Making Your Impact: Advancing the Economic Power of Women

Smiling female professionalBy Natalie Sabia (New York City)

“Women hold up half the sky,” was the mostly widely conveyed message of Deutsche Bank’s 18th Annual Women on Wall Street Conference; a message so powerful, it resulted in mostly laughs and applaud, along with a few tears.

Over 2,000 women of all ages and all areas of financial services packed into the conference excited to hear from not only great women speakers, but also eager to hear what men in our business have to say.

Robert Rankin, Co-Head of Corporate Banking & Securities and Head of Corporate Finance at Deutsche Bank kicked off the night with an uplifting speech how global companies need women employers in order to grow their businesses. Currently, women control an astounding $12 trillion of global consumer spending. “It’s important to develop, inspire and motivate women in this business,” said Rankin. “This is a global movement.”

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He Said, She Said: Recalculating the Gender Wage Gap

iStock_000003482002XSmallBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

There is a 23 percent wage gap between men and women in the US – women working full time still earn just 77 percent of what men earn. For years now we’ve been told that the gap narrowed considerably in the 1980’s due largely to women’s progress in education and workforce participation and that progress has since stalled, but a new study from the University of Georgia’s Jeremy Reynolds and Jeffrey Wenger has revealed some shocking results.

While writing a paper about how couples deal with health insurance arrangements when sick, Reynolds came across an interesting fact: when a spouse reports on the health of their husband, they tend to say their husband is less healthy than their husband believes himself to be and the same is true for husbands reporting on the health of their wives. This unexplainable quirk got the professors wondering about what other issues self-reporting affected.

As it turns out, it’s made much of the data about the gender wage gap seem unreliable at best.

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Will Being “Nice” Really Cost You $2,000?

iStock_000002559773XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Earlier this month a new study revealed yet another dimension of the gender wage gap – how being nice can have a negative impact on your paycheck. According to the study, “Do Nice Guys—and Gals—Really Finish Last?” “agreeable” people earn less than “disagreeable” people. How does gender fit in?

The research revealed that “agreeable” men were penalized far more than “agreeable” women – the researchers, Beth A. Livingston, Cornell; Timothy A. Judge, University of Notre Dame; and Charlice Hurst, University of Western Ontario, posit that the reason is because men are expected to be aggressive, and when they behave in a manner contrary to societal expectations, they are paid less – much less, in fact. Disagreeable men made almost $10,000 more per year than their friendlier male counterparts.

On the other hand, the gap between agreeable and disagreeable women is much smaller. Disagreeable women only earn $1,828 more than agreeable women. According to the researchers, we can take this to mean that disagreeable women are punished for their counter-normative behavior.

They explain, “…because low agreeableness is at odds with norms for feminine behavior, disagreeableness will not likely be the same asset for women as it is for men.”

As Rachel Emma Silverman wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “It may not pay to be nice in the workplace.” Really?

The implications of the study are conflicting – should women aiming to earn a little more money dial up the attitude? Or is the small apparent benefit to disagreeableness negligible, considering the damage that playing to gender biases can do?

How can women use this study to be more effective at earning what they’re worth?

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Why the Growth in Female Investors Will Make a Difference

woman using laptopBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Kamie Zaracki, Chief Executive Offer of BetterInvesting, explained that women are growing more confident with personal investments – which is good for women themselves, as well as companies.

BetterInvesting is a volunteer-based nonprofit dedicated to providing individual investors with the tools and education they need to make smart investments. While the organization helps people organize into investment clubs, it also offers volunteer-led and staff-led educational events and, now, a robust offering of web-based courses and services. Founded in 1951, the group now boasts over 100,000 community members and is powered by over 1,300 volunteers, supported by a small home office of professional staff.

Zaracki said, “Individuals tend to be long term investors. If publicly-traded companies have a significant portion of their holdings owned by groups of individual investors, that could mean greater stability in our overall economy.”

“There’s no empirical data on this, but I would suspect that as women become more empowered as investors, and examine where their investments will do the most overall good, we will see a change in the way companies behave,” she continued. “In the long term, the market is going to reward those companies that consistently perform well. And society has a changing definition of what ‘consistently doing well’ means.”

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Ask for More Now, Ladies – Here’s How to Get That Raise

iStock_000013511726XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

When was the last time you negotiated a raise? If it’s been a while (or perhaps, if your answer was ‘never’), chances are you could be making more. According to Matt Wallaert, lead scientist at GetRaised, “The research shows that women don’t ask for raises as often as men do, and when they do, they’re not as successful at it.”

Carol Frohlinger, co-author of Her Place at the Table: A Woman’s Guide to Negotiating Five Key Challenges to Leadership Success, agreed. She said, “The challenge for women is that not only are we reluctant to ask because of socialization, but the reality is that both men and women expect women to negotiate differently than men. So when we ask, we get push-back, or we heard about someone else who asked and it didn’t go well, so we don’t try.”

But that’s no reason to be discouraged – research and planning can help you ask for and get more.

GetRaised, for instance, shows women how much they could be making, based on its extensive database of market-based compensation research, and then provides women with a tool to help frame the negotiation conversation. According to Wallaert, tens of thousands women have now used GetRaised – and 75% of the women who have used it have gotten a raise. On average, the site’s users receive a raise of about $6,000.

This is about confidence. The success of GetRaised’s users shows women just aren’t asking. It’s time for women to start negotiating with the confidence that they can get more.

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The Mommy Penalty Hits MBAs Hard

iStock_000012432210XSmallBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

“The Career Cost of Family,” a study written late last year by Harvard economics professors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, found that women with MBAs suffer the largest percentage “mommy penalty,” while those with medical degrees suffer the lowest proportionate loss. Findings were based on a survey of Harvard College graduates from 1969 to 1992, a study of MBAs from the University of Chicago, and a nationwide survey of various professions.

The study’s most crucial findings revealed that female MBAs who take 18 months off from their career to have children earn 41 percent less than male MBAs. Female Ph.D.’s earn 33 percent less than male Ph.D.s for taking the same amount of time off, while female lawyers earn 29 percent less than male lawyers, and female MDs earn 16 percent less than male doctors.

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Surprising New Findings on Gender Wage Gap in IT

Successful group of business colleagues working on a laptopBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

Last fall, Technisource released its Women & Men in Information Technology Survey, which revealed the many discrepancies in how men and women in the IT industry view the challenges being faced by women.

One of the most interesting findings revealed that nearly half of the men surveyed strongly believed that female IT workers were equally compensated for their work as their male counterparts, while only 22 percent of women surveyed felt the same.

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Why Do Working Moms Make Less?

By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)
iStock_000006103713XSmall
Women – and mothers in particular – have made tremendous gains in the workplace over the past two decades, but the U.S. Government Accountability Office‘s recent Glass Ceiling Report is making many mothers in management positions feel as if they’re taking one step forward and two steps back.

“I call this the mom bomb,” said Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, chair of the Joint Economic Committee, who commissioned the report. “When men become fathers their pay goes up and when women become moms their pay goes down.”

The report revealed that working moms are not only making less than their male colleagues, but they’re also making less than their childless female colleagues. This has been deemed “the motherhood penalty” and it’s something we’ve covered extensively here at The Glass Hammer. But according to new The Glass Ceiling Report, the problem doesn’t appear to be getting any better.

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Are Family-Friendly Benefits on the Decline?

working momBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently released the results of its annual study [PDF], which gathers information on the types of benefits employers offer their employees. It was found that most benefits remained stable this past year, though many benefit offerings are down from five years ago. It was also discovered benefits for working parents took some unexpected turns.

One of the hardest hit areas was flextime, with only 49 percent of employers offering flextime in 2010, down from 57 percent in 2006. Paid family leave also took a major hit, with just 24 percent of companies currently offering it, compared to 32 percent in 2006. The findings, which are based on a survey of 534 human resources professionals, aren’t very surprising. During rough economic patches it is not uncommon to see medical benefits reduced or 401(k) matching eliminated. What is perplexing, however, is sorting through the numbers and not being able to detect any rhyme or reason as to why certain benefits stay, while others go.

For example, 7 percent of HR respondents said they plan to reduce or eliminate paid-maternity leave policies within the next 12 months, while paid paternity leave is offered by 17 percent of companies today vs. 13 percent in 2006. The figures are also similar for paid maternity leave and 16 percent of firms now offer adoption leave. So, how do companies juggle different family friendly benefits during a tough economy? And more specifically, why would they decide to cut flex time while increasing maternity/paternity paid time off? How are these tradeoffs considered?

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Women’s Financial Confidence Rising, Finds Citi’s Women & Co. Research

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iStock_000002762853XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

“Women’s one-word association with wealth is security,” said Linda Descano, President and COO at Women & Co., a division of Citi.

Recently, Women & Co. released the results of its national survey on women and personal finance, which measured women’s attitudes toward money and financial decision-making following the recent recession.

Descano said that even before the recession, women saw wealth as a means to security, and now she said, “The women surveyed think the rest of society is finally thinking like them. Their financial values have really held steadfast.”

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