By Cleo Thompson (London), founder of The Gender Blog
Alex Crawford, whose coverage of the capture of Tripoli for UK news channel Sky News made recent headlines, has declared that it’s “offensive and sexist” to ask how she raises her four children and adds that she objects to the way in which female war correspondents are asked if they can juggle motherhood and frontline journalism when their male counterparts do not face similar questions. Speaking to the Edinburgh International Television Festival via satellite link from Libya, Crawford added that she thinks that “as a woman, you bring a different view to the whole thing … a woman who’s been through the same experiences, even if it’s giving birth, that gives you an empathy.”
Crawford would therefore doubtless be pleased to read some recently published research from the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, which suggests that children whose mothers work outside the home are no more likely to have behavioural or emotional problems at age 5 than kids whose mums stayed at home.
“We don’t see detrimental effects on children’s behaviour with maternal employment,” says study researcher Anne McMunn, PhD, a senior research fellow at University College, London.
Living with two working parents seems to be best for kids, and this effect was apparent even after researchers took into account the mothers’ education level and household income.
Girls may even fare worse if their mothers stay at home. Girls whose mums weren’t working at all in the first five years of their life were twice as likely to have behavioural problems at age 5, the study showed.
“Working mothers should not feel guilty that this will have any impact on the social, emotional, or behavioural development of their children and if anything, they may be doing a service in terms of increased income and some positive effect for girls,” McMunn says.
The new study analysed data on parental employment when children were infants, 3 years old, and 5 years old. The researchers compared this information with social and emotional behaviour at age 3 and 5 to see if the mothers’ work status had an effect on risk for problems later on.
Ask-a-Career-Coach: How to Survive an MBA
Ask A Career CoachBack to school!
It’s a rallying cry we usually associate with kids’ backpacks and notebooks, but don’t forget about mom. More and more, working women are heading back to school to upgrade their skillsets and resumes with an advanced degree.
In fact, this fall a record number of women will be entering two of the country’s top MBA programs–the Harvard Business School and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Women will make up 39% of Harvard’s class of 2013, and at Wharton, women will represent 45% of the incoming class.
Those happy numbers are the result of national efforts by groups such as the Forté Foundation, a consortium that advocates the MBA as a career-advancement and leadership-development strategy for women.
That said, a concurrent MBA – attending classes while keeping your job – isn’t for everyone. “If you’re looking for career advancement within your current company or within the same industry, the part-time/executive route is a good option,” advises Elissa Sangster, Forté’s executive director. “But if you are looking to change your career or industry, I highly recommend taking the full-time route.”
The pay-off for a concurrent MBA is big. “You get your education while continuing your career progression and drawing a salary.”
But there’s also a downside, Sangster adds: “Your life will be very complicated.”
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Catch 22: Challenging Masculine Leader Stereotypes
Managing ChangeAccording to a recent Northwestern University report entitled Are Leader Stereotypes Masculine?, the characteristics that people commonly ascribe to women, men, and leaders contribute to the challenges that women face in obtaining leadership roles and performing well in them.
The study also found that women are viewed as less qualified in most leadership roles and when women adopt culturally masculine behaviors often required by these roles, such as being assertive or aggressive, they are viewed as inappropriate or presumptuous. Alice Eagly, professor of psychology at Northwestern and co-author of the study calls this ‘the double bind.’
“Masculine qualities are seen as more crucial to leadership, so women are thought to be less qualified than men. We call this the double bind because when women have these ‘masculine’ characteristics and behave in ways that are competitive and ambitious, it’s not seen as a good thing,” Eagly said.
“This is because women are thought of as ‘nice’; they must be nice even when they become leaders, which leads people to question whether or not they’re cut out for the role. If they’re not nice; however, people wonder what’s wrong with them. Men don’t have this problem because they’re never expected to be nice.”
How do we get out of this Catch-22? Eagly provided some suggestions.
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Men Who Get It: Jorge Benitez, Managing Director, North America and Chief Executive, United States, Accenture
Men Who "Get It"“I remember Susan Butler, Accenture’s first female senior executive,” began Jorge Benitez, Managing Director, North America and Chief Executive, United States at Accenture. “To be the first at something – that’s huge.”
In fact, Benitez himself has been an advocate for and a role model of diversity at the company since he joined it thirty years ago. He explained, “There weren’t a lot of people who looked like me when you looked around. We’ve made huge strides since then. And it’s important as we become leaders to pass that onto the next generation.”
“It’s night and day versus 30 years ago – diversity is part of our fabric now. Of course, we can always find room for improvement,” he said.
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Phew! Saying Goodbye to a Busy Summer
NewsToday The Glass Hammer is taking a day off to celebrate Labor Day and bid farewell to a very eventful summer. Over the past few months, we’ve managed to host two big events – A Brave New Regulatory Environment and The Newest Innovation in Technology – and we’re busy putting the finishing touches on our inaugural London event as well (not to mention surviving some pretty unusual weather here in New York!).
Beginning this month, we have some other very exciting surprises in store for our readers – and we can’t wait to share them with you. Of course, as always, we’ve got some fantastic interviews with industry leaders, articles on effective career advice, and the latest news on women in leadership lined up for this fall.
Finally, last Friday, we asked you to tell us what you’d like to see more of on The Glass Hammer – after all, this is your community. And the results are in! The top three topics you voted for were:
We’re already at work planning more stories around these topics. If you have any specific questions you’d like us (or one of our amazing career coaches) to address, please ask in the comments section below.
Here’s to a productive budget season, a seamless back-to-school, and a sigh of relief for some gorgeous fall weather!
Follow Up: Three Ways to Reconnect This Fall
NetworkingIt’s sad, but true. Summer is nearly over. The heat has broken, vacation is over, and the kids are going back to school. You’ll probably be seeing more of your colleagues around the office, and as folks get back into the swing of things, you’re starting to feel more of the buzzing energy that goes along with the beginning of fall – the last push for business before everyone begins to disappear again for the holidays.
That means these next few months are crucial times to reconnect with folks in your field, new potential clients, and those contacts you made last spring. It’s time to make your own autumn resolution: make fall the season to follow up. Here are three ways to reconnect – and a little follow-up homework – for you to do this month.
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Will Being “Nice” Really Cost You $2,000?
Money TalksEarlier 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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Leadership Lessons: Sorting through the Trip to the Top
Expert AnswersFrustrated, she shook the ladder she was too tired to climb, had been climbing for years. It was just one more step and yet it looked like a mountain of ice. The call had been in the early morning, time when most would still be wandering down the paths between dreams and deep sleep.
They wanted her. They were offering her the CEO position. The meeting was set for day after tomorrow in London. It was all very hush-hush. Only the key people were in the loop. A diagnosis of inoperable cancer had changed the game. She knew she was a contender, yet that was in the succession plan for a future time – not now. But suddenly that last step on the ladder was to right here, right now.
She got up and started to plan her wardrobe. And then it hit her, like a hardball smack in her gut. Tomorrow was the day she was to be a chaperone with her son’s fourth grade class; an all day visit to the zoo. The trip she promised she would not change, no way, never, as she had done so many other times.
Her husband stirred from sleep. They talked. No – their son had enough of dad time; this one was a promise from a mom who was the major breadwinner, and because of that, was rarely available for school outings.
The demands were weighing down on her. Was the trip to the top really worth it? And so what’s the big deal about the trip to the zoo; she’s only a chaperone for crying out loud. This true story belongs to so many of us: moments of conflicting demands, moments of loyalty binds that choke us.
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Working Mothers: Role Models to the Next Generation
Managing ChangeAlex Crawford, whose coverage of the capture of Tripoli for UK news channel Sky News made recent headlines, has declared that it’s “offensive and sexist” to ask how she raises her four children and adds that she objects to the way in which female war correspondents are asked if they can juggle motherhood and frontline journalism when their male counterparts do not face similar questions. Speaking to the Edinburgh International Television Festival via satellite link from Libya, Crawford added that she thinks that “as a woman, you bring a different view to the whole thing … a woman who’s been through the same experiences, even if it’s giving birth, that gives you an empathy.”
Crawford would therefore doubtless be pleased to read some recently published research from the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, which suggests that children whose mothers work outside the home are no more likely to have behavioural or emotional problems at age 5 than kids whose mums stayed at home.
“We don’t see detrimental effects on children’s behaviour with maternal employment,” says study researcher Anne McMunn, PhD, a senior research fellow at University College, London.
Living with two working parents seems to be best for kids, and this effect was apparent even after researchers took into account the mothers’ education level and household income.
Girls may even fare worse if their mothers stay at home. Girls whose mums weren’t working at all in the first five years of their life were twice as likely to have behavioural problems at age 5, the study showed.
“Working mothers should not feel guilty that this will have any impact on the social, emotional, or behavioural development of their children and if anything, they may be doing a service in terms of increased income and some positive effect for girls,” McMunn says.
The new study analysed data on parental employment when children were infants, 3 years old, and 5 years old. The researchers compared this information with social and emotional behaviour at age 3 and 5 to see if the mothers’ work status had an effect on risk for problems later on.
Read more
Flex and Job Security: The New Balancing Act
Work-LifeAccording to a recent study in the Journal of Vocational Behaviour, there is a huge disconnect in policy and practice when it comes to corporate flex programs. The study, “Influences on employee perceptions of organizational work–life support: Signals and resources,” found that even though many companies have flex policies in place, employees aren’t taking advantage of them.
Why? Workplace cultures often do not support actually using human resources policies as they are written.
As the report’s author Ariane Ollier-Malaterre told the Financial Times:
Ollier-Malaterre indicated that a workplace culture unsupportive to flex utilization may be driving women out of the workforce – that at the manager level and beyond, women tend to drop off the career ladder. The reason, she says, is that companies have a hard time acknowledging that many women have significant priorities outside the workplace.
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Voice of Experience: Jennifer Fitzgibbon, Managing Director, Treasurer, Americas, RBS Global Banking & Markets
Voices of Experience“Think about how you are going to distinguish yourself in this industry,” advised Jennifer Fitzgibbon, Managing Director and Treasurer, Americas at RBS‘s Global Banking and Markets division. “What are the things I can do to stand out and establish myself as a go-to person?”
This is something Fitzgibbon has worked hard to do throughout her career. She recalled attending an off-site ski trip in Austria early in her career. She didn’t know how to ski but managed to connect with a colleague whom she had not previously met). He convinced her to ski down the black diamond slope with him.
“Later, I found out he was actually our new global head, and subsequently had recommended me for a large role because he thought I could handle anything. That’s the importance of putting yourself out there and taking a risk. Just try to do it without so many bruises!”
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