Arabia with the least. For the next group, Lithuania tops the list and Algeria, #31 is last. The Lower Middle Income Group is led by Thailand while Sudan, #39, is at the bottom. And finally, among the poorest nations, Kenya gives women a lot more opportunity than Chad, #20.

The Economic Lesson

Why do women’s opportunities matter? One reason is economic growth. As one World Bank report concluded, “Societies that have a preference for not investing in girls pay a price for it in terms of slower growth and lower income.”

An Economic Question: Just referring to education, at home and at work, how might a women’s productive impact on economic growth change? Being able to drive a car? Owning property?

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: economic growth, gender inequality, Sudan, Sweden, Women's Economic Opportunity Index, women's rights
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07.30.2010 | Son Preference

If there are 122 men for every 100 women, how do you find a wife? According to a Columbia University professor, in China, you save.

Economists have been asking why Chinese households save so much–30% as compared to a current 6% rate in the U.S. One answer starts with the hypothesis that too many Chinese men have too few women they can marry. How to compete? Become richer by saving. To prove their theory, researchers gathered data and found that savings rates appeared to vary with an area’s male/female ratios. Or, as expressed by one social scientist, it was all about “keeping up with the Zhangs”.

Why does all of this matter?

Domestic saving relates to an undervalued yuan. More saving in China has helped their current account surplus grow. This surplus helps the yuan remain undervalued. An undervalued yuan perpetuates a U.S. trade deficit as the U.S. continues to buy Chinese exports.
Domestic saving also relates to women’s rights. With China’s one child policy and son preference leading to male births, the result was “missing women” and a social issue becoming an economic concern. Defined, “missing women” is a gender inequality phenomenon in which a country’s demographics become artificially skewed toward male births and male survival. (You might want to look at nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s comments.)

The Economic Lesson

An undervalued Chinese currency has become an economic and a political concern. Just like we might purchase a sweater when it is cheap, we tend to be attracted to less expensive currencies. Owning the currency enables us to buy that nation’s exports more cheaply. Hence, we buy Chinese goods, look to Chinese factories, and inflate our trade deficit.

But what is the cause of the problem? Some say we should focus less on the Chinese government’s control over the yuan and more on their social policy toward women.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: Amartya Sen, China, foreign exchange, gender inequality, missing women, son preference, yuan
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