Last semester, I had to a TED talk for RCL. In preparation for the talk, we watched Ann Cuddy’s talk about body language and how important it is when presenting yourself. Cuddy talked about the concept of doing a “power pose.” I recently came across an article that discussed the capabilities that this has on helping women advance in the work place- particularly on those with their eyes set on CEO positions.

A power pose is basically standing up straight, feet apart, and chin up. This pose leads to a drop in cortisol levels and a rise in testosterone levels (for both men and women.) If a women does this power-pose, she will feel more confident and be a more assertive leader; because of this confidence, she would be more likely to be taken seriously (of course, so would a man.)

Today women can and do reach top positions, but in surprisingly low numbers. It’s perplexing that while women graduate high school in higher numbers than men and get placed in jobs after college/grad school in higher number than men; when it comes to holding high positions in major corporations, women are lagging behind. Only 26% of vice president positions are held by women and they head only 4% of the Fortune 500 companies (Forbes).

There have been many reasons put forth to explain why this is the case, namely motherhood and women earning less in general. Another explanation is that women start making less and at lower positions, hence the gap (Business Week). However, new research has also found that it’s not that women don’t have the desire to have high, well-paying leadership positions, it is just that some women do not even feel adequate to take the opportunity. The ambition simply is not there or was lost along the way (Forbes).

Just has Ann Cuddy mentioned in her talk, women are much more likely to doubt that they belong in the positions that they do. This has been referred to as Impostor Syndrome, the nagging feeling that the success you have achieved happened by some luck and that you are a “fake”/impostor (NBC). Also, women are much more likely to underestimate their performance while men tend to overestimate theirs.

Female leaders in the business community are also treated differently as opposed to male leaders. Women are interrupted more and are treated in a more biased manner if they try to negotiate for a raise (Business Week). When negotiating for a raise, women are more likely to be seen as pushy and unlikeable, thus making them less likely to actually get the raise. Women in power at corporations tend to be “hard-charging” and “ambitious”. As a result, they tend to be disliked by co-workers and peers. Men in power are also often described as “hard-charging” and “ambitious.” However, women are more likely to care what others think of them and be upset by this (NBC News).

Workshops that give women skills to help them navigate the business world have been set up through executive leadership training programs at business schools. Carnegie Mellon was the first to do this. Among many techniques, these workshops specifically help women learn how to negotiate for a pay raise without making them feel like they’re being too aggressive. When negotiating for a raise (or leading in general), women should be confident and assertive but also “relentlessly pleasant”. By having “an air of warmth” women can combat the perception that female leaders in business are pushy. Women also learn to own their skills and have confidence in them, this combats the “Impostor Syndrome”. The point of these workshops, regardless of what business school they are offered at, aim to make women more confident and secure in their skills and ambition. Power posing and learning negotiation techniques are useless if the person doing them is seriously unsure of themselves. As Ann Cuddy said, “”I’m not telling women to be like men or to be different from who they are now; I’m recommending they should be their best, most effective selves,” says Cuddy. “Why would anyone not strive for that?” (NBC News.)

While it may be unfair that there is a bias toward women in the business field at all, these workshops have helped many women regain their ambition. By tackling an esteem issue that has previously kept women away from reaching the top, perhaps in the future there will be significantly more female CEOs leading Fortune 500 companies.

Sources:

1.http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/how-close-gender-gap-work-strike-power-pose-n9636

2.http://www.forbes.com/sites/peggydrexler/2013/07/15/women-need-more-than-confidence-to-succeed-they-need-ambition/

3. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-13/how-much-is-the-ceo-worth-for-women-it-s-17-percent-less

I’m sure many people have heard of the joke that women should marry doctors because they get paid well. However, new research suggests that women are succeeding in the medical field in unprecedented numbers.

Women have also been proved to be competent doctors, with one Huffington Post article suggesting that women are better doctors than men. This suggestion is based on research showing that female doctors spend more time with their patients, are more likely to prescribe recommended medication, and to plan required examinations. Another interesting finding was that the differences between male and female doctors tended to increase as they the ages of the doctors increased. Patients themselves treat female doctors differently, for example they are more likely to ask them follow up questions.

In general, there are more female doctors now and there are more women going to medical school. Today, women face less obstacles when attending medical school. Not surprisingly, as the culture towards women in the work force changed and became more accepting, they started attending and graduating medical school. The number of men and women attending and graduating medical school is very close to equal.

Still, like with other fields, women get paid less than men. For many years, this was believed to be caused by women’s parental responsibilities. Now, there is evidence that the speciality of medicine is also a factor. Women tend to populate family medicine or pediatrics, which pays less than the specialities that men populate. Men are more likely to work in heart surgery or radiology. There has also been research showing that men are simply more aggressive when negotiating for a pay rise. Even when all factors are made equal, taking into account work hours, academic titles, medical specialties, age and other factors that influence salaries; they still found men’s average yearly salaries were at least $12,000 higher than women’s.

Related to this subject, I also came across a petition that I thought was worth sharing. Last Spring, a new reality series premiered on Bravo titled “Married to Medicine.” It is about the lives of six African American women in the Atlanta medical community. Two of those women are doctors themselves, while the other four are married to doctors. In the style of many Bravo tv shows, it’s overdramatic and filled with drama between the women.

The show was met with backlash even before it premiered. It was criticized as showing an image of African American women in the medical field as materialistic and unprofessional; completely untrue to the real lives of African American female doctors. The issue is made more problematic, because there are not many reality shows portraying African American female doctors, it is worrisome to the African American women interviewed in the article that this is the only  portrayal of them on a non-scripted tv show. There is a concern that they will not be taken seriously in the medical community and that there will be negative stereotypes associated with African American women in the medical community. As of 2010, there are only 18,533 practicing physicians that are African American and female.

The second season of Married to Medicine is set to premiere this April.

Sources:

1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/18/women-better-doctors-than-men_n_4122667.html

2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/12/women-doctors-paid-less-female-men_n_1591286.html

3. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/what-does-married-to-medicine-say-about-black-female-doctors/274490/

4.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/world/europe/08iht-ffdocs08.html?pagewanted=all

5.http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/is-medical-school-a-worthwhile-investment-for-women/260051/

Today, it is not uncommon for a woman to have a job and be a parent. It has become a norm in American culture for women to receive a higher education and then to find a job. More and more, women are encouraged to wait until they are financially stable before getting married and raising a family. While being a “working mom” is definitely acceptable in our culture, working mothers encounter more setbacks in terms of wages and the job market.

Research has shown that there are many benefits to an employed married woman such as good marriage quality, children with less behavioral problems, and better mental health (due to a reduced risk of depression.) Stay at home mothers tend to have a higher chance of divorce and higher risk of depression. Also, women who returned to work soon after having a child reported more satisfaction with their lives. Today, almost two-thirds of married mothers employed. In addition, women are the sole or main breadwinner in 40 percent of households with children under the age of 18.

However, studies have also found that working mothers make 7%-14% less money per year than childless woman. This is obviously particularly alarming because the women with children have more than just themselves to support. A wide variety of factors contributes to this unfortunate phenomenon. This is most commonly explained as occurring because women who do not work for several years suffer because miss out on adding experience to their resume and getting contacts that can help them get ahead; therefore getting a promotion/raise often takes longer than it would for a childless woman. Also, woman may opt to take lesser paying jobs that allow them to spend more time with their families; for example, a lawyer working for a non-profit firm rather than a huge company or working for a high school as opposed to a large, public research university. It has been found that universally among American woman, decisions about employment are made based on the effect it would have on their families. It is also been found that women that want to have children sooner may hold off on getting the highest education possible, which results in them not having the highest paying job possible.

Yet there are also factors contributing to this wage gap that are beyond the control of working mothers. “We often see women returning from maternity leave who are given less work or dead end assignments,” Dina Bakst, head of the advocacy group A Better Balance, told NPR. “And this type of discrimination really drags down wages for women because they get off track, and even worse off and pushed out of the workforce.” A Better Balance study found that a CEO is more likely to assign a 20-something year old woman without a family a slightly higher salary or more career-boosting assignments than a middle-aged mother of four, because they  thinks the former will work harder.

In a 2012 study by researchers Matthias Krapf at the University of Zurich, Heinrich W. Ursprung at the University of Konstanz, and Christian Zimmermann at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, found that working mothers are no less productive than childless women. The study had a sample size of 10,000 women. All the women had children, were considered “white-collar”, and worked in fields related to economics and business. The marital status of the women varied. The sooner it was after a woman had a child, the less productive she would be; but after about a year or so, her productivity would return to normal or even increase.

The socioeconomic status of women is also something to consider. Single, lower class mothers without a college education are found to suffer the most from the wage gap between childless and non-childless women.  Fifty-eight percent of working families headed by women were low-income in 2012, according to a report released this week by the Working Poor Families Project. The less of an education the mother had, the more likely the family was to be low-income. The problem is made worse by the fact these women are in industries like retail, food service, and home healthcare that typically offer few benefits and little opportunity for advancement. In addition, the problem is further aggravated by the wage-gap between men and women and the   lack of affordable childcare. It is common for women to spend about 1/3 of their income on childcare.

So what can be done about this? It would make sense that those who need the money more should receive it. Still, the issue is more complex than that. Is this only an issue of wage? Or should the issue of childcare not be addressed as well?

Sources:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/the-mommy-track-myth/283557/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/coontz-the-triumph-of-the-working-mother.html?_r=0

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/14/working-moms-study_n_4782062.html

When one pictures women in the work force today, one may imagine women in fields like teaching, medicine, and law. But women in the STEM fields is still an emerging concept.

Recently, a New York Times article attempted to answer the question, “Why Are There Still So Few Women In Science?” The author of the article examined the issue by looking at statistics of women in the STEM fields while also sharing the personal stories of women in these fields, and what almost kept them away from achieving success.

The issue seems more cultural and social rather than biological. It’s not that women were not interested in science or unable to do well in it, the issue was more rooted in the fact that they were not encouraged to go further within their field. Women were tired of, “being underappreciated, feeling uncomfortable and encountering roadblocks along the path to success,” said physicist Meg Urry. Even more disconcerting, when women do decide to go into the STEM fields, their salaries are often less than a man’s.

What Will It Take To Get More Women in Green-Energy Jobs?, an article in the Atlantic, also examines the disheartening statistics. For example, “Only 18.4 percent of bachelor’s degrees in engineering are awarded to women.” However, the argument is made that women are essential to this field because they provide a different perspective.

While there are debates to how this problem should be resolved or how long it will take, it is a good sign that there is agreement that the lack of women in higher divisions of the STEM fields is a problem.