By Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)
We’ve all heard the saying there are two sides to every story and that’s never been more true than with the seemingly new phenomena that has been deemed the “motherhood penalty,” which asserts that working mothers get passed up for raises and promotions at a higher frequency than single women without children. Not only that, but recent studies have also shown that working fathers experience no such professional limitations or wage penalties as a result of having a family.
Women in the corporate world have had to contend with these issues for years now, so the results of the award winning Cornell study entitled, Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty, weren’t very surprising when they were published in the American Journal of Sociology. According to the study, experiments found that “mothers were penalized on a host of measures, including perceived competence and recommended starting salary. Men were not penalized for, and sometimes benefited from, being a parent. The audit study showed that actual employers discriminate against mothers, but not against fathers.” None of this, of course, is an issue of contention among working women. What’s creating the real controversy is who is getting the shorter end of the stick in terms of pay and promotions: working moms or women with no children.
In Defense of Working Mothers
One of Getting a Job’s co-authors, Shelley Correll, was recently quoted as saying that she wasn’t surprised to find that mothers were discriminated against, but was “very surprised by the magnitude of the discrimination.” Correll and the other researchers sent out fake resumes for both a childless woman and a mom; both were equally qualified and the only difference was that the mom’s resume listed “Parent-Teacher Association coordinator” under the heading “other relevant activities” as a discreet way of informing employers that it was a parent’s resume. The researchers quickly discovered that the moms were viewed less favorably than the non-moms and were less likely to be hired. Even more disturbing, mothers were offered an average of $11,000 a year less in compensation than the childless job candidate with the same qualifications.
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Building a Women’s Network at Your Company
NetworkingOn Tuesday, the Forté Foundation brought together movers and shakers from New York’s top companies as part of its 2010 Network of Women’s Networks conference. The theme of the conference was Driving Change through Innovation – and as speaker Kerrie Peraino, Chief Diversity Officer of American Express explained in opening remarks, “Far from being the buzz words of this millennium, change and innovation, they are actually a call to action.”
Attendees were asked to focus not only on how change and innovation come to fruition within an organization, but how they themselves are change agents. And of course, because of the emphasis on networks, women were encouraged to build relationships and make new connections with other conference attendees.
Networking for Innovation
Kicking off the day with a speed-networking session, Amy Orlav, Professional Development Specialist at the Graduate Management Admission Council ®, joked, “What is the best part of any conference? Don’t say the food.” She answered, “it’s the networking!”
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Debating the Motherhood Penalty
Work-LifeWe’ve all heard the saying there are two sides to every story and that’s never been more true than with the seemingly new phenomena that has been deemed the “motherhood penalty,” which asserts that working mothers get passed up for raises and promotions at a higher frequency than single women without children. Not only that, but recent studies have also shown that working fathers experience no such professional limitations or wage penalties as a result of having a family.
Women in the corporate world have had to contend with these issues for years now, so the results of the award winning Cornell study entitled, Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty, weren’t very surprising when they were published in the American Journal of Sociology. According to the study, experiments found that “mothers were penalized on a host of measures, including perceived competence and recommended starting salary. Men were not penalized for, and sometimes benefited from, being a parent. The audit study showed that actual employers discriminate against mothers, but not against fathers.” None of this, of course, is an issue of contention among working women. What’s creating the real controversy is who is getting the shorter end of the stick in terms of pay and promotions: working moms or women with no children.
In Defense of Working Mothers
One of Getting a Job’s co-authors, Shelley Correll, was recently quoted as saying that she wasn’t surprised to find that mothers were discriminated against, but was “very surprised by the magnitude of the discrimination.” Correll and the other researchers sent out fake resumes for both a childless woman and a mom; both were equally qualified and the only difference was that the mom’s resume listed “Parent-Teacher Association coordinator” under the heading “other relevant activities” as a discreet way of informing employers that it was a parent’s resume. The researchers quickly discovered that the moms were viewed less favorably than the non-moms and were less likely to be hired. Even more disturbing, mothers were offered an average of $11,000 a year less in compensation than the childless job candidate with the same qualifications.
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Ask-A-Career-Coach: Prioritizing Your Job Search Activities
Ask A Career CoachI recently coached a young professional who wants to change careers but has done nothing with his search because he is juggling working full-time and attending graduate school. He feels like he doesn’t have any extra time, so his $64,000 question for the session was: “if I am limited in what I can do, what should I be prioritizing?”
Your best time management strategy will depend on your specific circumstances, your working style, your timetable, and your search goals. But here are some considerations to get you started:
Use your circumstances. This person had a brand name graduate school with a strong career services office. Part of his search should be to learn exactly what resources are available to him, including coaching and workshops, information products and research material, networking events and job leads (with deadlines entered into his calendar in advance). Read more
Mixed Success for Women in New York Companies’ Leadership – And How to Improve
Industry Leaders, LeadershipLast week, the Women’s Executive Circle of New York presented the results of its “2009 New York Census – The state of Women Business Leaders in New York State.” The study was created in partnership with Columbia Business School.
Yessinia Scheker-Isquierdo and Candace L. Quinn, co-presidents of WECNY opened the event with mixed results. On one hand, said Quinn, “In New York we have actually increased the number of seats held by women.” But on the other, “the percentage of companies that have no women [in top positions] has increased” as well.
Companies should encourage women in their top ranks, especially in challenging times, she explained. Women are skilled at keeping the important issues at the forefront of a discussion. The diversity of background, thought, and decision making that women bring to the table allows for dynamic solutions to problems, rather than allowing hard conversations to drift into group-think territory.
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Financial sector recruitment trends for 2010
NewsBy Elizabeth Harrin (London)
Last year wasn’t a great year for financial services, and if you managed to keep your job you’re probably wondering what new employment ‘challenges’ 2010 will bring. It’s a mixed story, but the good news is that there is some good news.
Sectors that are picking up
Sue Sattler, President of recruitment company Talent Network Group, believes that bank recruitment is going to pick up in 2010. “We will experience some increase in hiring greatly due to the troubles in the banking industry and new compliance and legislation that will continue to unfold,” she says. “The last half of 2008 and through 2009 we saw many newly created positions or additions to staff. These positions were largely in credit, corporate risk and compliance. Many of these positions were mandated or recommended from the bank examiners.” Sattler also believes that mergers and acquisitions will be a growth area this year and may be another avenue for those looking to transfer their banking and finance knowledge and skill set.
Sue Allon, CEO and founder of Allonhill, a mortgage due diligence firm, has seen an improvement in her sector too. “The mortgage securities market is clearly coming back,” she says. “Even in the past couple of months, the deal flow and work going into getting deals moving has stepped up dramatically. There is recruitment going on in this sector, at the banks, the hedge funds and the expert service providers like Allonhill. When I walked the trading floors of the major banks last summer, the lights were off in some cases, and there were very few people there. I’m now seeing hundreds of people back on the floors, and they are very busy.”
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Voice of Experience: Colette Taylor, Managing Director and COO of Americas Institutional at Russell Investments
Voices of ExperienceA well-stocked kitchen cabinet is more than a reassuring comfort; it can get you through some hard times. If you ask Colette Taylor, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of Americas Institutional at Russell Investments and founding president of Russell’s Women’s Network, about her “kitchen cabinet,” she will not talk to you about shelves lined with orderly packages of staples and foodstuffs. Referring instead to Harvard professor Bill George‘s cabinet concept, she will tell you about a cabinet of advisors on whom she can lean for support in difficult times—times like those from which executives across the globe are emerging and through which they are leading their firms. In 2009, Taylor’s own personal board of directors, made up of coworkers, professional coaches, family members and friends, created a platform on which she could strip away distractions, get back to basics, and focus on relationships.
Getting back to basics can mean becoming leaner as an organization. This can be bad news for a program that receives corporate support, such as mentorship programs. As Taylor says, “A formal mentoring program can get lost because it can be considered less of a priority. But mentoring is always going on whether there is a formal program or not; people continue to reach out.” To get the most benefit from a mentoring program, she might remind you to look into your own kitchen cabinet. “One of the things that I have learned is that mentoring can have two facets—one for developing specific skill sets focused on the ‘professional,’ and one for work/life balance. Sometimes those are two different mentors because they are such different conversations. There is tremendous value in hearing from a diverse set of perspectives. This can uncover something you have never thought about—an idea from left field.” And that maverick perspective may be just what is needed. “I’ve been both a mentor and a mentee. I enjoy being on both sides; when you are a mentor, you are getting mentored at the same time. If you are really open to the mentoring relationship—really listening— it can change you.”
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Playing for Success: A Conversation with Ellen Leikind
ReviewsEllen Leikind is the founder of POKERprimaDIVAS, a company that provides corporate team-building programs that teach women how to play poker and use what they learn at the table to enhance their business skills. She is also a successful marketing executive who spent more than 15 years in the corporate world working for several Fortune 500 companies. The more she played poker, the more she saw the similarities with the larger game of business and personal fulfillment. Her new book, PokerWoman: How to Win at Love, Life, and Business Using the Principles of Poker, positions the card game as a metaphor for life.
TGH: Why poker?
EL: I decided to take a break from my career and during that time, I started to play poker again. And that’s when I started to see the connections between what you need to play poker, and what you need to survive in the boardroom and have a rewarding life.
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Honoring Black Enterprise’s Top Ten Most Powerful Women in Business
Industry Leaders, LeadershipThis year the iconic publication Black Enterprise (BE) celebrates its 40th anniversary. Since 1974 the magazine has featured prominent African American business women in a way that other publications have failed to. In 1991, the magazine published its groundbreaking list of the “21 Women of Power and Influence in Corporate America.” In 2006, it was a list of the “50 Most Powerful Women in Business.”
BE rang in 2010 with their most comprehensive list to date, profiling the “75 Most Powerful Women in Business,” as written by BE’s careers and lifestyle editorial director Sonia Alleyne. Alleyne’s rundown of the most prominent African American business women made its way into the hands of the publication’s nearly 3.7 million loyal readers and it is her hope that seeing successful, strong, black women will influence some of the publication’s struggling female readers to continue their fight.
“[We honor these women] to show that it is possible. The benefit men have in business, particularly in the corporate environment, is that they have so many role models; successful men who recognize potential in other young men and offer the necessary support and guidance to make sure they succeed as well. Women have historically operated outside of that network, but when we highlight women who have made it to the senior ranks of an organization or in their own business, it serves as a powerful source of inspiration to others who might be silently struggling in their companies wondering if it’s possible – or if it’s even worth the effort,” Alleyne said.
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5 Ways To Increase Your Employability
Featured, Industry Leaders, LeadershipWhile things are looking better for job seekers, the financial sector has not yet returned to its pre-recession state. There are still fewer jobs around. And even if you aren’t looking for a new job, the risk of more redundancies hangs heavy in the City. Nobody wants to be out of work at the moment, and although it’s a bit late for New Year’s Resolutions, you still have time to commit to improving your employability this year. Here are The Glass Hammer’s top five tips for improving your CV or resumé.
Enough already with the excuses. You will not die if you stand up and speak in front of a crowd. Cutbacks means fewer industry events this year but there are still plenty of conferences and seminars looking for speakers. You are an expert in something, and you only have to know a small amount more than the rest of the room to look like that expert. Speak at an industry conference about a project or initiative you have worked on – no one will know more about it than you and case studies are a perennial favourite on the conference circuit.
How do you get to be a speaker? It’s really easy – just ask. Look at the fliers that fall out of your industry publications or look on the internet for forthcoming events. By the time the schedule is published it will be too late for you to attend that session, but ask for your details to be put on the call for papers list and next time they are looking for speakers you’ll get a notification. You’ll be asked to prepare a short abstract about your presentation. The organisers take all the abstracts and choose those that would make a coherent conference schedule.
If that still sounds too scary then start small with a talk at your local professional institute branch. Or offer your services to a women’s network – they would love to hear about your career journey. If you are just starting out, talk to university groups about how you landed your finance job.
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Hunting and Gathering: Networking with Men
NetworkingI’ve never been fond of the imagery associated with the phrase “hunting and gathering,” conjuring up visions of big cavemen-types hurling spears at bison, while their female companions gingerly pick berries nearby. In fact, research has shown that this is often a bit more of a stereotype than a hard-wired reality. For example, a study of the Philippine Agta culture showed that women hunters regularly outperform their male counterparts – and mixed-sex groups do best of all: “Their rates are even better when they combine forces with men: mixed hunting groups have a full 41% success rate among the Agta.”
Why the scholarly introduction, you ask?
It seems that a similar division of the sexes is taking place in the business arena as well – even if it is within the bounds of the corporate auditorium, the conference room, the multi-purpose area. The line of discussion says that one reason women still lag behind in corporate leadership positions is because their networking style is simply different then men’s – preferring to seek out deeper professional connections than embarking on the broader approach associated with men: collecting casual acquaintances and leveraging them when the need arises. Women are hunting for a few deep, professional connections, rather than gathering many casual ones.
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