Women Lose More Jobs in Recessions

The U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee recently released a report confirming that women are more vulnerable to job loss during recession. Unlike the economic downturns of the 1980s and 1990s, the 2001 recession was particularly detrimental to women because they not only lost more jobs than men but also did not see their employment rates recover to their pre-recession peak. Since women bring home more than one-third of family income and single mothers are often the sole breadwinners, women’s unemployment also has harsh implications for the economic security of families and communities. Greater job losses for women translate into reduced government revenue and cuts in spending on programs and services that benefit women and their families.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/business/22jobs.html?scp=1&sq=women+and+jobs&st=nyt
http://jec.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=80a7a0cd-6125-495d-bca5-09af2c0393f9

Study Suggests Strategies for Hiring Women in Sciences

A recent study tracking the career paths of more than 3,000 male and female applicants for jobs in science, mathematics and engineering fields found that women were less likely to apply and more likely to decline job offers than men. The study, conducted by sociologists Christy M. Glass of Utah State University and Krista Lynn Minnotte of the University of North Dakota, suggested strategies for recruiting more women into science and technology jobs. Although they determined that employers were willing to hire women, there was a lack of understanding of where and how to market jobs to female candidates. Recommendations ranged from advertising job postings in publications specifically geared towards women in the sciences to including at least one woman on search committees.
http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/08/05/women
http://aaa.main.usu.edu/Assessment/Fac_Vitas/SSWA/GlassChristy.pdf http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/leaders_entry.php?id=6453&area=All

Women Leaving Science Careers

The Center for Work-Life Policy has found that more than half of women who choose careers in science, engineering, and technology drop out. The study identifies five major causes—hostile “macho” work environments, severe isolation, lack of career path guidance and orientation, systems of reward that emphasize risk-taking, and extreme work pressures—and proposes fourteen new initiatives to address these challenges. The paper “Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology,” is published by the Harvard Business Review.

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3100

http://www.worklifepolicy.org/index.php/section/research_pubs

http://www.worklifepolicy.org/documents/AthenaPressRelease-April30.pdf

High-Ranking Women Lose Jobs on Wall Street

Recent instability in the financial services sector has had a negative impact on women in corporate leadership. One of the highest-ranking women on Wall Street, Lehman Brothers chief financial officer Erin Callan, was recently removed from her post after the company suffered a $2.8 billion loss in the second quarter. The change came just months after Morgan Stanley forced the retirement of co-president Zoe Cruz. While no one should be allowed to remain in a job just to fill a quota, experts say that the expectations for women executives are higher and that women have to be “twice as credentialed” to even be considered for top jobs. Although women make up 46% of the workforce, only 15.4% of them hold Fortune 500 senior officer positions. “There’s so few women [that] when one of them gets fired [from an executive position], the percentage drops 10 percent,” said Gail Evans, former CNN executive vice president.
http://www.mainstreet.com/wall-street-women-under-siege

The Myth of Women "Opting Out" of the Workplace

When Lisa Seftel was planning for her first child, she and her employer made a deal that she would work three days in the office and two days at home. This arrangement would allow her to have full employer benefits and share the childcare with her husband. In 2003, however, her employer went back on his word, telling her she could work five days a week in the office or three days at home. Like so many other women, Seftel was forced to quit her job because she could not afford to pay for childcare and would lose her family’s health insurance if she worked only three days. While a plethora of news reports has explained the recent trend of women leaving the workforce as "opting out," new research has emerged showing that the workplace is at fault for failing to meet women’s needs.
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=3640

Forced Unpaid Maternity Leave for Detroit Police Officers

Female police officers in Detroit often hide their pregnancies because they face the prospect of unpaid leave. The Detroit Police Department designates pregnancy an “off the job injury” and requires pregnant officers to leave their positions until after they have given birth. A state legislator has introduced a bill that would overturn the policy and the department faces possible legal action by an officer who was forced to take unpaid leave.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080606/METRO/806060360/1409/METRO

Female Baby Boomers Face 'Retirement Gap'

The first Baby Boomer to file for social security was a woman, highlighting the increasing number of women who will rely on the program in the near future. Thousands of Baby Boomers could apply for social security everyday over the next 20 years, over half of whom will be women. Yet, in the presidential primaries there has been no mention of the retirement gap or the particular needs of women. Click here for more.

For Women, Greater Obstacles to Retirement

For many women, retirement is not an option. An increasing number of women can not afford to retire because they have not saved enough money to support themselves after retirement. Even if they have invested in a traditional pension or a 401(k) plan, women consistently enter retirement with about half as much money as men do. Please click here for more.

For Women, a Slow Narrowing of the Pay Gap

In 1979, women working full time made only 63 percent as much pay as men, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now working women make 81 percent as much as men. Yes, that’s an improvement, but it still means that median weekly earnings were $600 for women last year, compared with $743 for men. Click here for more

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.