Helping Companies Retain and Advance Women
““The challenge for women competing in politics or business is less misogyny than unconscious sexism: Americans don’t hate women, but they do frequently stereotype them as warm and friendly, creating a mismatch with the stereotype we hold of leaders as tough and strong,” Kirstof said.
In other words, voters may not be aware of the true reasons they feel that a woman is not the right person for an elected office.”
»
Dan Carpenter of IndyStar.com writes a very engaging article about diversity in the 2008 election. An excerpt:
“The frustration is understandable. She’s eminently qualified to be president. No primary election candidate has ever before done this well without winning. Furthermore, none has been asked to walk a tightrope between too-soft and too-manly. None, certainly, has managed to mobilize a feminist-liberal force while touting her appeal to blue-collar whites and her willingness to bomb ‘em like the boys.”
»
HRZone.co.uk writes about the changing face of HR and how the job is much more “masculine” than perceived. In previous generations, HR was all about personnel - now it incorporates negotiation, conflict resolution, data management, etc. - decidedly masculine skills whether performed by a woman or a man.
»
Maya Dollarhide writes for CNN.com/living:
“In three studies, 463 men and women between 18 and 70 years old watched video of actors pretending to be job seekers or employers. The participants then wrote down which applicants should get the job, the type of responsibility they could handle and how high their salaries should be.
“We found that the women (on the tapes) who were judged as angry lost out in every category,” says Victoria Brescoll, an assistant professor at Yale University’s School of Management. She and Eric Uhlmann, a psychology professor at Northwestern University, conducted the research.”
»
Moms on Issues blog reports some sobering statistics from a study of school-age children:
*Ninety percent of girls reported experiencing sexual harassment at least once.
* 67 percent of girls reported receiving unwanted romantic attention
* 62 percent were exposed to demeaning gender-related comments
* 58 percent were teased because of their appearance
* 52 percent received unwanted physical contact
* 25 percent were bullied or threatened with harm by a male
* 52 percent of girls also reported receiving discouraging gender-based comments on the math, science and computer abilities, usually from male peers
* 76 percent of girls reported sexist comments on their athletic abilities, again predominantly from male peers
Interestingly, those girls whose mothers discussed feminism and equality with them, handled the harassment better and reported it.
»
Boys and girls are different - we all know this - yet researchers who point out the gender differences are unfairly described as “controversial.”
In a forthcoming book Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports, the American writer Michael Sokolove explores why young female athletes are more injury prone than their male counterparts. But the best part of the article is at the end…
In the course of his research, Mr. Sokolove discovered some startling facts:
»
Interesting discussion about gender differences posted on the blog for First Community Church of Columbus Ohio. Here’s an excerpt:
“We found that we couldn’t go very far with generalizations about gender without running into two other factors - individual differences and family of origin. Using the apt analogy of a three-legged stool contributed by a participant, we ended up feeling that the formation of each person stands on those three legs; gender, individual personality traits, and the family in which you grow up.”
»
In her Washington Post column Real Life Politics, Ruth Marcus shares Q&A about sexism in the current Presidential election.
»
Monica Nicosia, in her The Reading Blog, collected some interesting articles about gender issues, political power, and women in leadership.
»
The Wheaton News from Wheaton college reports:
May 17, 2008
NORTON, MASS. — Giving the keynote address at Wheaton College’s 173nd Commencement held on May 17, 2008, Wheaton alumna Katharine T. Bartlett marveled at the dramatic social, technological and scientific advances that have occurred over the past 40 years, and called attention to how far we still have to go.
“We could not know in 1968, even, that in our graduating class was the future governor of New Jersey, and future head of the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency that did not exist in 1968. We could not know that at another all women’s college 35 miles away, was a student who would be running for the democratic nomination for president 40 years later. Nor that her primary opponent in the primary would be a then seven-year-old son of a black Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas,” said Bartlett, the A. Kenneth Pye Professor of Law at Duke University and a leading scholar on gender issues and social change, and an advocate for children’s rights.
»