Monday, July 30, 2007

NEW: Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling

A new study by Linda C. Babcock and Lei Lai from Carnegie Mellon University and Hannah Riley Bowles from the Kennedy School of Government may explain why women’s salaries are still lower than those of their male counterparts. Traditionally, the gender gap in salaries is considered to be the result of men’s aggressivity and women’s passivity. Therefore, according to this theory, women could close the pay gap through assertiveness training.

Babcock, Lai, and Bowles, however, found that the gender gap stems from differences in the way men and women negotiate. Findings indicated that there is a social risk involved in negotiating. The study showed that both men and women perceived women who asked for more as being “less nice” and subtly penalized these women. Men tended to penalize women who asked for more money, but did not penalize other men for doing the same. Women tended to penalize both men and women who negotiated.

Results of this study explain that the social risk of negotiating is higher for women than men; therefore, women are less likely to negotiate salaries because they will be perceived less favorably by their superiors.

Read the full article.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

UPDATE: Ex-Surgeon General Says White House Hushed Him & Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised


Yesterday, former Surgeon General, Richard H. Carmona, testified to a Congressional panel that top Bush administration officials tried to prevent him from speaking out on public health issues they deemed controversial, including abstinence-only sex education, the emergency contraceptive Plan B, and mental and global health issues. He stated that any health information that did not align with the administration’s ideological or political agendas was excluded from or pushed to the fringes of his reports. For example, when Carmona wanted to speak out about scientific research supporting the benefits of teaching about both abstinence and contraceptives in schools, he was silenced. David Satcher and C. Everett Koop, also former Surgeon Generals, attended the hearing, and claimed that although these practices had become worse during the Bush era, previous administrations had also suppressed scientific information that conflicted with political and personal interests. Satcher reported that under the Clinton administration, he was refused permission to publish a report about sexuality and public health due to sensitivities surrounding the Lewinsky scandal. Koop stated that under the Regan administration, he had been dissuaded from confronting the AIDS crisis. For similar reasons, former FDA commissioner, Susan F. Wood, resigned in 2005 because of the administration’s delay tactics surrounding the approval of over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraceptive, Plan B.

Full Articles:
Ex-Surgeon General Says White House Hushed Him
Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised