Fierce Female Analyst Takes on Citi

All-star stock analyst Meredith Whitney of CIBC World Markets made major waves earlier this month when she presciently predicted the decline of Citi’s stock. According to a recent Business Week article, Ms. Whitney downgraded Citi’s stock to “market underperform” status, equivalent to a recommendation to sell, in an October 31, 2007 report. She bucked the conventional wisdom that Citi was a super-stock that could do no wrong when she concluded that the bank was undercapitalized, despite its huge size, and predicted that it would be forced to cut dividends in order to make up for huge losses related to the subprime mortgage fiasco.

At the time she issued these recommendations, she came under intense fire from the media and other stock analysts. According to articles in the London Times and the Washington Post, she even received death threats from investors in the bank, after her recommendations caused the value of the stock to plunge by $369 billion. Ms. Whitney told the Times, “clients are not pleased with my call and I have had several death threats. But it was the most straightforward call of my career and I’m surprised my peer analysts have been so resistant. It’s so straightforward, it’s indisputable.”

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Want a Mr. Mom at Home?

This week’s post on the Wall Street Journal’s blog The Juggler, entitled A Father’s Decision to Stay Home, provoked an impassioned discussion. The posting referred to an article in Men’s Vogue this month in which award-winning New York Times correspondent Charlie LeDuff discussed his decision to give up his career (at least temporarily) and be a stay at home dad. Mr. LeDuff shared some words of advice he received: “You have to decide if the child is more important than the stature, the action, the money. If she is, you must accept it and get on with the routine.”

While women have heard variations on this theme since the beginning of time, it’s only recently that men have considered the option of being a stay at home dad. While Mr. LeDuff says that he eventually wants to return to work for the income as well as the personal fulfillment it brings, the author raises an interesting point. He asks, “Should every parent, finances permitting, spend some extended time devoted entirely to child rearing?”

Explosive responses ran the gamut from a New York Working Mom who was happy with her family’s decision to have her husband stay home with her children so she could pursue her career full time, to some mothers who agreed with the idea that a stranger could not give the same kind of love to a child that a parent could, to people who thought that Mr. LeDuff was just lazy and should go back to work.

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Can Women Win? And Do We Even Want To?

“Women can’t win.” This is one of the conclusions reached by Lisa Belkin, a writer for the New York Times, in her recent article “The Feminine Critique.” After reading the article, you may well agree, particularly when you consider her analysis about how differently men and women are viewed in the workplace, even when behaving in similar ways.

In the article, Ms. Belkin cites several examples from research studies, including this nugget of wisdom: when a woman gets angry, she is perceived to have lost stature and control. When a man gets angry, he is considered to have gained stature and control. Belkin is right on target by asking what women should do with this, and all the other information floating around about how we are viewed differently than men in the workplace. She wonders if women really need to transform themselves in order to succeed, and if so, into what?

Belkin also gleans some practical advice from the research cited in her article, and quotes a psychology professor who believes that the research can help by letting women know that “they are acting in ways they might not even be aware of, and that is harming them and they can change.”

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The H-Bomb

When I was in law school, my girlfriends and I had a favorite non-scientific experiment. We would go out to bars in Boston, meet a group of friendly guys, and tell them one of two things.

1) We were yoga instructors, dental hygienists or kindergarten teachers.
2) We were in our last year at Harvard Law School, headed off to work at big corporate law firms in New York.

When we told them that we worked in the first set of very worthy yet non-threatening professions, the men smiled, flirted, and offered to buy us drinks.
“That’s why you have such a nice smile!”
“If I was naughty, would you make me stay after class?”
“Wow, you must be really flexible.”
Requests for our phone numbers were common. Results were uniformly positive.

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Why Working Mothers Lie

I’m a liar. Actually, I’m a serial liar.

I refuse to admit that I’ve been late or absent from work because the kids have chicken pox/flu/a broken collarbone, or the babysitter didn’t show up. I would rather lie to my boss and cite train delays or urgent meetings.

Here’s the harsh truth about why: It is simply not acceptable admit that you are giving anything less than 100% at the office because you happen to be a mother. Any excuse, including chronic flakiness, a borderline drinking problem, or being abducted by aliens, is better than confessing problems on the mommy front.

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One of the Boys

I love being one of only three women in my office. I work at a small technology company in Chicago that caters to the financial industry. We have 20 male developers and a few business development guys. I work in the Marketing/Public Relations department.

We spent one of our recent happy hours at Monk’s on Lake Street. It’s the kind of pub where you throw peanut shells on the floor. One of our developers, a 23-year-old guy who just moved out of his parent’s house, was trying out his pick-up lines on me. He asked me if I knew a good vet. I said, “No, why?”

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Sexism in the City: What’s the real deal?

Collecting data on behaviour in the City can’t be easy at the best of times. When it’s data designed to explore and uncover potentially sexist attitudes, you need to be deft if you’re to tiptoe across this particular minefield.

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Only ourselves to blame on pay issues?

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A swathe of stories in the UK press this week about the Pay Gap issue has columnists and career women agonising over why the slowly narrowing gap between what high-end men and women earn has gone into reverse after eleven years. Read more

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Leaving the office: Connie’s story

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Connie Thanasoulis has just left her job at Merril Lynch after seven years, for a much-needed break. She worked at Merrills most recently as Director and Chief Operating Officer for Campus Recruiting, having spent a total of twenty-one years working in the industry. She’s taking time out to enjoy the things she hasn’t previously had the daylight hours to accomplish…

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From here to maternity…

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If you’re a female of a certain age and working in banking, you’ll appreciate that at a variable point in your thirties (round about early- to mid-) your career track and biological clock mysteriously start working against each other.

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