sexism

Dems Rely on Black Women Voters: But Why Can’t Black Women Get Elected?

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Governor Votes Early Donna Brazile writes in Ms. magazine that in the elections of 2008 and 2012, the group that turned out to vote in the highest numbers was black women. In 2012, 60 percent of 18- to 29-year-old-black women voted, and 76 percent of all black women were registered to vote. A recent Pew study found that in 2012, the voter turnout in the United States was low—53.6 percent of the estimated voting-age population. Only 65 percent of the US voting-age population even bothered to register to vote. Brazile cites “The Power of the Sister Vote” poll from Essence magazine, which indicates that the turnout will again be strong for black women in 2016, “driven by a hunger to institutionalize their gains” in:

  • Increased affordable health-care access
  • Quality education reform and access to low-cost college education
  • Living-wage reforms
  • Criminal justice reforms
But the frustration levels are high for political candidates like Donna Edwards, an African American woman who just lost the Democratic primary race for a Senate seat in Maryland. Jill Filipovic writes in the New York Times that while the Democrats rely on black female voters, only one black woman has ever been elected to the Senate. In addition, while Trump accuses Clinton of playing the “woman card,” Edwards, during her primary race, was accused of playing both the “woman card” and the “race card.” The implication is that these “cards” somehow confer unearned advantages to the women holding them. Yet research shows that for black women, combined stereotypes about both race and gender create double challenges for them to be perceived as competent leaders and elected, or hired, to leadership positions. Filipovic suggests that the problem, in general, is that authority, competence, and power are perceived to be male qualities. Several recent studies show that when the same résumés are shown to both male and female evaluators, the documents are rated more highly when they have a man’s name, John, on the top than when the same documents have a woman’s name, Jennifer, at the top. Filipovic proposes that to fight pervasive prejudices, we need to change our images of competence and power by putting more women, especially more women of color, into positions of authority and leadership so that women in authority becomes normal rather than unusual. Specifically, she says, “we can’t change longstanding assumptions about what a leader looks like unless we change what leaders look like. . . . Democrats should make [the ‘woman card’ and the ‘race card’] central components of a winning hand.” She also suggests that when there are equally qualified men and women competing for positions, Democrats should champion politicians who are not white men. It’s the only way that, in the long run, we are all going to win.   Photo credit: Governor Votes Early. by Jay Baker at Baltimore, MD. via Maryland GovPics on Flickr]]>

The “Woman Card”: What Is It?

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According to Donald Trump and others on the right like Rush Limbaugh, Hillary Clinton is playing the “woman card.” What does that really mean? Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times explains that the implications are that women, and in particular Hillary Clinton, have some kind of unearned advantage because they are women. Kristof challenges this assumption with the following facts:

  • There has never been a woman president of the United States.
  • Only one-fifth of senators, 20 out of 100, are women.
  • Women earn 92 cents to a male worker’s dollar.
  • A bare 19 percent of corporate board seats are held by women.
  • An assault on a woman happens every nine seconds.
  • Men and women judge women more harshly for the same job application, résumé, or essay when, in several research studies cited by Kristof, the names on the documents are switched from John to Jennifer.
  • In the same studies, salary recommendations for the job applicant with the masculine name were 14 percent higher than for the same applicant with a feminine name.
Kristof notes that these disadvantages for women reflect unconscious bias, which he defines as “a patriarchal attitude that is absorbed and transmitted by men and women alike—which is one reason women often aren’t much help to other women.” I talk about this same dynamic in my book, New Rules for Women: Revolutionizing the Way Women Work Together, as an example of internalized negative stereotypes that result in women not supporting other women and being harder on each other in the workplace.

Why Do We Need More Women in Politics?

Jill Filipovic of the New York Times suggests that we need more women in elected office. Because of our life experiences as white women and women of color, many elected women:
  • Get more cosponsorship for legislation.
  • Bring more money home to their districts.
  • Focus on priorities such as the need for access to affordable health care, contraception, quality education and low-cost college tuition, living-wage reforms, and criminal justice reforms.
Kristof concludes that if the polls show Clinton leading Trump, it is not because she has a “woman card,” which is less than worthless. He notes that a “woman card” is “like a credit card that isn’t accepted anywhere but carries a $3,000 annual fee.” If Clinton wins the election, it will because of her “experience, policies, temperament and judgment.”   Image credit: FreeImages.com/Julia Freeman-Woolpert]]>

New Research: Work Is Valued Less When Women Do It

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Why is the gender gap so persistently stalled at annual median earnings for women of about 20 percent below men’s? It has been 53 years since the Equal Pay Act was passed by the US Congress in 1963, yet women still don’t get equal pay for equal work. Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times reports on several new studies that reveal a core reason for the pay gap—work is valued less when women do it. Miller notes that a number of factors once thought to explain the gender wage gap are no longer true, yet the gap remains. For example:

  • Women now have more education than men.
  • Women have nearly the same amount of work experience as men.
  • Women are equally likely to pursue many high-paying careers.
One of the new studies, coauthored by Paula England of New York University, was conducted using US census data from 1950 to 2000. This research tracked the movement of women in large numbers into previously male-dominated occupations. When the occupation switched from being male dominated to female dominated, the pay declined for the very same jobs men were doing before, even when accounting for education, work experience, skills, race, and geography. For example:
  • When women became designers in large numbers, wages fell 34 percent.
  • When women became biologists, wages dropped 18 percent.
  • When women became housekeepers, waged declined 21 percent.
The reverse was true when an occupation, such as computer programming, attracted more men and switched to being male dominated. Another of the new studies, conducted by Claudia Goldin at Harvard University, shows that women and men are paid differently, even when they do the same job. For example:
  • Female physicians earn 71 percent of what male physicians earn.
  • Female lawyers earn 82 percent of what their male colleagues earn.
In other words, whether women have become the majority in an occupation previously dominated by men or are doing the exact same work as their male colleagues, these studies show that the work is valued less when women are doing it. We also know that there are significant differences by race—women of color are paid less than white women in the same occupations.

What Can Help?

I have shared several possible strategies for closing the gender wage gap in previous posts. In addition, some innovative policies and tools are being introduced at the state level. Shirley Leung of the Boston Globe reports on one exciting new tool introduced by Massachusetts state treasurer Deb Goldberg—an online salary calculator where you can look up the wage gap by sector. The calculator also allows you to send an anonymous e-mail to your employer, encouraging the recipient to download an “Employer Tool Kit” that explains how to close the gender wage gap. The data behind the calculator comes from the US Census, and the wage categories are large. The city of Boston is in the process of collecting actual wage data from city employers, on a voluntary basis, but that data is not yet available. Leung notes that there is power in numbers. Many employers do not report or analyze their wage data by race and gender and do not realize that pay discrepancies may exist. In addition to sending an anonymous e-mail to our employers, urging them to take steps to identify and remedy pay discrepancies in the organization, another step we can take is to elect women to state and federal offices. The record shows that women in government—like state treasurer Deb Goldberg and the US congresswomen who keep unsuccessfully introducing the Paycheck Fairness Act to remedy problems in the 1963 legislation—are committed to closing the gap. It will take action from all of us to close the gender wage gap.   Photo credit: Víctor Santa María from Buenos Aires, Argentina – Suterh Solidario – Víctor Santa María, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23362803]]>

Are Women Candidates Changing Presidential Politics?

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It is really significant that two women ran as candidates in the 2016 presidential campaign. Kelly Ditmar, writing for Ms. magazine notes that while Hillary Clinton felt she had to prove that she was “man enough” to be commander in chief in the 2008 campaign, both she and Carly Fiorina ran on their own terms in 2016, “disrupting the images, tactics, and rules of the game that have been determined by men.” Neither woman denied the influence of gender on her experience:

  • Carly Fiorina talked about how being a woman informed her bid for office. She also shared her own battles to overcome sexism in corporate America as an example of her toughness.
  • Hillary Clinton has talked about the “merit” of gender in that it shapes our lived realities and the perspectives we bring to policy making. She has discussed her understanding of the need for paid family leave by sharing her experiences of being a primary caregiver and a working woman. She gives equal attention to the concerns of both women and men in her campaign agenda.
Even though Fiorina dropped out of the race during the primary season, the fact that for awhile two women were running for president representing two different political perspectives may help normalize the image of women in leadership in the future. Both Fiorina and Clinton also influenced the agendas of their parties. Fiorina, responding to Trump’s attacks on her appearance as “unattractive” in his Rolling Stone interview, called women’s attention to how these attacks demeaned women. Clinton has pushed her party to make paid family leave, pay equity and the provision of affordable, quality childcare central to the party agenda. But double standards remain for women candidates. Dittmar notes that Clinton must still confront the double bind of “needing to prove her strength without being characterized as unfeminine or unlikeable.” She was recently characterized by a well-known journalist as unacceptably aggressive for “shouting” during rallies and debates—behavior considered normal for her male opponents. Dittmar also observed that “gender shapes the experience and behavior of each candidate and, like any identity, brings variety and richness to the race. In this respect, every candidate is playing a gender card, women and men alike.” Amen to that.   “Carly Fiorina at NH FITN 2016” by Michael Vadon and “April 14, 2015 – Jones Street Java House in Le Claire, Iowa” by Michael Davidson for Hillary for America are licensed under CC BY 2.0. Both images have been cropped.]]>

The Latina Wage Gap (It’s the Worst!): What Employers May Be Missing

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latinaNew research from the University of Massachusetts Boston on workers in Massachusetts finds that while a gender wage gap exists across all occupations for women, the gap becomes a chasm for Hispanic women, especially for low-wage workers. Here are some facts from the research:

  • White women make 83 percent of what white men make in the same occupations.
  • Hispanic women make 56 percent of their male equivalents.
More specifically, here are some numbers for low-wage workers:
  • Latinas who work as cleaners make 54 cents on the dollar compared to all male janitors and 59 cents compared to their Hispanic male counterparts.
Ann Bookman, the study’s author, notes, “the earnings gap for women of color is wider than for women as a whole, and for Latina women it’s egregious.” The wage gap for Latinas is particularly damaging for mothers. Women are the primary breadwinners in slightly more than half of all Hispanic households in Massachusetts with children under eighteen. Of these female breadwinners, 49 percent are single mothers. Many of the research participants complained that they are seldom offered promotions when openings occur because they are not seen as having leadership potential. They also report difficulty in being considered for higher-paying jobs as single mothers because they are assumed to be unreliable. These assumptions reflect misunderstandings about Latina culture. Evangelina Holvino conducted research on Latinas and found eight cultural scripts that can be leveraged as strengths if employers understand them. Holvino defines cultural scripts as commonly held assumptions shared by a cultural group that are learned beliefs about how to be in the world. The eight scripts she discovered for Latinas are
  1. Familismo—valuing close family relations
  2. Simpatía—avoiding conflict and disharmony
  3. Colectivismo—putting the needs of the group before those of individuals
  4. Personalismo—forging meaningful and trusting relationships
  5. El presente—being in the here and now
  6. Respeto—respecting authority, age, and power
  7. Machismo-marianismo—strongly differentiated gender roles
  8. Espiritualismo—trusting in a higher power/being
Holvino’s research offers us a way of understanding Latina cultural scripts as strengths that employers should appreciate and leverage. For example, instead of assuming that a single mother is unreliable, her value of familismo means that she is driven to work hard to support her family. She will do what it takes to perform well and keep her job. The scripts of simpatía, colectivismo, and personalismo give her an important leadership framework and capacity for building and leading teams.

What Employers Can Do to Close the Wage Gap and Value Latinas in Their Workforce

With these new wage-gap statistics and Holvino’s research in mind, here are some suggestions for employers:
  1. To begin with, employers can look closely for pay disparities by occupation in their organizations and make adjustments in pay to close the gaps. Pay disparities are often invisible and unscrutinized and reflect unconscious bias.
  2. Employers should become familiar with the cultural scripts, or cultural assumptions, that guide hiring and promotion decisions in their organizations. For example, the dominant criteria for leadership in Anglo culture, which focuses on valuing individual achievement and a direct communication style, runs counter to strengths in Latina culture.
  3. Employers can become familiar with Latina cultural scripts and develop appreciation for the value they can add.
  4. Employers can expand their definitions of leadership to include strengths in Latina cultural scripts, such as building relationships.
Understanding and including cultural differences can enrich us all and add capacity to our organizations. And it’s past time to close the gender wage gap for everyone. Image credit: Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net  ]]>

The Beauty Culture and Age: What’s Wrong with Christine Lagarde?

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A coaching client recently asked me for the names of older women who are public figures and could be role models for her. She had just turned fifty years old and realized that her self-image was of a much younger woman, which was getting in her way professionally. She was struggling to “find her voice” and speak out more at work. Her boss had recently given her feedback that she was viewed as lacking confidence. Through reflection, she became aware that her self-talk, reflecting her “young self,” undermined her confidence by telling her that she did not know enough or had not yet earned the right to express her opinions. In addition to having a young self-image, she felt pressure to color her hair to hide the grey and to dress like a much younger woman, all of which may have reinforced her own perception, and the perception of others, that she was less experienced. The only woman in public life whom we could both think of, though, who embraces her age and is seen as powerful is Christine Lagarde. Christine Lagarde was appointed in 2011 to be the first woman to head the International Monetary Fund (IMF). She is fifty-nine years old and has beautiful white hair. She is a great role model for my client—she is confident, powerful, and attractive, and she embraces her age. Having role models as we age is important, especially in the United States, where our youth-focused culture can be dismissive and even discriminatory toward older women and older men in terms of hiring and promotions. While these economic challenges are real, feeling good about your life experience and having the confidence to draw from it to find your voice and demonstrate leadership presence is also important. I recommended that my client develop a ritual with her friends to embrace and celebrate her inner Chrone. She’s not a little girl or a young woman any more—she has wisdom to offer that she needs to embrace. What’s wrong with Christine Lagarde? Nothing. I’m sure she has critics and detractors, as all powerful people do, but she also has beautiful white hair, projects confidence and a strong leadership presence, and provides a great role model for women on many levels. Who are your role models?   Image credit: Image courtesy of International Monetary Fund

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Do You Worry about Your Appearance? What Is the Cost?

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Women and girls in the United States, and in many other parts of the world, feel enormous pressure to look good to be both socially and professionally acceptable. Conforming to the beauty culture can require that women undergo and pay for botox injections and cosmetic surgeries on faces, breasts, tummies, buttocks, and thighs to either enhance or reduce the appearance of those body parts, along with expensive makeup, skin cream, and hair coloring to hide grey hair. And, of course, clothes and shoes are not cheap. While men also experience some pressure to attend to their appearance, it is nothing like the pressure on women. Where does this pressure come from? It comes from everywhere—from magazines, television, social media, the workplace, family, and peers.

What Are the Costs?

There are several ways to think about the costs of the pressure to conform to the beauty culture:
  1. Time and money—The most obvious costs are time and money. Mika Brzezinski, in her book, Knowing Your Value, talks about the pressure from both viewers and her employers to maintain an expensive wardrobe as a talk show host. She is expected to spend a significant percentage of her salary, without reimbursement, on clothes, while her co-host, Joe Scarborough, is not expected to do so. She is also required to arrive on set two hours before showtime for hair and makeup preparation. Since their show begins at 6 a.m., another cost for her is sleep, since Scarborough only has to roll in fifteen minutes before showtime to slap on a little face powder. Many women, in all walks of life, feel these same pressures to spend time and money that they may not be able to afford on their appearance.
  2. Health—Surgery always has risks. My niece, a beautiful young woman in her thirties, decided that she needed liposuction to remove fat from her stomach and thighs to improve her appearance. She got a postsurgical infection that became systemic and almost died. She survived but remains seriously scarred and disfigured. Medical complications can occur from any type of elective cosmetic surgery or treatment, including botox injections.
  3. Body Shame—Recent studies reported by Renee Engeln in the New York Times found that “fat talk” (public body disparagement, such as posting, “I’m so fat,” on social media) has become, “practically a ritual of womanhood.” One study found that more than 90 percent of college women reported engaging in fat talk even though only 9 percent were actually overweight. Fat talk is linked with body shame, which motivates unhealthy eating choices and, in the extreme, can result in eating disorders. This research also finds that fat talk is contagious. In other words, engaging in it may drag others down into body shame with you.
  4. Role Modeling—We give conflicting messages to the girls in our lives when we tell them that what matters is what’s in their hearts and minds, while at the same time we are spending a lot of time and money on our appearance. Actions speak louder than words.

What Are Our Choices?

There is a lot we don’t control as individuals. We cannot change the airbrushed sexist messages that advertisers bombard us with about how we are supposed to look. We don’t have much hope, as individuals, of changing the often unspoken influence of appearance on hiring and promotion decisions in the workplace. Peer pressure is hard to resist, without a doubt. But you can control your own behavior and make a difference:
  1. Find support. Having other women and men in your life who are willing to question the cost of participating in the beauty culture can help you make the best choices for yourself.
  2. Be a role model. What is the message that you want the girls and younger women in your life to receive about being girls and women? How can your choices reinforce that message?
  3. Stop engaging in fat talk.
  4. Join a book group. Many reading and discussion circles are forming in workplaces to raise awareness of diversity issues, including gender differences. You can form such a group if one does not exist. Many books and articles are available that you can read together to stimulate discussion.
In my next article I will talk about the beauty culture and age, so watch for it! What are the pressures you face? What decisions have you made about participating in the beauty culture and why? What advice do you have for others?   Image credit: Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]]>