HERE WE GO AGAIN

Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists, Activists & Everyone WAM!2008

March 28-30, 2008

HERE WE GO AGAIN

Rosalind Chait Barnett, Ph.D.Community, Families & Work ProgramWomen’s Studies Research CenterBrandeis University

Caryl RiversProfessor of JournalismBoston University


March 28-30, 2008

Bad Stories About Women

That Never Die


March 28-30, 2008

Continuing Narratives

• Girls Can’t Do Math

• Larry Summers was Right--A Victim of Feminist PC

• We need much more research

• Science tells us there are great gender differences in math and science


March 28-30, 2008

Continuing Narratives, Cont’d.

• Boys hormones make them better at math.• Women can’t be geniuses.• Boys are better at spatial relations, making then

“hardwired” for math.• Boys are hardwired to deal with objects and

systems, girls are built for relationships.• There is no discrimination against girls.


March 28-30, 2008

Storyline: Stab in the back

• “Larry Summers & the Thought Police”

• Kathleen Parker, Washington Post

• September 21, 2007


March 28-30, 2008

Washington POST, Cont’d.• The latest smack-down of former Harvard President

Lawrence Summers should extinguish any remaining doubt that political correctness is the new McCarthyism.

• Summers, you'll recall, was driven out of his university post in 2005 after he suggested at a conference that gender differences might account for an under representation by women in science, math and engineering.

• Never mind that scientific evidence suggests as much. One simply doesn't say -- ever -- that men and women aren't equal in every way.


March 28-30, 2008

Atlantic.com• “Why Feminist Careerists Neutered Larry

Summers”

• By: Stuart Taylor, Jr.

• The hysteria about Summers furthers the career agendas of feminists who seek quotas for themselves and their friends.

• Unlike most religious fundamentalists, these feminists were pursuing a careerist, self-serving agenda. This cause can put money in their pockets.

v


March 28-30, 2008

SLATE

• THE PSEUDO-FEMINIST SHOW TRIAL OF LARRY SUMMERS.

• By: William Saletan


March 28-30, 2008

Slate, Cont’d.

• Already Summers is being forced to apologize, in the style of a Communist show trial, for sending "an unintended signal of discouragement to talented girls and women." But the best signal to send to talented girls and boys is that science isn't about respecting sensitivities. It's about respecting facts.


March 28-30, 2008

Weekly Standard

• Summers had no good reason, none whatsoever, for apologizing.

• Alas, Summers's decision to acquiesce in the denunciation and to serve up one apology after another not only legitimated but also emboldened the forces of darkness and reaction.


March 28-30, 2008

New York Times

• March 6, 2006 Monday

“Academic, Heal Thyself”

• By: Camille Paglia


March 28-30, 2008

NYT, Cont’d.

• Harvard's reputation for disinterested scholarship has been severely gored by the shadowy manipulations of the self-serving cabal who forced Mr. Summers's premature resignation.


March 28-30, 2008

Financial Times editorial

• Summers launched a “long overdue debate on an issue often judged too sensitive to discuss.”


March 28-30, 2008

Storyline: We Need New Research• Washington Post:

• By Sally Quinn:

• “Why don’t female mathematicians and scientists, especially at Harvard, get together and research this issue until they have definitive answers instead of reaching for the smelling salts.”


March 28-30, 2008

• Many other articles simply made the assumption that the issue of gender differences in math had not been studied before and that Summers was to be applauded for “launching new research.”

• Nothing could be farther from the truth, there is adequate research, but journalist have not bothered to read it.

• There’s plenty of evidence on the subject, dating back for many years, nearly all of it showing very small differences in cognitive abilities between the sexes.


March 28-30, 2008

• ''Here was this economist lecturing pompously this room full of the country's most accomplished scholars on women's issues in science and engineering, and he kept saying things we had refuted in the first half of the day." -- Denice D. Denton, Chancellor University of California, Santa Cruz. (An engineer)

• Summers trotted out “the same old lines we’ve heard for decades—if not for centuries—and they just aren’t supported by good data.”--biologist Marlene Zuk of UC Riverside


March 28-30, 2008

Storyline: “Science” says there are great differences between men

and women

• George Will: “There is a vast and growing scientific literature on possible gender differences in cognition. Only hysterics denounce interest in these possible differences.”


March 28-30, 2008

Innately, women don’t have what it takes to succeed in math and science


March 28-30, 2008

The Real Story

“The nation’s report card on math and science abilities” released in February of 2007, found that:

• Girls are doing increasingly well in math.

• The press virtually ignored this story.

• 37 newspaper articles on the report-- not one mentioned that girls were on a par with boys on a range of math abilities, including algebra, geometry, measurement properties, data analysis and other areas.


March 28-30, 2008

Major meta analysis of math aptitude scores from 4,000,000 students, by Wisconsin’s Janet Hyde found sex differences were tiny.


March 28-30, 2008


March 28-30, 2008

• Tests compared grammar school kids in the U.S., Taiwan and Japan. Japanese girls score almost twice as high as American boys. (A Japanese girl gene?) This fact is rarely reported in the American media.


March 28-30, 2008

• Definitive overview of math and cognitive abilities supposed to show substantial sex differences. Diane Halpern (Claremont McKenna) found them to be trivial. While there are slight differences, boys and girls are far more alike than different.

• Elizabeth Spelke (Harvard) analyzed all the available research (American Psychologist, 2005), in tests done from birth to maturity, males and females have the same aptitude for math and science.

• Spelke: Women do just as well as men on challenging university-level math courses.


March 28-30, 2008

• Spelke--five "core systems" at the foundations of mathematical reasoning.

• First, a system for representing small exact numbers of objects — the difference between one, two, and three. (5 mos.)

• Second, understanding numerical magnitudes — the difference between a set of about ten things and a set of about 20 things.

• Third, a system of natural number concepts that children construct as they learn verbal counting. This takes place between about the ages of two and a half and four years.


March 28-30, 2008

• Fourth and Fifth are systems first seen in children when they navigate: understanding the geometry of the surrounding layout and identifying landmark objects.

• There is, she notes, a biological foundation to mathematical and scientific reasoning that emerges in children before any formal instruction. These systems develop equally in males and females.

• “There’s not a hint of an advantage for boys over girls in any of these five basic systems.”


March 28-30, 2008

No.

Average performance High performance

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

num

ber

scor

ing

90-1

00%

girlsboys

Are Boys Better at Representing Numbers?


March 28-30, 2008

No.

(Spelke, LaMont & Lizcano, aggregated data)

0102030405060708090

100

4-8 years (N = 47)

perc

ent

corr

ect

perf

orm

ance

girlsboys

Average performance high performance

0123456789

10

4-8 years (N = 11)

num

ber

scor

ing

95-1

00%

girlsboys

Are Boys Better at Representing Objects?


March 28-30, 2008

The Development of Counting

Children typically learn to count over the years from 2 to 4.

An invariant learning sequence:“one” means an object“two” means two“three” means threecounting determines cardinal

value.Considerable variability in the speed of progression through the sequence.

Predicts success in elementary school math.


March 28-30, 2008

Are Boys Better at Learning to Count?

No male advantage on average or at the highest levels.

0

10

20

30

40

50

1 2 3 4 5 6 counter

Highest known number

Num

ber

of p

arti

cipa

nts

boysgirls

3 year old children


March 28-30, 2008

Sex Differences in the Capacity to Harness These Abilities for New Purposes?

Maps


March 28-30, 2008

The Development of Map-Reading

Children typically begin to understand map tasks at about 4 years.

Considerable variability in map reading at all ages.


March 28-30, 2008

Are Boys Better at Map Reading?

No.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

percentile score

num

ber

of p

arti

cipa

nts

girlsboys

4 year old children


March 28-30, 2008

Storyline: HormonesMale hormones that kick in at puberty give

boys a big edge in math.

• Michael Gurian, The Wonder of Boys• Steven Rhoads, Taking Sex Differences

Seriously• Anne Moir and David Jessel, Brain Sex


March 28-30, 2008

Louann Brizendine, MD.,The Female Brain

“When boys and girls enter their teens, their math and science abilities are equal.”

“But as estrogen floods the female brain, females start to focus intensely on their emotions and on communication.”

“Girls start to lose interest in pursuits that require more solitary work and fewer interactions with others.”


March 28-30, 2008

The Real Story• If true, we’d see boys’ scores at this age

soaring ahead of girls.

• But in 2001, sociologists Erin Leahey and Guang Guo at the University of North Carolina looked at 20,000 math scores of kids age 4 to 18 and found no differences of any magnitude, even in areas that are supposedly male domains, such as reasoning skills and geometry.


March 28-30, 2008


March 28-30, 2008

IES National Center for Education Statistics. (2007). The nation's report card: 12th-grade reading and mathematics 2005. Retrieved. from http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_grade12_2005/.

151149

0

100

200

300

400

500

Male Female

Average 12th-grade NAEP mathematics scores in 2005, by gender

d'=.06

http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_grade12_2005/


March 28-30, 2008

Storyline: Genius is a “guy” thing

• Daily Mail (London)September 25, 2007 “Only men can be geniuses”


March 28-30, 2008

Daily Mail, Cont’d.

• The stubborn facts of history remain. Very few truly original scientific discoveries have been made by women.

• There are no women geniuses in physics or mathematics to rival Newton or Einstein.

• there is no symphonic music by women to match the sublime works of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms or Shostakovich.


March 28-30, 2008

Daily Mail, Cont’d.

• On average, women are much more competent and much cleverer in that generalist “middle ground” where ordinary exam results are required, or ordinary jobs need to be done.

• Or, “The Mediocity of Women Hypothesis”


March 28-30, 2008

• Does the overrepresentation of males at the upper tail of the distribution of math aptitude scores explain why there are more men in leadership positions in science and math?

• Are women destined for mediocrity?


March 28-30, 2008

The Real Story• 2006 review of major studies, funded by the

National Academy of Sciences: no relationship between scoring in the upper tail of ability and eventual success in math/science careers.

• Of the college-educated professional workforce in math, science, and engineering, fewer than one-third of the men had SAT-M scores above 650, the lower end of the threshold typically presumed to be required for success in these fields.

• Clearly, not all these guys are Einsteins.


March 28-30, 2008

Benbow, Stanley and Lubinski followed mathematically talented boys and girls over time.

Results:

• Equal numbers of girls and boys majored in math. And they got equal grades.

• The SAT-M not only under-predicts the performance of college women in general, it also under-predicted the college performance of women in the talented sample.


March 28-30, 2008

Superiority in Space?

• Males generally score higher on tests of involving objects in space.


March 28-30, 2008

Charlotte Allen, op ed, Washington Post, March 08

• “Visuospatial skills, the capacity to rotate three-dimensional objects in the mind, at which men tend to excel over women, are in turn related to a capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning, the grounding for mathematics, science and philosophy.”

• A few females can be fighter pilots, architects, tax accountants, chemical engineers, supreme court justices and brain surgeons, but over the long run not many will succeed.


March 28-30, 2008

Superiority in Space, Cont’d. • Not a hardwired difference

• Study: Regular video game players had spatial ability far superior to that of non-gamers.

• Both men and women can improve their spatial skills by playing a video game; women catch up to men.

• Women’s success rate leapt from 55 percent to 72 percent and abilities remained over time.


March 28-30, 2008

Storyline: Boys are hardwired for systems and objects; girls,

for relationships

Men and boys do better at math, science, and are natural leaders because of their “wiring,” while girls and women do best at relationships, especially in low-level jobs that do not require leadership.

BBC documentary, NY Times op ed, Washington Post, Newsweek Cover.


March 28-30, 2008

• “Girls prefer dolls (to blocks and toys) because girls pay more attention to people while boys are more enthralled with mechanical objects.” --Parents' Magazine, June 2007

• Newborn boys were more interested in looking at a physical object than a face, whereas newborn girls were more interested in looking at a face than a physical object.--Steven Pinker, Harvard


March 28-30, 2008

• [there are] biological reasons that girls gravitate to dolls and boys gravitate to trucks-- Weekend Australian, 2006.

• Girls prefer dolls (to blocks and balls) ...because girls pay more attention to people while boys are more enthralled with mechanical objects-- Parents’ Magazine, 2006.


March 28-30, 2008

Christina Hoff Sommers, The American, March 2008

• Men like rigorous, systematic, challenging work

• Women prefer “empathy-centered fields such as early-childhood education, social work, veterinary medicine, and psychology.”

• “Veterinary medicine would be a dream job for the scientifically gifted but empathy-driven female.”

• (And those puppies are just so cute.)


March 28-30, 2008

The Idea, based on one study of day-old babies, is

that boys looked at mobiles longer and girls looked at faces longer. (Simon Baron Cohen, The Essential Difference)


March 28-30, 2008

There is a long literature flat-out contradicting Baron-Cohen’s study, providing evidence that male and female infants tend to respond equally to people and objects.


March 28-30, 2008

On what basis do very young children choose which toys to play with?

Toy Choice


March 28-30, 2008

The 3 toys were:

Gun and holster Traditionally male-typed

Tea set Traditionally female-typed

Ball Traditionally neutral


March 28-30, 2008

Purple Rhinestone Gun


March 28-30, 2008

Spiky Tea Set


March 28-30, 2008

KIDS: Spiky tea sets are for boys and purple rhinestone guns are for girls.


March 28-30, 2008

Thus, children are more likely to base their gender-typing of the objects on the attributes than on their traditional gender-typing.


March 28-30, 2008

Storyline: Discrimination

• There’s no discrimination against girls in science and math anymore--critic Charles Murray, at AEI conference, 2007.

• So if girls don’t score as well as boys, it has to be due to biology.


March 28-30, 2008

Real Story: The Leaky Pipeline

All GirlsPrimary Grades

Preschool Years

High School


March 28-30, 2008

10-year study of 4,000 children and 2,000 parents (Jacqueline Eccles, U. Michigan):

• Parents offer far more encouragement to boys than to girls to engage in problem-solving activities -- playing with Legos, for instance--that may give them an early advantage in spatial skills.

• Parents are more likely to attribute a boy’s success in this realm to "natural talent," whereas a girl is seen as "hard working."


March 28-30, 2008

Study of kids’ and parents' visit to a science museum (2004)

• Girls and boys were equally engrossed in the interactive science exhibits.

• But boys were three times more likely than girls to hear explanations from their parents about what they were seeing. This gender difference popped up with kids as young as one to three years of age.

• Parents may quite unconsciously, be creating a gender bias in science learning years before their kids ever even see the insides of a science classroom.


March 28-30, 2008

Crowley, K., Callanan, M. A., Tenenbaum, H. R., & Allen, E. (2001). Parents explain more often to boys than to girls during shared scientific thinking. Psychological Science, 12(3).


March 28-30, 2008

Crowley, K., Callanan, M. A., Tenenbaum, H. R., & Allen, E. (2001). Parents explain more often to boys than to girls during shared scientific thinking. Psychological Science, 12(3).


March 28-30, 2008

RELATED STUDIES:

• Parents and teachers of third- and fourth-grade children believed that boys were more talented in math—even though test scores of the actual children showed no gender difference in math.

• Teachers of 6th graders believed that boys were more talented at math than girls, even when the actual kids scored equally well on tests. Parents had less confidence in their daughters than in their sons math ability—regardless of their girl’s actual abilities and performance scores. This held true even when girls had higher grades in math than boys.


March 28-30, 2008

Research: People base their career choices more on what they believe to be their abilities, than on what their abilities actually are.

Over time, children construct their own self-perceptions which are based on their parents’ messages.

• They use these ideas in choosing a college major or a career.


March 28-30, 2008

Parents’ Beliefs

Teacher’s Beliefs

Child’s Beliefs

Tiedemann, J. (2000). Parents' gender stereotypes and teachers' beliefs as predictors of children's concept of their mathematical ability in elementary school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92(1), 144-151.

The Power of Beliefs About Math Ability

1

2


March 28-30, 2008

• Mothers in particular have a strong and long-lasting influence on those choices. For example:


March 28-30, 2008


March 28-30, 2008

Women's Math Performance Affected By Theories On Sex Differences

Women perform differently on math tests depending on whether they believe math-related gender differences are determined by genetic or social differences, according to University of British Columbia. ScienceDaily (Oct. 20, 2006)


March 28-30, 2008

The Study provided participants with bogus explanations for alleged sex differences in math.

• Worst math performances-- women who received a genetic explanation for female underachievement or who were reminded of the stereotype about female math underachievement.

• Women who received a “culture” explanation performed better.


March 28-30, 2008

• The Swedish Medical Research Council, which funds biomedical research, does not evaluate women and men on an equal basis for their prestigious fellowships.

• When men’s and women’s applications were rated for scientific competence, men fared far better—even when they weren’t as good as women.


March 28-30, 2008

• Researchers found that a female applicant had to be 2.5 times more productive than the average male applicant to receive the same competence score.

• The most productive group of female applicants (those with 100 points or more for publication, research etc.), was the only group of women judged to be as competent as men.

• Even then, astonishingly, these female high achievers were judged only as competent as the least productive group of male applicants (who had fewer than 20 points).


March 28-30, 2008Wenneras, C., & Wold, A. (1997). Nature, 387 (22 May), 341-343.

Figure 1: The mean competence score given to male (red squares) and female (blue squares) applicants by the MRC reviewers as a function of their scientific productivity, measured as total impact. One impact point equals one paper published in a journal with an impact factor of 1.


March 28-30, 2008

Larry Summers based his comments on women’s “lack of innate ability” in math and science on their failure to advance in universities.

• Is that a good measure?


March 28-30, 2008

Or, are universities hostile places for women faculty?Answer. Yes!


March 28-30, 2008

• If you look only at universities to see who is talented in math and science, you will get a skewed picture.

• Women do spectacularly better, a 2007 study shows, in non-hierarchical workplaces.

• Female scientists in biotech firms have a much higher probability of being in a position to lead research teams than do their female colleagues in academia.


March 28-30, 2008

• In universities, women were 60 percent less likely to be supervising than men.

• In biotech, women were 7.9 times more likely to be in supervisory jobs than in universities.


March 28-30, 2008

Narrative: Achievement makes women unhappy

• Women are miserable without men

• Too much ambition is dangerous for womens’ happiness

• Men will be miserable if they marry career women

• Men don’t like smart women

• Best and brightest want to go home

• Only men want to sacrifice to achieve.


March 28-30, 2008

"Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough”--The Atlantic,

March, 2008• “To the outside world, of course, we still call

ourselves feminists and insist—vehemently, even—that we’re independent and self-sufficient and don’t believe in any of that damsel-in-distress stuff, but in reality, we aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle, we’re women who want a traditional family.”

• Any man, even one you don’t love--or even like--is better than none.


March 28-30, 2008

The Wonder of Girls, Michael Gurian

• Achieving women will be miserable.

• Women’s primal need is to be mothers, and women who seek careers or are family breadwinners will live to regret it.

• Feminism teaches girls to turn away from their natures.


March 28-30, 2008

What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us:Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman…DANIELLE CRITTENDEN--New York Times Book Review

“Those aspects of life -- whether it's the pleasure of being a wife or of raising children or of making a home -- were, until the day before yesterday, considered the most natural things in the world.”


March 28-30, 2008

But feminism, for all its efforts, hasn't been able to banish fundamental female desires from us, either -- and we simply cannot be happy if we ignore them.

When a woman postpones marriage and motherhood, she does not end up thinking about love less as she gets older but more and more, sometimes to the point of obsession. Why am I still alone? she wonders. Why can't I find someone? What is wrong with me?

CRITTENDEN, Contd.


March 28-30, 2008

Modern Woman: The Lost Sex--1947 bestseller

• “Male-emulating careerists have such anxiety about pregnancy that their glands secrete chemicals that destroy fertility”.

• Return to “normal” role in society would soothe ovaries that spew defective eggs.


March 28-30, 2008

Daily Mail Sept. 2007

We women have never had it so good. So why ARE we unhappy?

I’m afraid it's obvious to me that the woman who regards taking care of her family and keeping an eye on her elderly parents as the sum total of her ambition is bound to be more contented than her sister who wants to "have it all."

-- Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton University

Women are making themselves unhappy by 'wanting it all'


March 28-30, 2008

Is chemistry destiny? New York Times, columnist David Brooks,

September 17, 2006.

• ”Happiness seems to consist of living in harmony with the patterns that nature and evolution laid down long, long ago.”

• Long long ago, of course, was when men were in charge of the world and women knew their place.


March 28-30, 2008

The Real Story

• Women 28-35 with advanced degrees who earn over $55,000 are as likely to be happily married as women who earn less (Heather Boushy, Center for Economic Policy Research).

• The more education women have, the more likely they are to marry.

• Women who earn more than their husbands have marriages as stable as women who make less than their husbands.


March 28-30, 2008

Corollary: Men who Marry Achieving Women will be miserable, Forbes.com, 2006

“Don't Marry Career Women: How do women, careers and marriage mix? Not well, say social scientists.”

Michael Noer (editor)


March 28-30, 2008

Major analysis of data: Our study of 300 dual-earner couples sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health challenges the Forbes thesis that men will be unhappy if they marry career women.

For most husbands in dual-earner couples, marital quality is unrelated to their wives’ earnings.Why? Probably for a number of reasons.


March 28-30, 2008

• Men's wages have been stagnant or declining for nearly 20 years, so women’s income may be easing financial tensions and making it possible for the couple to pay their bills.

• Her enhanced earnings may be heightening her self esteem, and so she brings these good feelings about herself into the marriage.


March 28-30, 2008

• He may want to spend more time with the family, and her work eases his breadwinning burden.

• Men today do want more family time and are actually spending more time with their families than they used to.


March 28-30, 2008

Will men who marry career women have terrible sex lives?

No.

• A longitudinal study of 500 couples by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Janet Hyde found that for both men and women, the highest sexual satisfaction was among couples who both worked and experienced high rewards from their jobs.

• A good job is good for your sex life.


March 28-30, 2008

Trend Story:

Best and brightest are going

home


March 28-30, 2008

Fact: Over 78% of mothers with a graduate or professional degree are in the paid workforce, and they are 3 times as likely to work full-time as part-time.

Bureau of the Census, 2002


March 28-30, 2008

The Opt-Out Revolution Revisited

Joan C. Williams

The American Prospect, March, 2007

In nearly three-fourths (73 percent) of the newspaper stories we analyzed, the overall tone was one of pulls rather than pushes - women following the pull toward home, with little mention of how the workplace pushes them out.


March 28-30, 2008

• In a 2004 study by Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy, 86 percent of highly qualified women surveyed said work-related reasons, including workplace inflexibility, were key considerations in their decisions to quit.

Yet only 6 percent of the articles we reviewed identified workplace pushes as key reasons why women left work.


March 28-30, 2008

• Storyline--Women are less serious than men about work, and want more traditional lives. (PEW study that got major press)

• “Part-Time Looks Fine To Working Mothers; 60% Prefer It to Full-Time--Washington Post

• Moms prefer part-time gigs, new study says.

• The proportion of mothers who feel that way jumped 12 percentage points since 1997.--Grand Rapids press


March 28-30, 2008

• The subtext: Feminism is eroding and women want to return to more traditional lives.

• Problems: – a tiny sample (259 working mothers, 153 at

home mothers).– Poorly worded questions


March 28-30, 2008

• PEW study doesn’t define what part-time work means.

• A female doctor who chooses to work four days a week instead of five is tossed into the same category as the bored housewife who works a few hours a week at a local retail store.

• What women say they want is at odds with what they actually do.

• Just 24 percent of working mothers work part-time, and the number of mothers working part time has not increased in the last decade.


March 28-30, 2008

• Story angles: Women want to go home or work part time because they are turning their backs on ambition and becoming more traditional.


March 28-30, 2008

What mothers most likely want:

• Not part-time, pin-money jobs• But good jobs with reasonable hours

that give them flexibility to spend time with their families.


March 28-30, 2008

• NYU sociologist Kathleen Gerson: Full time work has come to mean 50 hours or more. That overload is what mothers are rejecting.

• Women, overall aren’t opting out of full-time work, but are getting pushed out by an increasingly inflexible workplace.


March 28-30, 2008

• US working mothers have far fewer supports than women in other countries.

• 37 countries guarantee parents some type of paid leave when children fall ill. The 163 countries offer paid maternity leave. The US does not.

• All industrialized countries except Australia offer paid family and medical leave, the US does not. Australia guarantees a full year of unpaid leave while the US offers 12 weeks.


March 28-30, 2008

• 45 countries offer paternity leave.

• 96 countries mandate paid annual leave.

• The US is tied for 39th with Ecuador and Surinam for enrollment in early-childhood education for 3-5 year olds.

The US does not.

The US does not.


March 28-30, 2008

-Patricia Sellers, Power: Do women really want it. Fortune, October 13, 2003.

Storyline: Women really don’t want power


March 28-30, 2008

• George Will :Women "cheerfully choose" low-paying jobs.

• Steven Pinker, Harvard: Men are risk-takers but women "are more likely to choose administrative support jobs that offer lower pay in air-conditioned offices.”


March 28-30, 2008

MEN: Having lots of money; inventing or creating something; having a full-time career; and being successful in one's line of work.

• WOMEN: The ability to have a part-time career for a limited time in one's life; living close to parents and relatives; having a meaningful spiritual life; and having strong friendships--Steven Pinker, Harvard.


March 28-30, 2008

• Men suited for: Mastery of hunting and tracking; trading, achieving, and maintaining power; gaining expertise, tolerating solitude, using aggression; and taking on leadership roles.

• Women suited for: Making friends, mothering, gossip, and "reading" your partner.--Simon Baron Cohen, Cambridge University.


March 28-30, 2008

The Real Story:

• A meta-analysis of studies of managers (Gary Powell, UConn: female managers as motivated as male managers.

• Study of two thousand managers--female managers more hard driving than men.


March 28-30, 2008

“As Leaders, Women Rule” Business Week, 2000

• Women executives, rated by peers, underlings and bosses on a wide variety of measures, from producing high quality work to goal-setting to mentoring employees.

• Women got higher ratings than men on almost every skill measured.

• “Management gurus now know how to boost the odds of getting a great executive. Hire a female.”


March 28-30, 2008

Same Difference

Rosalind Barnett and

Caryl Rivers

www.same-diff.com

Documents

HERE WE GO AGAIN