Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide

Here are some interesting (and somewhat depressing) statistics on why women tend not to negotiate when it comes to buying a car or negotiating a salary. What is the solution? COME TO CT NOW'S PAY NEGOTIATION SEMINAR SEPTEMBER 22! See our web site for details. In the mean time, read this:

http://www.womendontask.com/stats.html

Interesting Statistics


It's Necessary for Women to Negotiate Now More Than Ever Before

Between May 2001 and May 2002, 39 percent of the American workforce changed jobs.

In 2000, 76.8 percent of women aged 25 to 54 worked outside the home.

The divorce rate hovers at 50 percent.

Union membership is down 33 percent since 1983.

Women's earnings relative to men's have stagnated at 73.2 percent.

The percentage of births to single mothers (out of all mothers) has risen from 10 percent in 1970 to 33 percent today.

Women Don't Like to Negotiate

In surveys, 2.5 times more women than men said they feel "a great deal of apprehension" about negotiating.

Men initiate negotiations about four times as often as women.

When asked to pick metaphors for the process of negotiating, men picked "winning a ballgame" and a "wrestling match," while women picked "going to the dentist."

Women will pay as much as $1,353 to avoid negotiating the price of a car, which may help explain why 63 percent of Saturn car buyers are women.

Women are more pessimistic about the how much is available when they do negotiate and so they typically ask for and get less when they do negotiate—on average, 30 percent less than men.

20 percent of adult women (22 million people) say they never negotiate at all, even though they often recognize negotiation as appropriate and even necessary.

Women Suffer When They Don't Negotiate

By not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60—and men are more than four times as likely as women to negotiate a first salary.

In one study, eight times as many men as women graduating with master's degrees from Carnegie Mellon negotiated their salaries. The men who negotiated were able to increase their starting salaries by an average of 7.4 percent, or about $4,000. In the same study, men's starting salaries were about $4,000 higher than the women's on average, suggesting that the gender gap between men and women might have been closed if more of the women had negotiated their starting salaries.

Another study calculated that women who consistently negotiate their salary increases earn at least $1 million more during their careers than women who don't.

In 2001 in the U.S. women held only 2.5 percent of the top jobs at American companies and only 10.9 percent of the board of directors' seats at Fortune 1000 companies.

Women own about 40 percent of all businesses in the U.S. but receive only 2.3 percent of the available equity capital needed for growth. Male-owned companies receive the other 97.7. percent.

Women Have Lower Expectations and Lack Knowledge of their Worth

Many women are so grateful to be offered a job that they accept what they are offered and don't negotiate their salaries.

Women often don't know the market value of their work: Women report salary expectations between 3 and 32 percent lower than those of men for the same jobs; men expect to earn 13 percent more than women during their first year of full-time work and 32 percent more at their career peaks.

Girls Clothing Defining Gender Stereotypes

From: Shine.Yahoo.com

I came across an article last week that caught my eye. It discussed girls clothing that came out in time for back to school shopping. The clothes were targeted to young girls and contained messages such as "I'm too pretty to do math" "Future trophy wife" and "I'm too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me" The last message was sold on the JCPenny website with a message "Who has time for homework when there is a new Justin Bieber album out" I was horrified to read that these are the messages we are trying to convey to young girls.

Melissa Wardy started a Facebook campaign against these t-shirts in fear of her young daughter who is starting kindergarten this year, thinking that academics are only for boys. She had launched her own clothing campaign called Pigtail Pals in 2009 against this type of gender stereotyping with messaging like "Pretty's got Nothing to do With it". Because of Wardy drawing attention to this clothing, JCPenny's discontinued the sale of the offensive t-shirt and released a statement apologizing for selling it after

The article also talks about the 1994 barbie that spoke "Math Class is Tough" when you pushed a button on it's back. I wonder like this author why designers are continuing to push the stereotype that beauty is everything to young girls. How are young girls supposed to pursue careers and gain access to equal pay with their classmates wearing clothes like this?

Panel Offers Women In Their Twenties Secrets Of Career Success

First Posted: 9/8/11 05:27 PM ET Updated: 9/9/11 09:48 AM ET Huffingtonpost.com

NEW YORK -- While many 20-something women embarked on their dreams of a college education when a decent-paying job was virtually guaranteed, the rules have suddenly changed, with a new generation coming of age during an era of significantly reduced options.

Last night, on the second day of classes at Barnard College in New York, Glamour magazine hosted a sold-out event geared toward distilling the secrets of success for 20-something young women. The panel was part of the magazine's annual Top Ten college women competition, which honors 10 high-achieving undergraduates each year.

Hosted by Cindi Leive, editor-in-chief of Glamour, the panel included actress Taraji P. Henson, political blogger Meghan McCain, author Danielle Evans, New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor and racecar driver Danica Patrick.

Leive solicited the panelists' advice for college students facing a difficult job market. “What does it take to be successful in your twenties?” she asked. “What will it take to make your mark and really live your dream?”

Here was some of their advice for women who are just starting out:

• ”You really have a huge advantage on your side. More than any other time in your future life, you don’t have to worry that much about making money yet,” said Kantor, who made $18,000 a year in her first job after graduating from Barnard more than a decade ago. “Compared to the obligations you’ll have 10 and 20 years from now, you’re so free.” Given that freedom, Kantor said, young women should go after the best experience they can get, even if that means bartending a few nights a week in order to be able to make ends meet while working at a dream internship during the day.
• McCain cautioned young women to be careful about what they’re putting on the Internet, be it on Facebook, Twitter, or their personal blogs. “You can inhibit yourself from getting a job because people will be looking at what you’re saying and what you’ve been posting,” she said. “And no drunk Tweeting.”
• In the current unstable economic environment, when even the safest of career paths are no longer sure bets, Evans encouraged students to still pursue their passions. “My advice is to build the life you want around the things that you love," she said. “There is no net and the sooner you understand that, it will liberate you to pursue what it is you really want to do.”
• Henson also encouraged young women to resist fear, despite the weak economy. “You can’t be scared because fear can debilitate you,” she said. “You have to stay optimistic. You have to take a risk. You can’t let fear take over.”
• Finally, when it came to seemingly doing it all, Patrick stressed the importance of learning how to set limits and say no. Kantor also encouraged young women to think ahead in their personal lives, underscoring the critical importance of eventually selecting the right mate: “Marry someone who will split the child rearing with you.”

The Women of Ground Zero

Brenda Berkman, Former New York City Fire Department Captain, Talks Women At Ground Zero

Captain Brenda Berkman has been a crusader for women in the emergency services since she challenged the barriers to women entering the New York City Fire Department in a successful law suit in the late 70s, a fight chronicled in the 2006 PBS documentary 'Taking the Heat.'

Berkman not only won women a fair path of entry into the department, but she went on to become one of the highest ranking women in the NYFD over the course of her 25 year career. She worked at Ground Zero from the morning of September 11, 2001 until the site closed months later.

Retired from the department since 2006, she is the founder of the “United Women Firefighters” organization in New York City and Director of Women First Responders of 9/11, a group formed to publicize the stories of women who served at Ground Zero.

With the 10th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center approaching, Huffington Post Women caught up with Berkman to talk about the part women played in the rescue effort at Ground Zero on and after September 11th and how their role has been covered in the media.

What don't people know about what happened at Ground Zero?

Even though people from around the world were very caring and expressing lots of sympathy and concern about what was going on [in] New York, it was very difficult to explain to people [elsewhere] the magnitude of what happened here.

I'm not sure that a lot of people watching on television understood how incredibly dangerous it was down there for months afterwards but especially in the first several weeks. Even though no more buildings fell down after 5:20 in the afternoon on September 11th (everybody forgets there was a third building that fell down in the late afternoon, 7 World Trade Center), for really days, maybe weeks afterwards, there were surrounding skyscrapers which the building engineers were very concerned might also fall down because they had been compromised by the collapse of these three gigantic buildings and the fires and everything else. It was an incredibly dangerous fight, and you didn't have to be there just on 9/11 to be terribly endangered by working down there.

How many women belonged to the New York City Fire Department on 9/11?

There was a very small number. [There were] 11,000 or so [firefighters in the FDNY], and there were approximately 25 [female] firefighters. Our numbers were very tiny. When I won my lawsuit and I brought women into the NYFD in 1982, there were 42 of us. Now there are 29.

What role did women play at Ground Zero?

Basically all of the women [in the Fire Department] ended up there at one point or another while the recovery was going on. And [there were female] police and EMTs. There were other women there not only from the military but also from various law enforcements agencies, the FBI.

Three women rescue workers were killed on 9/11: Moira Smith, NYPD officer, Kathy Mazza, a Port Authority Police Capt., and Yamel Merino, an EMT. Besides those three who were killed, there were countless women almost killed, severely injured. And then there were the women who were working who somehow managed to escape serious injury and were able to continue doing their assignments down there.

Was the work that women were doing in any way different from the work men were doing?

No, no. We were doing exactly the same things. I was operating as a New York City fire officer from the time I got there on 9/11 to the time that the site closed. I was doing my job the way I was doing my job before 9/11, alongside of all my male peers. We didn't have any restrictions on our service, like even now some of the women in the military have. We did everything, and so there was nothing different between what we were doing and what the men were doing.

What was your first indication that the participation of women in the rescue effort was not being represented in the media?

Initially I did not even read a newspaper or watch television because I was in the firehouse [for] what seemed like around the clock. When I was home I was sleeping or I was answering telephone calls. It was all-consuming in those early weeks, and then I really wasn't paying very much attention at all to the media.

Then I started getting phone calls from women firefighters around the country and emails from them saying, "What is going on [in] New York? There's absolutely no indication that there were any women firefighters and also even women cops and EMTs," It seemed like there wasn't very much being said about the role of women in rescue relief. My friends from around the country started pointing it out to me.

How did you feel personally when you thought women were receiving less media coverage?

Well, besides surprised, I think it's hard for any person who excels in something that is being recognized in some ways to be ignored in other ways.

If women composed such a small percentage of the department at the time, why is it important to spotlight their role specifically at Ground Zero?

It took me awhile to realize while I was in college in the 1970's that there were important women in history, we just didn't learn about them [in elementary school].

Women in fact were contributing at the Trade Center, and I knew they were because I was there, I was seeing other women there, I talked to other women who [went] through all kinds of different experiences on 9/11 on the days that we were down there. They were risking their lives and their health, right alongside their male co-workers, and I simply couldn't understand why that story wasn't being told.

We were saying that one of the motivations for going to Afghanistan was to free the Afghan women from the oppression of the Taliban, which kept them behind the veil, locked in their homes, with no opportunities for economic security or freedom of any sort it seemed. And in our own country, where we have these inspirational women doing these important jobs, [they are] not being put out there as something to be proud of. And I think this is something that we should be very proud of in our country.

How do you respond to criticism that your focus on female responders is too narrow and that we should honor everyone who worked at Ground Zero on 9/11?

None of this is meant to, in any way, take away from the heroism of the men who were down there. It's simply stating the fact: There were women serving right alongside the men in exactly the same roles putting their lives on the line exactly the same way.

None of the women down there were looking for their 15 minutes of fame or any of that nonsense, it wasn't like Dancing with the Stars. I wasn't so interested in my personal story, I was interested in the story of women at this paradigm-changing event in world history where things are not going to be like they were [before]. Women were part of all of that. And we simply want to have it recognized.

[These women] were patriots. They were self sacrificing, and they were brave, and they were hard-working, and they were taking risks, and they were serving their community. I mean, how inspiring is that? Why wouldn't you want to tell that story?

25 Jobs to Bring Home the Bacon!

According to CNN in 2010, these jobs help women earn more than $1,000 weekly. Despite these employed ladies stacking their bank accounts, though, it's important to notice that even the top women do not bring home as much as their male co-workers. EMPOWER YOURSELF & NEGOTIATE YOUR PAY!

Pharmacists Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,647 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,914 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 86.1%

Chief executives Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,603 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,999 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 80.2%

Lawyers Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,509 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,875 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 80.5%

Computer software engineers Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,351 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,555 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 86.9%

Computer and information systems managers Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,260 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,641 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 76.8%

Physicians and surgeons Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,230 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,911 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 64.4%

Management analysts Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,139 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,391 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 81.9%

Human resources managers Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,137 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,433 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 79.3%

Speech-language pathologists Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,124 Men - Median weekly earnings: * Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: **

Computer and mathematical occupations Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,088 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,320 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 82.4%

Computer scientists and systems analysts Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,082 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,240Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 87.3%

Physician assistants Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,077 Men - Median weekly earnings: ** Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: **

Medical and health services managers Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,066 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,504 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 70.9%

Physical scientists, all other Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,061 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,535 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 69.1%

Postsecondary teachers Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,056 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,245 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 84.8%

Marketing and sales managers Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,024 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,601 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 64%

Physical therapists Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,019 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,329 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 76.7%

Occupational therapists Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,016 Men - Median weekly earnings: ** Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: **

Registered nurses Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,011 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,168 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 86.6%

Managers, all other Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,010 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,359 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 74.3%

Psychologists Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,004 Men - Median weekly earnings: ** Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: **

Computer programmers Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,003 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,261 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 79.5%

Architecture and engineering occupations Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,001 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,286 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 77.8%

Advertising and promotions managers Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,000 Men - Median weekly earnings: ** Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: **

Education administrators Women - Median weekly earnings: $1,000 Men - Median weekly earnings: $1,398 Women's earnings as percent of men's in same occupation: 71.5%

When Campy is Cool.

Summer is over and school is back in session. Boo. Throughout the summer, I collected a few articles on summer camps that are targeted to girls, and trying to undo stereotyping while equipping them with skills and hopefully sparking a career interest.

I never really went to camp as a kid. Did a brief stint in a day camp about a mile from my house. I just remember making keychains. Felt like prison. But if I had to do it over, and didn't have to worry about spending my parents' money, I'd really want to go to couture camp on East 53rd Street in Manhattan. It may not be too late for me, perhaps I can be a camp counselor there: I watch Project Runway, have a subscription to Vogue and know it's now ok to wear white after Labor Day.

The New York Times recently profiled this fashion camp that was created by a husband and wife team: Gordon Josey, a full-time summer camp director, and Fran Della Baddia, a senior vice president at Coach. FashionCampNYC is a 5-day hands-on program that's been around four years. The girls who participate are ages 12 - 18 and are taught how to create a brand and market it. They hear firsthand from those in the industry on how to launch a career. Pretty cool, right?

While the fashion industry can send conflicting messages to young girls about body image, I think this is a pretty interesting approach in teaching the business side and teaching young women to how to own the industry.

There is a camp that is working to reverse those conflicting messages. Camp Wah-nee promotes a healthy body image and eating habits to its young female campers. Camp Wah-nee is in Torrington, Connecticut, not the town of Pawnee, Indiana- that's in the sitcom Parks and Recreation. The camp's nutritionist was recently featured on Fox 61 talking about the eating "lessons" she provides for the young women. You can watch that here.

The news article points out some startling statistics about child obesity. And I guess I find it slightly frustrating that the eating is focused only on girls and does not include boys, who tend to have a habit of sitting in front of video games for extended periods of time and may not necessarily know what's healthy eating either.

Head over to Chicago, and there's Gadget Camp! This camp focuses on teaching girls the skills needed for a career in manufacturing. Just over a quarter of the 11.7 million manufacturing workers are women; and in technical fields requiring math and science skills, women are paid 33% more than those working outside technical and science fields.

There are Gadget Camps all over the country, even one in East Hartford, CT. Not only do they teach girls that manufacturing and engineering are not "man's work" but it's also inspiring future workers to pursue training in a field where there are limited amount of skilled workers, a frequent complaint from American manufacturers. You can read more about it here.

I wonder if there will be any follow-up interviews with these campers to see the impact the camping experience has on their career paths. At the very least, it makes the camp experience pretty cool and empowering.

What do you think? Were you empowered at summer camp?

Could You Go A Year Without Mirrors?!?!

Kjerstin Gruys Commits to a Year Without Mirrors

Huffington Post, August 30, 2011

When Kjerstin Gruys got engaged to her longtime boyfriend, the former fashion merchandiser turned sociologist feared she would relapse into an eating disorder as she hunted for the perfect wedding dress. She was fiercely committed to researching her sociology Ph.D. on beauty and inequality, but was overwhelmed by the pressure of having a picturesque wedding. Her values and behavior were at odds, and she knew had to do something -- and quick.

Instead of becoming engulfed in a vanity obsession, she committed to a year without mirrors -- and launched the blog Mirror Mirror...OFF The Wall six months before her wedding date.

"I've been trying to stick to my own goal of writing honestly and openly about the process," Gruys said.

Her inspiration for the blog and staying mirror-free for a year came from "The Birth of Venus," a novel about an order of nuns who lived in Italy hundreds of years ago and gave up looking at their bodies and reflections for a lifetime. Since kicking off her blog five months ago, she's written about everything from her "No Makeup Mondays" to the history of mirrors, referencing stats such as how women spend five full days a year staring at their reflection.

Her objective for the blog? To get women to rethink body images and what they're told about beauty. To help her stick to this goal, she volunteers at the nonprofit About Face, which aims to equip women and girls with the tools to understand and resist media messages that negatively affect their self-esteem and body image. "If I had a magic wand, I'd ask women to think about and try to challenge some of the assumptions they have about their appearance, and loosen the grip that body ideals can have," she said.

One of the biggest themes that has stemmed from her project is trust, Gruys said. "I have to trust people to let me know if I have poppy seeds in my teeth. A bigger, deeper issue is trusting people in your life to not care about how you look and to love you even more for spending time with them instead of complaining about your looks."

Although Gruys said she has a supportive group of peers who have nudged her on, she has been criticized by online commenters who say she is not dealing with the root of her insecurity. "In my case, I am avoiding the mirror so I can get on with my life and do other things. I hope to take the emphasis away from my body and just focus on other things."

"I recently read something that said looking in the mirror for more and more time doesn't give you anymore information. It's so plain and true," she added.

Gruys' interest in beauty and its role in society began long before she launched her blog. The Missouri native said she has always had an interest in the interplay of culture and fashion. "We live in a culture that is very stigmatized towards larger bodies and that stigma is directed towards women, much more so than men," Gruys said. "Research shows attractive people are given a 'halo effect' ... Most of this is unconscious, but there are real repercussions if we're looking at employment discrimination, in terms of how people are hired, fired and paid."

While at Princeton University, Gruys wrote her undergraduate senior thesis on body image and sorority culture while overcoming an eating disorder.

"That was probably one of the biggest steps in terms of my personal recovery because it felt so empowering to be facing these issues from a different position," she said. "It felt like a transition, away from being a victim and towards being an activist."

For her master's dissertation, Gruys worked at a plus-sized women's clothing store and discovered some unique power plays happening with what she calls "fat talk," a term coined by anthropologist Mimi Nichter, who wrote "Fat Talk: What Girls and their Parents Say About Dieting."

"I noticed a pattern that these low waged workers, time and time again, were responsible for soothing the body insecurities of their customers ... and also their supervisors," Gruys said. "And that became particularly interesting to me because while all of the customers were plus-sized, a majority of management at this particular store were not plus-sized."

"There's a rule of 'fat talk' that says you shouldn't complain about your body to someone who is worse than yours, but some people do it anyway and get away with it because they are in a position of power," she added. "If someone says, 'Does my butt look big?' they tend to do that in the direction where someone they know will respond kindly."

For her Ph.D. research, Gruys has moved on from body image and started examining vanity size -- when clothing that was once, say, a size 8, becomes a size 6 so that women feel better about themselves, she said. By analyzing Sears catalogs from the past 100 years, Gruys said she's seen drastic changes in clothing size over time. "I think the most interesting thing I've found so far is simply that clothing sizes have changed so dramatically, especially for women, and in the direction of getting away from having the clothing size and clothing measurements having any relationship to each other."

"When we think of standards we think of things that make our lives more standard and more efficient," she said. But clothing size standards are different across every fashion firm and even across brands within a firm. "We attach so much emotion to body size, women especially and companies want us to feel good when we are trying on their clothes."

Making customers feel good has meant that when it comes to standards, fashion has flouted the medical community. "The medical standards are telling us that we are getting bigger, where fashion standards are telling us we are getting smaller," Gruys said.

While Gruys maintains that her blog and Ph.D. research are separate projects, she has used her studies to understand how beauty culture shapes women's lives and explore how her own story fits into the larger picture. And with less than two months to go before her wedding, she has learned to place less value on physical appearance and invest more in her relationships and volunteer work.