Tag Archives: working women

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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01.21.2013 | Gender Issues: The Second Glass Ceiling

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

A recent study shows that the glass ceiling not only pertains to employment, but also to marriage. The results demonstrate that as women earn more than their husbands, the frequency of those marriages decreases. In other words, there are tons of couples in which the man makes a greater or equal amount of money than the woman, but there are many fewer couples as income reverses. (It should also be pointed out that all of these couples were in the age range of 22-34 years old, so the presence of children could not really skew the numbers). The study also makes the equally upsetting point that as women start to out-earn their husbands, the rate of divorce increases. Interestingly enough, it did not make a difference how much the disparity between the two paychecks was. Just in general, if women earned more, the occurrence of divorce increased.

The results also show that a woman who has the potential to out-earn her husband often either decides to work less or quit her job altogether. Why is this? It could be because she realizes how detrimental (and possibly terminal) it could be for her relationship. Another explanation proposed by the study was that in marriages in which the woman makes the smaller paycheck, the woman is the one who does the majority of the household chores. Therefore, it only makes sense that if the woman is the one who earns more money, then the man should be the one to take care of the chores. Oddly, this is not the case. Just because of social norms, women, even if they work longer hours and earn more money, are still expected to complete the household tasks.

So what does this mean for the economy? A significant proportion of women are not working at full potential, thus under-utilizing our nation’s production possibilities. Especially at a time in which our economy desperately needs a productivity surge, gender norms and stereotypes should not be hindering our economy to this extent.

Sources and Resources: To read more about this issue, New York Magazine has a very interesting article about the troubles which can stem from having a relationship in which the woman is the “alpha.” The Economist also has an article which discusses the issues above in more depth.

Note: The title was slightly edited after this entry was posted.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: gender issues, gender wage gap, glass ceiling, production possibilities, working women
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08.21.2012 | Augusta National Golf Club and Women

With Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore soon to become the Augusta National Golf Club’s first female members, I keep thinking about how women have become more valuable. The reason takes us back to the family.

Assume for a moment that a family is a production unit–sort of like a little factory. In the traditional set-up, women and men contribute resources. Women bring their ability to reproduce and maintain a household; men are responsible for reproduction and economic sustenance. In other words, men had real dollar value but not women. And not having dollar value mostly meant having very little value.

However, once a woman enters the labor force, her worth can be quantified. By contributing to her household’s economic sustenance, at home and beyond, she increases her value. You can see from the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) charts that conclude this post, women are increasingly participating in the work force, women earn money, they spend money and they are more educated. Their activities and accomplishments bespeak value.

And, as a woman’s value changes, everywhere she gets greater bargaining power…even at Augusta.

My Sources: For scholarly analysis of women’s value in marriage markets and of the family as a production unit with resource inputs and goods and services outputs, Nobel laureate Gary Becker’s The Essence of Becker is a perfect source. Then, as a complement with more of a historical focus, I suggest Claudia Goldin’s papers and books while the BLS paper for the charts (below) provides valuable statistics. In addition, econlife has looked at the recent controversy at Augusta that involved IBM’s CEO. Finally, I thank Eduardo Porter for The Price of Everything, whose chapter, “The Price of Women,” inspired this post.